Great video! Even though I think these enhanced versions are awesome, I’d have not included them. I’d prefer to include other msx 2 classics like Ikari Warriors, Xevious, kings valley 2, etc. Another topic for a future video might be the v9990 enhanced games. Awesome stuff!
i always perved over the MSX in the windows of the shops in the Tottenham court road (back when it was the place to get the good tech , unlike now where its a hell hole of beggars and American sweet shops ) but you needed to be properly caked up , they were 300 notes i finally got one a couple of years ago and i was NOT disappointed
Awesome list. Didn't know there were so many sequels to great MSX1 games❤. Now i have to play them😂. Thanks for the shout out!! Please keep up the great work❤
The Phoenix game @9:57 is actually based on Osamu Tezuka's (aka the grandfather of Manga and creator of Astroboy and many, many other classics!) masterpiece Phoenix. It was actually a quite a difficult manga to describe properly, as it was kind a collection of many self-contained stories from different periods of time and dealt with esoteric topics that many other manga rarely touched back then. It's an amazing must read, if you're a fan of manga or graphics novels as whole, and is something that master himself considered his life's work (unfortunately, he never was able to finish as he tragically died of stomach cancer in 1989 before he could. In fact supposedly his last words were "I'm begging you, let me work!" spoken to a nurse who attempted to take away his drawing equipment.) and is generally accepted as his best work. It's kinda weird that there's a video game based on it, but it was very popular and a true classic so I'm not surprised that someone would take a shot at it...I'm so glad that it's actually a good game, as it was defintly something that deserved to be taken seriously and not be a quick cash-grab.
An amazing system that was done dirty in the west by subcontracting lame Speccy ports to whatever teenager kid in Spain who happened to know Z80 coding. Basically running an emulated Spectrum game on a computer as slow as it. On the other hand, in Japan...
It was worse than you think. They took advantage, not only of the shared CPU, also of the compatible AY-3 sound chip and a nearly identical graphics mode on the MSX VDP. If someone already made a Spectrum game, all it took was moving some bytes around.
This list consolidated the popularity of Metal Gear. In fact, I could've really voted on both entries, even though the second one is, in my opinion, even better than the first in a technical level (I've put it in an honorable mention). However, it only improved more on the surface than on game design, since the first had a strong foundation. So, I think the 1st place of the first Metal Gear is well-deserved, specially because it has started the stealth genre as a landmark. Great and pleasant surprises to see Psychic World (the best version indeed is in the MSX 2), Firehawk: Thexder - The Second Contact (even though the original in the PC-88 is even more amazing, the MSX 2 is very respectable) and Firebird Hinotori. And the recognition of the homebrew improvements made to Nemesis 2 and 3 and Knightmare Gold is something to applause (how come I haven't downloaded them yet)! Summing up, MSX 2 is one of my very favorite 8-bit systems, and I think this list pretty much defines its importance! P.S.: The one point of disagreement with me is that I don't think MSX 2's Vampire Killer is better than the NES/Famicom one. And you can give me Castlevania 2 any day... Hahaha...
I think Herzog deserves an honorable mention. It was a predecessor to what are now called MOBAs. It successor, Herzog Zwei on the MegaDrive/Genesis, is better known and is seen as a hidden gem overlooked upon its initial release.
At 15:02 you talk about the game "Metal Slug" and the scenes are from the game "Metal gear", of course you can see which game you are talking about, but it is desirable to correct it. 😉
I was so sure I corrected that too! Because it was the last thing I did before I rendered it, it's a hangover from me re-using the template for a Neo Geo video. I don't why its still there and there is no way to correct it once the video is live unfortunately. 😭😭😭
I've never even seen an MSX machine in person. They just weren't a thing in the US. I've only ever seen MSX games via emulation. One of the problems with selecting MSX2 or MSX2+ games is that most websites don't differentiate them from MSX1 games. Since the later systems are backwards compatible, websites tend to lump all the MSX software in together.
