The MSX was the first computer I owned. I learned to program Z80 assembly on it. I had no assembler so I wrote the programs on paper first and then translated it to machine code which I then poked into memory and ran the program :-)
Arab here. I was aware of the MSX for a couple of years but never knew much until recently about its impact here in the Middle East. Even asked my mother and she said she owned one. To my knowledge, there were two different MSX series of models here, one is "Al-Mithali" and the other one is "Sakhr", made by Al-Alamiah. There was even competition between the MSX and other home computers like the NEC PC-6001 also known as Al-Warkaa' here in Arabia.
I've been modifying one of the AL Sakhr-170 machines into a modern cyberdeck for some time and find it's aesthetics to be super satisfying. Mysteriously mine has a spot toward the bottom right that seems to have been planned as a spot to stick some AA batteries, but never had any contacts, door, or wiring run to that spot. I only found the AA marking embossed in the plastic when I took it apart the first time.
Nice review. There were a couple of minor issues (ASCII Corporation is the name of the company that developed MSX, sharing the name of the ASCII standard, without any relationship to it).
MSX where always the machines of legend. I'd always hear of them, and that they where basically great machines, but nobody had one, nor know where to get one.
Greetings from Italy. Really nice & nostalgic video: when I was a child back in the 80's, I had (still have) a Canon MSX one (64K). I had tons of hours of fun with it, especially with Konami's games (some are still great!). Thanks. Ciao!
Very accurate and informative video. I never knew about the issue regarding the video ram, always thought it would have been an advantage due to the other machines not having any vram, although everyone knew MSX couldn't scroll smoothly. Had to scoff at Sir Clive Sinclair saying the speccy was 2-3 X more powerful 😂. Konami proved the MSX was capable of much better games than the competition when you know how to utilize the hardware rather than just dumping a port from the speccy
The Sharp MZ 800 had videoram too, for a matter of fact you could upgrade it to a whopping 32K videoram (just by pressing to 4416 chips in empty sockets). Scrolling was indeed a problem, normally they could only move 8 pixel blocks. But there was a trick (I believe they did it with sprites), Pippols is an example. Oh and if Sir Clive was always right we won't drive cars today ;)
@@xXTheoLinuxXx Actually Mz 800 had hardware scrolling, though somewhat limited. First of all the display memory wrapped around when scrolling so any graphics that went out of top/left came back from bottom/right. And secondly there were no separate horizontal and vertical scroll controls but the scrolling was controlled by one offset register with limited range. Vertical scrolling could be done with 1 pixel accuracy, but horizontal scrolling only with 8 CHARACTERS accuracy (since the offset register moved the display 1 pixel up/down with offset change of 5). Still, it could have been used to make a relatively smooth vertical scroll game. As for scolling in 8 pixel blocks that was probably for horizontal direction. Copying the contents of the VRAM so that memory was shifted 1 byte back/forwards would shift the display 1 character left/right (though there would still be wraparound on the sides). In vertical direction I believe scrolling could be done by 1 pixel steps relatively fast using LDIR/LDDR. Also, I believe that the software sprites that were available just used the display controller's XOR draw mode.
@@juhanipolvi4729 I see that my comment was a kind of messy. The MSX 1 didn't have hardware scrolling and that was I was refering too. I messed it up with the thing that the MSX and the Sharp MZ 800 had seperate videoram, a lot of computers didn't have that. Which was nice to save some user memory. The Sharp MZ 800 was a nice computer, and compared to others inexpensive and provided a whole lot more. Mine had expanded videoram and a quickdisc and 16 colours in a resolution of 320 x 200 was a kind of Atari ST (although it didn't had the palette of the ST), but still half way the eighties very very nice :)
Great video but as far as gaming goes you missed the biggest series to ever launch on the MSX computers which started the career of a living legend. That series is Metal Gear and the developer was Hideo Kojima. Two MGS titles were made for the MSX and we in the US only recieved a portion of one on the Nes. It wasn't until many years later that we were able to play the first two games in all of their glory on an MGS Collection for...I think it was the PS2.
Despite the software issues, Konami apparently had no problem squeezing unbelievable performance out of this thing. Their games and other Japanese software developers made some superior games on this hardware.
@@robbienl8176 As an interesting aside, Konami ported some of their titles to the Canadian NABU PC computer, which has recently been gathering interest and is nearly compatible with MSX-1 machines. It's still early days in the homebrew scene but there's many folks hoping to port MSX titles to NABU PC in the coming months, as well as storage hardware development.
The Panasonic MSX Turbo-R is definitely the wildest MSX variant, with it's custom 16-bit CPU that is backwards compatible with MSX, MSX2, and MSX2+ software.
+EgoShredder LOL! You can't buy something like that on ebay unfortunately. I bought my Turbo R on Yahoo Japan Auctions for under $400 shipped from Japan. They are expensive for an MSX but nothing remotely close to that laughable listing!
My first computer was an MSX, that same Toshiba one. It was similarly popular as c64 here. I had so much fun with that thing and hacked all the games to modify them and rip pieces of them off to make my own games. That and the MSX-BASIC manual that game with it was what got me into programming.
I loved my Toshiba MSX and found another one with a crack right across the PCB so spent all day wiring jumpers from one side to the other. Amazingly it worked! Stupidly I gave them both away. I think my favourite game was Kings Valley.
Growing up, my first gaming console was a MSX based catridge system. With no keyboard and only joystick ports. Those was quite popular in south Korea. Some games I remember are... The Castle, Road Fighter, Galaga (my dad's favorite ;) ), King's valley, Seesaw, Hyper Rally... ah... One of my friend had a full fledged MSX PC with tape drive.