Interesting to see the final list. I feel like all the MSX1 games that got MSX2 fan conversions are kind of cheating, though -- those aren't MSX2 games, they're just MSX2-enhanced fan hacks of MSX1 games. I'd've preferred to see the list without them, since there are definitely more than enough MSX2 titles to fill it out. I also wish I'd've known homebrew games were OK to nominate, as my list would've probably looked a lot different in that case -- though I would've likely been the only person voting for games like Singular Stone, Pumpkin Adventure 3, The Sword of IANNA, or The Best of Hamaraja Night, so maybe it's a good thing I avoided nominating any homebrew games after all! Heheh. Also also, for your footage, you may want to emulate the games in 60 Hz modes when capturing in the future, particularly in the case of Japanese games -- hearing such slooooow renditions of the music from Vampire Killer, Usas, and Metal Gear just sounds so wrong to my ears! Definitely not how those games were meant to sound, though I am aware that's how most Europeans know them best.
@@thelairdslair Oh! Well, that's a nice surprise. Definitely deserves it -- it's a fantastic game with incredible music from the great Alberto Jose Gonzalez. So many fantastic homebrew MSX2 games, though! Pumpkin Adventure 3, Singular Stone, Kyokugen, and the recently released Pampas & Selene are probably the best of all time, but there are just so many others, too -- you could make a whole list of just top 40 homebrews for the system and still have a bunch left over.
Others that just missed out were Gauntlet, which was actually in the 20 until the last vote came in on the morning I counted the votes, Life on Mars, Barbarian, Pleasure Hearts and Alien 8 remake.
@@thelairdslair Pleasure Hearts is a sequel to Kyokugen, which is one of the four games I mentioned in my previous comment as one of the greatest MSX2 homebrews. Consistently, Pleasure Hearts always seems to get the nod over Kyokugen, and I've never been able to figure out why -- Kyokugen is simply a better game in every regard! Longer stages, more of them, a greater variety of settings and enemy types, 12 playable characters who all have completely different ships with completely different weapon upgrade paths (and another 4 unlockable hidden characters on top of that!), and just a much better soundtrack as well. It even looks nicer! The only thing Pleasure Hearts has going for it over Kyokugen, really, is that Pleasure Hearts is a horizontally scrolling shooter, while Kyokugen is a vertically scrolling shooter. And I guess people just generally prefer those? Still, it's something I've always found peculiar. Pleasure Hearts is certainly a great game in its own right, don't get me wrong! But Kyokugen seriously mops the floor with it. If you've never played it, I'd urge you to check it out -- really, really fun game, albeit obscenely difficult (and made even more so by the fact that in order to see the true ending, you have to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, then beat it a second time immediately afterward, but with every enemy getting revenge shots when defeated, making it exponentially more difficult still!).
Great video about a great 8 bit system! But... Do i have a deja-vu? Is this a reupload? Haven't i seen this video before? Or have i seen another top MSX2 video by another youtuber? I'm confused...
@@thelairdslair not to tell you how to run your channel, but it's always a good idea to answer questions like this with a real answer, very few people are going to check the comments to see if a problem they noticed has already been mentioned. At least make a pinned correction at the top if it's been pointed out to you. Cheers!
I guess we think differently because that's the first thing I would do before commenting, see if anyone else noticed, especially if there aren't that many comments. Repeatedly telling people the same thing can get quite tiresome, especially when I am already very annoyed about there being an error like this in my video. I really beat myself up about things like this. And my reply was hardly rude, it was tongue firmly in cheek. The comment is there because I used a Neo Geo video as a template and somehow that comment got left there even though I was sure I had swapped it over. There is no way to edit once a video is live, all I can do is add a card, which doesn't work on all devices anyway and nobody looks at them in my experience so they are pointless. I hope that answers your question.
Awesome video, but would it be possible to make the actual game footage bigger? The ersatz TV border is pretty, but doesn’t add very much and means the game graphics are tiny on my phone screen!
@ Absolutely your call sir. I love the channel, just can’t see the games very well on my phone (especially as my 50-odd year old eyes get more decrepit). May be I’ll just save watching for when I’m on a larger screen.
I've had no experience with msx except for a game stick and the games were of a very poor standard ,not much of an improvement on 2600 games...seeing this video and the msx2 standard looks quite appealing....it wouldnt suprise me if an msx type machine came on the market to compete with the x16 and spectrum next
I’m OK with indies in these lists but scroll hacks of existing commercial MSX 1 games is just cheating and wrong. Nemesis 3 didn’t even had the MSX2 enhancements!
Full Top 50 Games List:
50 - Final Fantasy
49 - A-Train
48 - 1942
47 - Arkanoid 2
46 - Tetris
45 - Xevious
44 - Xak
43 - Outrun
42 - Contra
41 - Shirei Sensen
40 - Pennant Race
39 - Fireball
38 - Zanac EX
37 - Eggerland 2
36 - Golvellius
35 - Quinpl
34 - Pleasure Hearts
33 - Parodic
32 - Life on Mars
31 - Sword of Ianna
30 - Barbarian
29 - Ikari Warriors
28 - Alien 8 Gold
27 - Fantasy Zone II
26 - Laydock 2
25 - Nemesis Enhanced
24 - Herzog
23 - Pac-Mania
22 - Gauntlet
21 - Ys
20 - Psycho World
19 - F1 Spirit 3D
18 - Bubble Bobble
17 - Dragon Slayer IV
16 - Firehawk: Thexder 2
15 - Nemesis 3 Enhanced
14 - Penguin Kun 2
13 - Aleste
12 - Nemesis 2 Enhanced
11 - Undeadline
10 - Firebird: The Phoenix Saga
9 - Mr. Ghost
8 - Treasure of Usas
7 - Metal Gear 2
6 - Knightmare Gold
5 - Vampire Killer
4 - Space Manbow
3 - SD Snatcher
2 - Aleste 2
1 - Metal Gear
Great video! Even though I think these enhanced versions are awesome, I’d have not included them. I’d prefer to include other msx 2 classics like Ikari Warriors, Xevious, kings valley 2, etc. Another topic for a future video might be the v9990 enhanced games. Awesome stuff!
I did debate not including them, but so many people voted for them that I thought it was wrong not to do so.
The msx had a surprising amount of top japanese devs - what a lovely machine, especially with the 2 and 2+
This channel is slowly becoming thel very meaning of my Saturday nights! 👾
i always perved over the MSX in the windows of the shops in the Tottenham court road (back when it was the place to get the good tech , unlike now where its a hell hole of beggars and American sweet shops ) but you needed to be properly caked up , they were 300 notes
i finally got one a couple of years ago and i was NOT disappointed
Awesome list. Didn't know there were so many sequels to great MSX1 games❤. Now i have to play them😂. Thanks for the shout out!! Please keep up the great work❤
I'd be very happy with these graphics in 1985.
The Phoenix game @9:57 is actually based on Osamu Tezuka's (aka the grandfather of Manga and creator of Astroboy and many, many other classics!) masterpiece Phoenix. It was actually a quite a difficult manga to describe properly, as it was kind a collection of many self-contained stories from different periods of time and dealt with esoteric topics that many other manga rarely touched back then.
It's an amazing must read, if you're a fan of manga or graphics novels as whole, and is something that master himself considered his life's work (unfortunately, he never was able to finish as he tragically died of stomach cancer in 1989 before he could. In fact supposedly his last words were "I'm begging you, let me work!" spoken to a nurse who attempted to take away his drawing equipment.) and is generally accepted as his best work.
It's kinda weird that there's a video game based on it, but it was very popular and a true classic so I'm not surprised that someone would take a shot at it...I'm so glad that it's actually a good game, as it was defintly something that deserved to be taken seriously and not be a quick cash-grab.
Interesting info thanks!
An amazing system that was done dirty in the west by subcontracting lame Speccy ports to whatever teenager kid in Spain who happened to know Z80 coding. Basically running an emulated Spectrum game on a computer as slow as it. On the other hand, in Japan...
It was worse than you think. They took advantage, not only of the shared CPU, also of the compatible AY-3 sound chip and a nearly identical graphics mode on the MSX VDP. If someone already made a Spectrum game, all it took was moving some bytes around.