Great video, looking forward to the MSX2 and Turbo R reviews! Also, no Jet Set Willy in your favourite games showcase? What the hell! Lol. Yeah I know it was just a port but it was miles better than the original so I tend to think of it as an MSX title.
My fav MSX Model is The SVI 728 MSX, which is my first ever computer and I still have it:D Man I have so many fond memories playing on it, I also played through Nemesis 1 with only the arrow keys.. The cartridge games from Konami was top notch, particulary Nemesis I, II III and Salamander:D
MSX was the first computer brand to include a multimedia standard (philips) called it the "New Media System". This was later transfered over to the PC side as the MPC-1 standard with a soundcard (adlib/soublader) and a cd-rom reader.
These were heavily used to hardcode the subtitles on pirated VHS tapes in the 80s. Every video rental shop had MSX generated subtitles on all tapes (except the tapes with local language, no subtitles needed for them).
I miss my Philips NMS8255 MSX2 computer. MSX2 was technically ahead of the Comodore C64/128 and hugely popular in Europe and Japan, also in Brazil if I’m not mistaken. The Konami games brings back good memories
I had a SVI-728 and HX10 to replace the Compukit UK101. Absolutely loved the Spectravideo for programming and wrote my first assembly program on it - an oscilloscope that used the joystick port. Sadly they were thrown out when I moved house a few years ago.
@Alejandro Herrera Barboza i lost my MSX when is was in high school and I'm not a collactor so i never touch MSX after that era. I remember a time when there was Arabic apps with weird protection They give you the password and it is "I swear in the name of Allah that this copy is legal or I'll go to HELL" it worked
The Turbo-R wasn't a 16-bit system. The R800 CPU was an incredibly fast 8-bit Z-80, arguably the computationally most powerful 8-bit CPU that ever reached the consumer market.
Well, it kinda depends on your definition; the R800 did have a native 16-bit ALU and 16-bit registers (and some operands), combined with only a 8-bit databus...
And there also was the Philips NMS 8280. It was an MSX 2 computer that was a bit popular in Netherlands, Belgium an Germany. It was a video computer with Chromakey and posibilities for videomontage.
I had the Sony HB-900AP counterpart, with the lovely typing keyboard. At some point the Dutch and German TV stations used it for sport-time overlays and subtitles, before they moved on to the Amiga 500 or Atari ST ...
I was also looking for it like crazy. The later MSX variants seem to be the strongest 8 bit machines ever made actually - maybe only measurable to the Elan Enterprise 128k - an other 8bit actually from Britain that we were all crazy about in my homeland Hungary because for some reason most of the units have shipped here ;-)
Well done on the video, came across very well and interesting to see MSX from a UK point of view. I have one of the PX-7 machines as well (as well as quite a few others :)), and use it for most tape games as it has a more standard memory layout and thus works with more titles. The video overlay functionality works really well. It really is a pity that more of the titles published in Japan did not make it to the UK and as you said that they moved into the Western market sooner or things may have been a little different to how things played out. Most of the UK ports are actually running an emulation layer when running Spectrum ports, unfortunately not many UK produced titles took advantage of the hardware or as you said understood/followed the guidelines for detecting the location of memory. It was programmers from both Spectravideo and Microsoft that wrote the original BIOS and Basic for the original Spectravideo machines, but it was Nishi who introduced them/got them together. Microsoft then refined it further for the MSX standard, also writing MSX-DOS at pretty much the same time they made MS-DOS (why they are similar and file compatible).
My first computer back in 1984 when I was a wee 7 year old lad. A Sony Hit-Bit 10-P MSX 1 with 32 kb of RAM. Spent countless hours on it and it only got replaced after getting our first family PC in 1995. My primary school back then had an MSX-2 with a floppy drive. Man that was fast compared to my good old cassette recorder...
In Finland the most popular one was Spectravideo with SVI-738 being the latest and greatest. They lacked the amount of titles as the other platforms but if you compared a cartridge Nemesis to a amstrad cpc conversion it was like two different games. Overall C64 was just too dominant for anything else to gain a foothold. We lacked a spectrum scene and I was one of the few in Alan Sugar's bed.
When I was at university in the 80s I borrowed my neighbour's MSX computer. It was actually a nice machine to use. It somehow felt very familiar to me coming from CPM.
In Brazil, we had actually 2 brands producing MSX machines, Toshiba (Hotbit) and Gradiente (Expert). This last one a bit more "professional" with separated keyboard and 3 interface slots.
It's strange that in an European MSX review there are no Philips machines to be seen at any point! Nor have I seen any SONY ones, which constitutes (together with Philips) my only childhood memories of the platform in my homeland Spain (from mainly computer magazines and ads). I faintly remember, throught the haze of distant memories, some SONY MSX's looking aethetically pretty good. Now, having done an image search, realize it was not just any model, but a few of them looked just beautiful.
Many of the MSX computers that came to Europe was music capable in some way. And was used in connection with keyboards. I have an early Yamaha MSX with a Yamaha synth built into it. I have been meaning to get it up and running, but I can't. (World of tanks addiction.)
+Nostalgia Nerd There is no such thing as an MSX3. There's a guy working on an emulator-like application that incorporates features that he would have liked to see in a hypothetical new MSX generation, and he happens to call it MSX3. This has no relationship to any actual MSX machine or standard ever built.
+Nostalgia Nerd The MSX3 was planned instead of the MSX TurboR, but Yamaha got delayed and didn't finish its VDP (V9978) in time. The TurboR received instead the MSX2+ VDP and was rushed to marked to try to not loose the release date. Yamaha finished the VDP some years later, but as it was too late they removed all Texas Instruments IP parts, named it V9990 and released it as a stand-alone VDP to be used on PC video cards. That's probably the saddest part of the MSX history.