This list consolidated the popularity of Metal Gear. In fact, I could've really voted on both entries, even though the second one is, in my opinion, even better than the first in a technical level (I've put it in an honorable mention). However, it only improved more on the surface than on game design, since the first had a strong foundation. So, I think the 1st place of the first Metal Gear is well-deserved, specially because it has started the stealth genre as a landmark.
Great and pleasant surprises to see Psychic World (the best version indeed is in the MSX 2), Firehawk: Thexder - The Second Contact (even though the original in the PC-88 is even more amazing, the MSX 2 is very respectable) and Firebird Hinotori. And the recognition of the homebrew improvements made to Nemesis 2 and 3 and Knightmare Gold is something to applause (how come I haven't downloaded them yet)!
Summing up, MSX 2 is one of my very favorite 8-bit systems, and I think this list pretty much defines its importance!
P.S.: The one point of disagreement with me is that I don't think MSX 2's Vampire Killer is better than the NES/Famicom one. And you can give me Castlevania 2 any day... Hahaha...
I think Herzog deserves an honorable mention. It was a predecessor to what are now called MOBAs. It successor, Herzog Zwei on the MegaDrive/Genesis, is better known and is seen as a hidden gem overlooked upon its initial release.
It only just missed out on the Top 20, it's in the Top 40.
At 15:02 you talk about the game "Metal Slug" and the scenes are from the game "Metal gear", of course you can see which game you are talking about, but it is desirable to correct it. 😉
I was so sure I corrected that too! Because it was the last thing I did before I rendered it, it's a hangover from me re-using the template for a Neo Geo video. I don't why its still there and there is no way to correct it once the video is live unfortunately. 😭😭😭
@@thelairdslair
Never mind, we'll see what game we're talking about anyway, don't worry about that.
I've never even seen an MSX machine in person. They just weren't a thing in the US. I've only ever seen MSX games via emulation. One of the problems with selecting MSX2 or MSX2+ games is that most websites don't differentiate them from MSX1 games. Since the later systems are backwards compatible, websites tend to lump all the MSX software in together.
I love the first 2 minutes calling out the ppl that weren't paying attention. 😂
Interesting to see the final list. I feel like all the MSX1 games that got MSX2 fan conversions are kind of cheating, though -- those aren't MSX2 games, they're just MSX2-enhanced fan hacks of MSX1 games. I'd've preferred to see the list without them, since there are definitely more than enough MSX2 titles to fill it out.
I also wish I'd've known homebrew games were OK to nominate, as my list would've probably looked a lot different in that case -- though I would've likely been the only person voting for games like Singular Stone, Pumpkin Adventure 3, The Sword of IANNA, or The Best of Hamaraja Night, so maybe it's a good thing I avoided nominating any homebrew games after all! Heheh.
Also also, for your footage, you may want to emulate the games in 60 Hz modes when capturing in the future, particularly in the case of Japanese games -- hearing such slooooow renditions of the music from Vampire Killer, Usas, and Metal Gear just sounds so wrong to my ears! Definitely not how those games were meant to sound, though I am aware that's how most Europeans know them best.
The Sword of Ianna actually got quite a lot of votes and narrowly missed out on the Top 20, it's in the Top 40 list.
@@thelairdslair Oh! Well, that's a nice surprise. Definitely deserves it -- it's a fantastic game with incredible music from the great Alberto Jose Gonzalez.
So many fantastic homebrew MSX2 games, though! Pumpkin Adventure 3, Singular Stone, Kyokugen, and the recently released Pampas & Selene are probably the best of all time, but there are just so many others, too -- you could make a whole list of just top 40 homebrews for the system and still have a bunch left over.
Others that just missed out were Gauntlet, which was actually in the 20 until the last vote came in on the morning I counted the votes, Life on Mars, Barbarian, Pleasure Hearts and Alien 8 remake.
@@thelairdslair Pleasure Hearts is a sequel to Kyokugen, which is one of the four games I mentioned in my previous comment as one of the greatest MSX2 homebrews. Consistently, Pleasure Hearts always seems to get the nod over Kyokugen, and I've never been able to figure out why -- Kyokugen is simply a better game in every regard! Longer stages, more of them, a greater variety of settings and enemy types, 12 playable characters who all have completely different ships with completely different weapon upgrade paths (and another 4 unlockable hidden characters on top of that!), and just a much better soundtrack as well. It even looks nicer! The only thing Pleasure Hearts has going for it over Kyokugen, really, is that Pleasure Hearts is a horizontally scrolling shooter, while Kyokugen is a vertically scrolling shooter. And I guess people just generally prefer those?
Still, it's something I've always found peculiar. Pleasure Hearts is certainly a great game in its own right, don't get me wrong! But Kyokugen seriously mops the floor with it. If you've never played it, I'd urge you to check it out -- really, really fun game, albeit obscenely difficult (and made even more so by the fact that in order to see the true ending, you have to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, then beat it a second time immediately afterward, but with every enemy getting revenge shots when defeated, making it exponentially more difficult still!).
I have played it and agree its excellent, but its far too hard for me!
H0ffman done a great port of msx metal gear to the Amiga, plays great! Wish SD snatcher was ported to a western system
That Mr Ghost level looks like Kenseiden's Master System first level, and Revenge of Shinobi's Mega Drive first level.
Appreciate you!
Great video about a great 8 bit system! But... Do i have a deja-vu? Is this a reupload? Haven't i seen this video before? Or have i seen another top MSX2 video by another youtuber? I'm confused...
This is a brand new video, I have done MSX2 videos before (they are linked in the description) but they were totally different to this.
I feel like I heard the opening music for your channel in some game I've played. Which game is that music from?
It's from the Atari Lynx port of STUN Runner (sampled from the arcade game).
@@thelairdslair Thanks!
for Arkanoid style games is there a volume controller for the msx/,sx2?
And my vote goes to Metal SLug
Yep!
15:12 Er.....why is the blurb on Metal Gear talking about Metal SLUG, a Neo-Geo run and gun side-scroller from 10 years later? 😆
Your answer is elsewhere in the comments . . . . .
@@thelairdslair not to tell you how to run your channel, but it's always a good idea to answer questions like this with a real answer, very few people are going to check the comments to see if a problem they noticed has already been mentioned. At least make a pinned correction at the top if it's been pointed out to you. Cheers!
I guess we think differently because that's the first thing I would do before commenting, see if anyone else noticed, especially if there aren't that many comments. Repeatedly telling people the same thing can get quite tiresome, especially when I am already very annoyed about there being an error like this in my video. I really beat myself up about things like this. And my reply was hardly rude, it was tongue firmly in cheek.
The comment is there because I used a Neo Geo video as a template and somehow that comment got left there even though I was sure I had swapped it over. There is no way to edit once a video is live, all I can do is add a card, which doesn't work on all devices anyway and nobody looks at them in my experience so they are pointless.
I hope that answers your question.
Awesome video, but would it be possible to make the actual game footage bigger? The ersatz TV border is pretty, but doesn’t add very much and means the game graphics are tiny on my phone screen!
Not really, I already made it it pretty much as big as I can as I still want to include all the other information like box art, publisher, year etc.
@ Absolutely your call sir. I love the channel, just can’t see the games very well on my phone (especially as my 50-odd year old eyes get more decrepit). May be I’ll just save watching for when I’m on a larger screen.
Suspected one of the MGS game would take #1 (deservedly so)
missing blade lords. even better game than bubble and bobble to play
It didn't get a single vote.
@@thelairdslair 😱
msx2 somewhere between atari, Nes, and sega master system not for me but to each is own cheers.
I've had no experience with msx except for a game stick and the games were of a very poor standard ,not much of an improvement on 2600 games...seeing this video and the msx2 standard looks quite appealing....it wouldnt suprise me if an msx type machine came on the market to compete with the x16 and spectrum next
They already made something like that called the MSX Visulizer, but it's not well known.
Uşas is pronounced "Ushas". It's the goddess of dawn in Hinduism.
never had one i had a ti99 4a instead.
I’m OK with indies in these lists but scroll hacks of existing commercial MSX 1 games is just cheating and wrong. Nemesis 3 didn’t even had the MSX2 enhancements!
the #1 comment is about metal slug not metal gear?
Yes, lots of people pointed this out already, not sure how that happened and now it's impossible to fix.