Interesting and well done video. Retroactively these first generation of MSX computers are called MSX1. Apart from Japanese companies, MSX computers were also produced by South-Korean one's (like Daewoo) and Philips.
@@saigokun No, they didn't. I have exactly that model here. It is made in Japan by Kyocera with a NEC main board. Even in the eighties Philips already did offshoring. The predecessor, the P2000T was made in Austria at a factory aquired by Philips that made audio tape devices.
@@saigokun Off course, but with focus on marketing of the system in Europe, with some local software development and market specific styling. Don't forget that they made the predecessor themselves, and they managed to sell only 50000 systems in total. A number like that was too big of a risk in the eighties to build your own factory line for. Because they offshored the production, they could focus on selling, and I guess they sold over a million "Philips" MSX computers because of that focus.
What about my favourite 8 bits? The Spectravideo range, which was an early cousin of the MSX. The SVI318 and 328 were not compatible but the 728 and on wards were. These were great machines and pride of my collection. Cheers
5:45 Very similar specs to sega MasterSystem - The notable differance, on the surface, is the sound chip SMS z80 running at 3.58mhz 8kb Ram TMS9918 with 16kb VRAM Why then did the MSX have such difficulties scrolling
You should play Knightmare or goonies, those are (for me) the best games that came out for the MSX 1. Another great video you made, I'm going to share on my page, even though it's a ZX Spectrum page
I had a speccy and recall later on (mid 80s??) seeing a Toshiba msx in the window of our local TV shop... At first they weren't cheap but within a few months the price had been slashed to around a third! Practically giving them away... I remember thinking at the time that it looked like a superior machine and that it was so cheap - build wise probably superior. . I always wondered why they never took off-now I know! Just a matter of timing 😊
Exactly my thoughts also, the MSX was very "splintered" it was (at least here in Sweden) not a standard. C64 ruled in Sweden for the most part and even though it had some facelifts it was the same computer and software could be shared without any problems. I do remember a MSX (Panasonic v1?!?) in my school and I loved it, but it took sometime to get used to as a C64 owner.
FYI. MSX Turbo R (MSX3) is an 8bit machine running on 7,xxMhz (double z80) and uses Risc technology, which needs only one clock cycle instead of four per instruction. Speed = z80 * 2* 4. On paper. It's a very fast 8bit system. Plans were more ambitious for a real MSX3. Yamaha chip development was slow and they created a different system with a lot of short cuts. Custom software development has always lacked. A lot of unused potential. Specifically on the MSX2 (1985-1988), being able to outdo aspects of 16bit systems and make other 8bit systems look bleak. I've developed a game engine to squeeze its strengths. It has become an interesting challenge to prove this point. Convincing pixel art is a different challenge. Also: the MSX2 video chip is fully equipped to handle 192Kb of video-ram. Only one obscure machine was ever produced to use this. Not making this available as a standard option (plug chip in socket) was the biggest mistake. It opens up more than just more memory. Had this expandability been a standard then this configuration would have become a standard itself. The MSX2 failed in X axis hardware scrolling. This was corrected in the MSX2+ in 1988. Too little too late. 192Kb could have made the difference here too, to some extend. Its more modern approach to graphics (Bitmap, RGB color-mixer) made it a stranger among 8bit developers. Its strength was its weakness. MSX2+ often has integrated XBasic. A slightly reduced Basic that runs at the speed of machine language. Also available for MSX2 as software. An optimized MSX2 was a powerful toy in 1986, when the Atari ST and Amiga also became available. With proper development of the obvious capacities, the MSX2 might have outshone these machines occasionally. I should buy a modern flash card extension for the MSX so I am freed of floppy disks. I have all the components to demonstrate a powerful game engine. I should be able to make a demo level that is pretty mind blowing for pretty straight forward 8bit capacities in 1986. It has a nice what-if?-factor to it. And I have some cool ideas for MSX GL. Video ram sees all its pages (screens) as one canvas with coordinates. It's easy to draw a large stage, for a game, maxing out on vectors and bitmap. It's half a game engine. Complex sprite manipulation is part of it. Add I know hacks to get more out of it. More color, more dynamics. More what-if? When it comes to getting the best out of retro tech, then the MSX2 is unexplored territory. A frustration for a technically inclined kid in the eighties. A truth for the ages. I'm not in a hurry. Nailing it for this machine is an interesting art project.
Hmm... MSX-BASIC is actually about 22KB in original MSX and you can't make MSX tR a 16bit computer although it has two 8bit CPUs... Other than that, very good and professional looking video. I enjoyed it.
I had a SVI 728 and a local store that sold games for it. First cassette I ever bought: Mastertronics "Chiller". I still regret that to this day. ;) Then, Feud. Aaaaand then Batman. It took 15 minutes from cload until I saw the menu..
I love this channel for its detailed history documentaries and deep reviews, but this particular video was sad to say the least. After 04:00 it shows a lot of prejudice against the MSX, and a boasts lot of misinformation. For example, being cousins with a common ancestor, the way the MSX access its video memory is identical to the Master System, a machine that Nostalgia Nerd praises a lot on the video about that console. The slowness of the ZX-Spectrum ports is caused by terrible programming just like it happened with the very same games for the Amstrad CPC. But your video on Amstrad CPC doesn't blame this problem on that machine. Real MSX games from Japanese developers perform much better. Searching for RAM is only necessary if no operating system is present, otherwise the system tells you where the RAM is. And even in that case its only if the software needs to use more than 32KB of RAM which is more than double the amount of usable RAM that the original ZX-Spectrum provided. The AY-3-8910 sound chip is the very same that was later adopted both by the ZX-Spectrum 128K and the Atari ST computers. The failure of the MSX in English speaking countries has nothing to do with its hardware qualities against its 8bit competitors, but its much more related to terrible marketing in these areas. Not different from the Amiga and Atari-ST versus the IBM-PC in the 16bit arena. The video title is also misleading: it says "MSX System & Platform review", when its just a shallow review of the 1st generation of computers, and only from an UK perspective. Story videos about other machines were very detailed about how things went in their most successful markets, to the point that there's even one very good special about the Sega consoles in Brazil. Saying that the MSX1 video was inferior to the C64 or CPC is questionable as can be easily seen when comparing Gradius for all these platforms. As you mentioned in one of your videos comparing the speccy with the CPC and C64, its a mater of wether you prefer more detailed graphics or more colorful ones. The MSX1 had exactly the same resolution as the speccy, but 8 times more color resolution and double the amount of colors per block. In fact, its the machine that can put more colors simultaneously per 8x8 block, even more than the NES.
fr_schmidlin It's an eleven minute video, not a full length documentary. What do you expect him to do in eleven minutes? MSX was a failure for several reasons. It's capabilities as a games machine are only as good as the games produced for it. It's no good claiming games *could* have been better, the fact is,many weren't brilliant. The hardware wasn't exactly revolutionary, in fact it bordered on obsolescence by the time the MSX2 was trundled out, with too many competing companies trying to produce compatible, but different computers. Nice idea, wrong product.
I have to agree, this video felt rushed and not up to Nostalgia Nerds usual qualities... Just look at the graphics in Salamander and or Nemesis it really shows the power of the MSX system:D
I had a Toshiba HX10 (8:25) although I can’t remember where & when I got it although believe it was back in the 90’s and have no idea what happened to it although I do remember that MSX was supposed to be the connectivity standard much like USB is now today, I believe I used mine with a Star Micronics Dot Matrix Printer! 🇬🇧
The very first gaming system my family had, I believe it was an SVI-728. Later lost the power supply so we couldn't play it, shame since I remember enjoying Penguin Adventure and Road Fighter a lot, among others. Great video!
Penguin Adventure was MSX2 so I believe it was the first episode, Antartic Adventure :) But most Konami games were great. Magical Tree, Pippols, Knightmare..
Theo Buunermond I see, it must have been then, does sound familiar. Didn't know there were two games. Yeah, Konami games were special, wish I'd had more of them.
Hi. I'm doing a videoclip for a song I created in contribution to the MSX. Would you allow me to use some footage from this video to create it? I'm just interested in some loose seconds here and there from some clips with the keyboard and things like that.
It is hard to have love for the MSX. We were already full on Mac when MSX happened, and it was a huge step back from Philips previous Z80 machine, the P2000T, in certain areas, most noticably the worse BASIC, the lower vertical resolution (which was really low on an MSX, we went back from 240 to 192 lines), and bad readability of its font.
+Doktor Hachi Roku the Toshiba hx 10 allows the cartridge out and put the computer is on because it has a switch inside the slot which makes it off and on when remove or put the cartridge. Sorry I don't speak English well.
I have a Toshiba and I have never done or would. I understand it is a security measure, it is certainly gamble and mistreat insert and remove the cartridge with the computer turned on.
There was a Yamaha MSX model that I really wanted to get back in the day because it also doubled as a music production system. Can't recall the number or name of it, but I saw it in a copy of Keyboard magazine and wanted it desperately. Maybe someday....
RockRedGenesis Could be. It's been easily 30 years since I saw the advert. I don't remember if I saw it in Keyboard Magazine or one of the computer mags of the day. I just remember seeing it and going 'I need this. Right NAO!!'
Brazil here.. I had a ZX Spectrum (TK 95) and my friend had an MSX and I remember the graphics and speed on MSX was better, but it had way less games. 😅
Living there, I went from P2000T straight to Mac. Never cared about the C64, MSX nor Amiga. All inferior machines to the once great true Philips product, the P2000T, especially the MSX was a huge step back for Philips. But in the late 80's we were about to enter Jan Timmer time, so the great doubts began, and they also started to bet on a PC future. The company evaporated in the nineties and became navel lint. Today I reside at the once holy Philips ground, gentrified hipster high density boring area with 3 buildings left reminding of a glorious past..
The MSX was the first computer I owned. I learned to program Z80 assembly on it. I had no assembler so I wrote the programs on paper first and then translated it to machine code which I then poked into memory and ran the program :-)
MSX was quite popular in Brazil and still has a big retro following.
1:48 "let's take a look at Japan in the early eighties"
(Shows map of the 1st century)
I guess he meant that literally...
Arab here. I was aware of the MSX for a couple of years but never knew much until recently about its impact here in the Middle East. Even asked my mother and she said she owned one. To my knowledge, there were two different MSX series of models here, one is "Al-Mithali" and the other one is "Sakhr", made by Al-Alamiah. There was even competition between the MSX and other home computers like the NEC PC-6001 also known as Al-Warkaa' here in Arabia.
I've been modifying one of the AL Sakhr-170 machines into a modern cyberdeck for some time and find it's aesthetics to be super satisfying. Mysteriously mine has a spot toward the bottom right that seems to have been planned as a spot to stick some AA batteries, but never had any contacts, door, or wiring run to that spot. I only found the AA marking embossed in the plastic when I took it apart the first time.
Yeah كمبيوتر صخر
I had a Talent MSX DPC-200. They were very common in Argentina. Great memories!
Nice review. There were a couple of minor issues (ASCII Corporation is the name of the company that developed MSX, sharing the name of the ASCII standard, without any relationship to it).
Msx was also populair in the Netherlands and Spain. You also forgot to mention that both castlevania and metal gear have they're roots on the msx.
Ahhhh, but I didn't. Those games didn't come until MSX2, which will be in a subsequent video ;)
Ah, my bad. i noticed the little vampire killer clip in you're video that's why i thought you forgot.
+theseob yeah, I had to put that in as a teaser at least. Great game
It was also quite popular in Finland, second to the Commodore
theseob
Not actually as for Castlevania. The very first version was the NES one, though MSX version came second.
MSX where always the machines of legend. I'd always hear of them, and that they where basically great machines, but nobody had one, nor know where to get one.
Greetings from Italy. Really nice & nostalgic video: when I was a child back in the 80's, I had (still have) a Canon MSX one (64K). I had tons of hours of fun with it, especially with Konami's games (some are still great!). Thanks. Ciao!
Very accurate and informative video. I never knew about the issue regarding the video ram, always thought it would have been an advantage due to the other machines not having any vram, although everyone knew MSX couldn't scroll smoothly.
Had to scoff at Sir Clive Sinclair saying the speccy was 2-3 X more powerful 😂. Konami proved the MSX was capable of much better games than the competition when you know how to utilize the hardware rather than just dumping a port from the speccy
The Sharp MZ 800 had videoram too, for a matter of fact you could upgrade it to a whopping 32K videoram (just by pressing to 4416 chips in empty sockets). Scrolling was indeed a problem, normally they could only move 8 pixel blocks. But there was a trick (I believe they did it with sprites), Pippols is an example. Oh and if Sir Clive was always right we won't drive cars today ;)
@@xXTheoLinuxXx Actually Mz 800 had hardware scrolling, though somewhat limited. First of all the display memory wrapped around when scrolling so any graphics that went out of top/left came back from bottom/right. And secondly there were no separate horizontal and vertical scroll controls but the scrolling was controlled by one offset register with limited range. Vertical scrolling could be done with 1 pixel accuracy, but horizontal scrolling only with 8 CHARACTERS accuracy (since the offset register moved the display 1 pixel up/down with offset change of 5). Still, it could have been used to make a relatively smooth vertical scroll game.
As for scolling in 8 pixel blocks that was probably for horizontal direction. Copying the contents of the VRAM so that memory was shifted 1 byte back/forwards would shift the display 1 character left/right (though there would still be wraparound on the sides). In vertical direction I believe scrolling could be done by 1 pixel steps relatively fast using LDIR/LDDR.
Also, I believe that the software sprites that were available just used the display controller's XOR draw mode.
@@juhanipolvi4729 I see that my comment was a kind of messy. The MSX 1 didn't have hardware scrolling and that was I was refering too. I messed it up with the thing that the MSX and the Sharp MZ 800 had seperate videoram, a lot of computers didn't have that. Which was nice to save some user memory. The Sharp MZ 800 was a nice computer, and compared to others inexpensive and provided a whole lot more. Mine had expanded videoram and a quickdisc and 16 colours in a resolution of 320 x 200 was a kind of Atari ST (although it didn't had the palette of the ST), but still half way the eighties very very nice :)
Had a Vic-20 and a Commodore 64 back in the 80'ths so yesterday I bought a Spectravideo 728, time to get to know the MSX standard :)
very good video. great to see more stuff for the MSX
+Banjo Guy Ollie Well thank you very much :)
Great video but as far as gaming goes you missed the biggest series to ever launch on the MSX computers which started the career of a living legend. That series is Metal Gear and the developer was Hideo Kojima. Two MGS titles were made for the MSX and we in the US only recieved a portion of one on the Nes. It wasn't until many years later that we were able to play the first two games in all of their glory on an MGS Collection for...I think it was the PS2.
Both Metal Gear games were for the MSX2. This review covers the original MSX standard, which couldn't run those games
Despite the software issues, Konami apparently had no problem squeezing unbelievable performance out of this thing. Their games and other Japanese software developers made some superior games on this hardware.
Konami games were awesome on the MSX
@@robbienl8176 As an interesting aside, Konami ported some of their titles to the Canadian NABU PC computer, which has recently been gathering interest and is nearly compatible with MSX-1 machines. It's still early days in the homebrew scene but there's many folks hoping to port MSX titles to NABU PC in the coming months, as well as storage hardware development.
I remember my old (well, at the time it was new) MSX Expert Plus manufactured by Gradiente here in Brazil. Good memories.
The Panasonic MSX Turbo-R is definitely the wildest MSX variant, with it's custom 16-bit CPU that is backwards compatible with MSX, MSX2, and MSX2+ software.
+The Obsolete Geek Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting stuck in with those beasts! Quite literally a Beast from the East
+The Obsolete Geek OUCH! Expensive but very nice! www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Panasonic-MSX-Turbo-R-512KB-Ram-Full-Set-/331622326007?hash=item4d363b1ef7
Holey moley. That's a lolla moola
+EgoShredder LOL! You can't buy something like that on ebay unfortunately. I bought my Turbo R on Yahoo Japan Auctions for under $400 shipped from Japan. They are expensive for an MSX but nothing remotely close to that laughable listing!
+KieranD212 It's certainly not worth the money, but its an interesting piece of hardware. I actually did a system review of the Turbo R on my channel!
My first computer was an MSX, that same Toshiba one. It was similarly popular as c64 here. I had so much fun with that thing and hacked all the games to modify them and rip pieces of them off to make my own games. That and the MSX-BASIC manual that game with it was what got me into programming.
I loved my Toshiba MSX and found another one with a crack right across the PCB so spent all day wiring jumpers from one side to the other. Amazingly it worked! Stupidly I gave them both away.
I think my favourite game was Kings Valley.
MSXcellent video, as always!
+Tonio Miklo I See what you did there, and I liked it.
Growing up, my first gaming console was a MSX based catridge system. With no keyboard and only joystick ports. Those was quite popular in south Korea.
Some games I remember are... The Castle, Road Fighter, Galaga (my dad's favorite ;) ), King's valley, Seesaw, Hyper Rally... ah...
One of my friend had a full fledged MSX PC with tape drive.
Oh, I remember the Zemmix! A magazine said it was going to be released here in Italy, but it never was. At least I got a MSX2
Great video, looking forward to the MSX2 and Turbo R reviews! Also, no Jet Set Willy in your favourite games showcase? What the hell! Lol. Yeah I know it was just a port but it was miles better than the original so I tend to think of it as an MSX title.
My fav MSX Model is The SVI 728 MSX, which is my first ever computer and I still have it:D
Man I have so many fond memories playing on it, I also played through Nemesis 1 with only the arrow keys..
The cartridge games from Konami was top notch, particulary Nemesis I, II III and Salamander:D
MSX was the first computer brand to include a multimedia standard (philips) called it the "New Media System". This was later transfered over to the PC side as the MPC-1 standard with a soundcard (adlib/soublader) and a cd-rom reader.
There was also the official elusive MSX-AUDIO standard
I had a ZX Spektrum but wanted a MSX... but i never got one... Better Grafix much better Sound, a dream Maschine.
Should have gone with an electronic dictionary. Much cheaper anyway.
My trusty Canon V20 MSX still rocks.
Very reliable hardware.
I own one too.. and a Philips NMS-8250 (MSX2)
These were heavily used to hardcode the subtitles on pirated VHS tapes in the 80s. Every video rental shop had MSX generated subtitles on all tapes (except the tapes with local language, no subtitles needed for them).
A Sword of Omens for a pointer. Nice
I miss my Philips NMS8255 MSX2 computer. MSX2 was technically ahead of the Comodore C64/128 and hugely popular in Europe and Japan, also in Brazil if I’m not mistaken. The Konami games brings back good memories
I had a SVI-728 and HX10 to replace the Compukit UK101. Absolutely loved the Spectravideo for programming and wrote my first assembly program on it - an oscilloscope that used the joystick port. Sadly they were thrown out when I moved house a few years ago.
Great vid. Parents bought me a HX10 in 1985. Loved it and still do!
ASCII Corp didn't have anything to do with the ASCII standard. They just used the name to sound computery.
great review about a platform i never knew about...keep up the great work!
Thank you sir. I shall!
The arabic edition was the first and only arabic computer, I learn Basic on that thing, it even have arabic commands :D
Hasan moment
@Alejandro Herrera Barboza I have no idea what you talking about
@Alejandro Herrera Barboza i lost my MSX when is was in high school and I'm not a collactor so i never touch MSX after that era.
I remember a time when there was Arabic apps with weird protection
They give you the password and it is "I swear in the name of Allah that this copy is legal or I'll go to HELL"
it worked
The Turbo-R wasn't a 16-bit system. The R800 CPU was an incredibly fast 8-bit Z-80, arguably the computationally most powerful 8-bit CPU that ever reached the consumer market.
Well, it kinda depends on your definition; the R800 did have a native 16-bit ALU and 16-bit registers (and some operands), combined with only a 8-bit databus...
I had a Sony MSX machine when I was a kid. Was called HitBit if I recall. The keyboard was amazing quality
the toshiba hx10 was probably THE most common msx machine, especially here in the uk.. unfortunately seems to be no servicing info anywhere for it...
Love you video keep making them!
And there also was the Philips NMS 8280. It was an MSX 2 computer that was a bit popular in Netherlands, Belgium an Germany. It was a video computer with Chromakey and posibilities for videomontage.
I had the Sony HB-900AP counterpart, with the lovely typing keyboard. At some point the Dutch and German TV stations used it for sport-time overlays and subtitles, before they moved on to the Amiga 500 or Atari ST ...
I love that you're using Lion-O's sword as a pointer.
So.... what ever happened to that MSX2 follow-up vid?
I was also looking for it like crazy. The later MSX variants seem to be the strongest 8 bit machines ever made actually - maybe only measurable to the Elan Enterprise 128k - an other 8bit actually from Britain that we were all crazy about in my homeland Hungary because for some reason most of the units have shipped here ;-)
Very informative video. Thanks!
really interesting, thanks for producing.
+Dolphination My absolute pleasure :)
7:17 The Castle for the win!! :D
Well done on the video, came across very well and interesting to see MSX from a UK point of view.
I have one of the PX-7 machines as well (as well as quite a few others :)), and use it for most tape games as it has a more standard memory layout and thus works with more titles. The video overlay functionality works really well.
It really is a pity that more of the titles published in Japan did not make it to the UK and as you said that they moved into the Western market sooner or things may have been a little different to how things played out.
Most of the UK ports are actually running an emulation layer when running Spectrum ports, unfortunately not many UK produced titles took advantage of the hardware or as you said understood/followed the guidelines for detecting the location of memory.
It was programmers from both Spectravideo and Microsoft that wrote the original BIOS and Basic for the original Spectravideo machines, but it was Nishi who introduced them/got them together. Microsoft then refined it further for the MSX standard, also writing MSX-DOS at pretty much the same time they made MS-DOS (why they are similar and file compatible).
Ahhhh, interesting. Thanks for the clarification. Yes! I plan on covering MSX DOS when I get onto the MSX2 machines! :D Thanks for the comments!
My first computer back in 1984 when I was a wee 7 year old lad. A Sony Hit-Bit 10-P MSX 1 with 32 kb of RAM. Spent countless hours on it and it only got replaced after getting our first family PC in 1995. My primary school back then had an MSX-2 with a floppy drive. Man that was fast compared to my good old cassette recorder...
MSX Toshiba first ever computer 👍 sigh.. long time ago now. 😢 missed out on the original Metal Gear. 😕
Me too (although my dad had a ZX81), loved that machine. I remember reading a review on MG through Konami's newsletter and wishing I had a MSX2...
In Finland the most popular one was Spectravideo with SVI-738 being the latest and greatest. They lacked the amount of titles as the other platforms but if you compared a cartridge Nemesis to a amstrad cpc conversion it was like two different games. Overall C64 was just too dominant for anything else to gain a foothold. We lacked a spectrum scene and I was one of the few in Alan Sugar's bed.
I had a Toshiba MSX. I couldn't find any cartridge games for it and I really wanted some at the time.
it was very difficult to find any software for it! certainly in shops, and even more so ones in smaller towns and villages, like where i live!
Msx2 any day now..
When I was at university in the 80s I borrowed my neighbour's MSX computer. It was actually a nice machine to use. It somehow felt very familiar to me coming from CPM.
In Brazil, we had actually 2 brands producing MSX machines, Toshiba (Hotbit) and Gradiente (Expert). This last one a bit more "professional" with separated keyboard and 3 interface slots.
Sharp/Epcon, not Toshiba =)
@@bsdrago indeed, it was Sharp. Thanks
The MSX was a lovely home computer,but suffered from really bad scrolling on its games
It's strange that in an European MSX review there are no Philips machines to be seen at any point! Nor have I seen any SONY ones, which constitutes (together with Philips) my only childhood memories of the platform in my homeland Spain (from mainly computer magazines and ads). I faintly remember, throught the haze of distant memories, some SONY MSX's looking aethetically pretty good. Now, having done an image search, realize it was not just any model, but a few of them looked just beautiful.
we had an msx at school and it was used in music lessons for some reason.
Many of the MSX computers that came to Europe was music capable in some way. And was used in connection with keyboards.
I have an early Yamaha MSX with a Yamaha synth built into it.
I have been meaning to get it up and running, but I can't. (World of tanks addiction.)
Really enjoyed this video on MSX - you've gone into a lot of detail.
Thanks! Yeah, gonna stretch it out over 2 videos to cover the MSX2, + and TurboR. Might even touch on MSX3...
Sounds good to me
+Nostalgia Nerd There is no such thing as an MSX3. There's a guy working on an emulator-like application that incorporates features that he would have liked to see in a hypothetical new MSX generation, and he happens to call it MSX3. This has no relationship to any actual MSX machine or standard ever built.
+Javi Lavandeira That's why I said I'd touch on it.
+Nostalgia Nerd The MSX3 was planned instead of the MSX TurboR, but Yamaha got delayed and didn't finish its VDP (V9978) in time. The TurboR received instead the MSX2+ VDP and was rushed to marked to try to not loose the release date. Yamaha finished the VDP some years later, but as it was too late they removed all Texas Instruments IP parts, named it V9990 and released it as a stand-alone VDP to be used on PC video cards.
That's probably the saddest part of the MSX history.
HotBit is my preferred (Hello from Brazil)
Spectra video sv328 and 738. Great machines
Interesting and well done video. Retroactively these first generation of MSX computers are called MSX1. Apart from Japanese companies, MSX computers were also produced by South-Korean one's (like Daewoo) and Philips.
Philips did not make any. It was all Japanese imports with a bit of silver paint.
@@lovemadeinjapan They made their own MSX computers in Eindhoven. My very first MSX2 was made by Philips, a VG8235.
@@saigokun No, they didn't. I have exactly that model here. It is made in Japan by Kyocera with a NEC main board. Even in the eighties Philips already did offshoring. The predecessor, the P2000T was made in Austria at a factory aquired by Philips that made audio tape devices.
@@lovemadeinjapan Wel perhaps you are right, I am not to sure, but anyway Philips played an important part in the MSX history.
@@saigokun Off course, but with focus on marketing of the system in Europe, with some local software development and market specific styling. Don't forget that they made the predecessor themselves, and they managed to sell only 50000 systems in total. A number like that was too big of a risk in the eighties to build your own factory line for. Because they offshored the production, they could focus on selling, and I guess they sold over a million "Philips" MSX computers because of that focus.
Do you know if it is possible to find a software for pioneer PX 7 to do genlock/subtitle editing you mentioned? I tried with google but no luck.
Great video,thanks for sharing
What about my favourite 8 bits? The Spectravideo range, which was an early cousin of the MSX. The SVI318 and 328 were not compatible but the 728 and on wards were. These were great machines and pride of my collection. Cheers
5:45 Very similar specs to sega MasterSystem - The notable differance, on the surface, is the sound chip
SMS
z80 running at 3.58mhz
8kb Ram
TMS9918 with 16kb VRAM
Why then did the MSX have such difficulties scrolling
You should play Knightmare or goonies, those are (for me) the best games that came out for the MSX 1. Another great video you made, I'm going to share on my page, even though it's a ZX Spectrum page
+ZX Spectrum Thanks! Appreciated! I've played Knightmare... great game, but never the goonies.
+Nostalgia Nerd How come Knightmare has not made to the list of favorites!? :P Also you forgot to mention Metal Gear franchise. It started on MSX.
@@asupshik Jet Set Willy; Bomberman; Who Dares Wins; Nemesis 2 and about all other Konami MSX1 games; there are a lot of awesome MSX1 games ...
My favorite was Yamaha MSX2+ with 3.5 floppy
I had a speccy and recall later on (mid 80s??) seeing a Toshiba msx in the window of our local TV shop... At first they weren't cheap but within a few months the price had been slashed to around a third! Practically giving them away... I remember thinking at the time that it looked like a superior machine and that it was so cheap - build wise probably superior. . I always wondered why they never took off-now I know! Just a matter of timing 😊
Awesome Review!
I don't know why but that background music is making my eye Twitch.
man... quickest game overs/lose life ever here!
Exactly my thoughts also, the MSX was very "splintered" it was (at least here in Sweden) not a standard. C64 ruled in Sweden for the most part and even though it had some facelifts it was the same computer and software could be shared without any problems. I do remember a MSX (Panasonic v1?!?) in my school and I loved it, but it took sometime to get used to as a C64 owner.
My first computer was the HotBit!!! :-D
The Sony XV-T33F “Family Studio” drawing tablet from the early 90s was MSX based! A bit like that Pioneer I guess.
Lol, is that the ITV Data Base video I uploaded to TH-cam years ago? :D
It's ITV footage for sure, I didn't get it from your channel...But if you were the originator, thanks! :D
It started on the MSX in 1986
FYI. MSX Turbo R (MSX3) is an 8bit machine running on 7,xxMhz (double z80) and uses Risc technology, which needs only one clock cycle instead of four per instruction. Speed = z80 * 2* 4. On paper. It's a very fast 8bit system. Plans were more ambitious for a real MSX3. Yamaha chip development was slow and they created a different system with a lot of short cuts.
Custom software development has always lacked. A lot of unused potential. Specifically on the MSX2 (1985-1988), being able to outdo aspects of 16bit systems and make other 8bit systems look bleak. I've developed a game engine to squeeze its strengths. It has become an interesting challenge to prove this point. Convincing pixel art is a different challenge.
Also: the MSX2 video chip is fully equipped to handle 192Kb of video-ram. Only one obscure machine was ever produced to use this. Not making this available as a standard option (plug chip in socket) was the biggest mistake. It opens up more than just more memory. Had this expandability been a standard then this configuration would have become a standard itself.
The MSX2 failed in X axis hardware scrolling. This was corrected in the MSX2+ in 1988. Too little too late. 192Kb could have made the difference here too, to some extend.
Its more modern approach to graphics (Bitmap, RGB color-mixer) made it a stranger among 8bit developers. Its strength was its weakness.
MSX2+ often has integrated XBasic. A slightly reduced Basic that runs at the speed of machine language. Also available for MSX2 as software. An optimized MSX2 was a powerful toy in 1986, when the Atari ST and Amiga also became available. With proper development of the obvious capacities, the MSX2 might have outshone these machines occasionally.
I should buy a modern flash card extension for the MSX so I am freed of floppy disks. I have all the components to demonstrate a powerful game engine. I should be able to make a demo level that is pretty mind blowing for pretty straight forward 8bit capacities in 1986. It has a nice what-if?-factor to it.
And I have some cool ideas for MSX GL. Video ram sees all its pages (screens) as one canvas with coordinates. It's easy to draw a large stage, for a game, maxing out on vectors and bitmap. It's half a game engine. Complex sprite manipulation is part of it. Add I know hacks to get more out of it. More color, more dynamics. More what-if?
When it comes to getting the best out of retro tech, then the MSX2 is unexplored territory. A frustration for a technically inclined kid in the eighties. A truth for the ages. I'm not in a hurry. Nailing it for this machine is an interesting art project.
good video :)
Hmm... MSX-BASIC is actually about 22KB in original MSX and you can't make MSX tR a 16bit computer although it has two 8bit CPUs... Other than that, very good and professional looking video. I enjoyed it.
Great vídeo :)
+1msx2go Thanks!
Great video. Looking forward to watching more. We've just subbed.
Awesome! Thanks!
I had a SVI 728 and a local store that sold games for it. First cassette I ever bought: Mastertronics "Chiller". I still regret that to this day. ;) Then, Feud. Aaaaand then Batman. It took 15 minutes from cload until I saw the menu..
cload? :P Most commericial games with a BASIC loader started with run "cas:" :P
I love this channel for its detailed history documentaries and deep reviews, but this particular video was sad to say the least. After 04:00 it shows a lot of prejudice against the MSX, and a boasts lot of misinformation.
For example, being cousins with a common ancestor, the way the MSX access its video memory is identical to the Master System, a machine that Nostalgia Nerd praises a lot on the video about that console.
The slowness of the ZX-Spectrum ports is caused by terrible programming just like it happened with the very same games for the Amstrad CPC. But your video on Amstrad CPC doesn't blame this problem on that machine. Real MSX games from Japanese developers perform much better.
Searching for RAM is only necessary if no operating system is present, otherwise the system tells you where the RAM is. And even in that case its only if the software needs to use more than 32KB of RAM which is more than double the amount of usable RAM that the original ZX-Spectrum provided.
The AY-3-8910 sound chip is the very same that was later adopted both by the ZX-Spectrum 128K and the Atari ST computers.
The failure of the MSX in English speaking countries has nothing to do with its hardware qualities against its 8bit competitors, but its much more related to terrible marketing in these areas. Not different from the Amiga and Atari-ST versus the IBM-PC in the 16bit arena.
The video title is also misleading: it says "MSX System & Platform review", when its just a shallow review of the 1st generation of computers, and only from an UK perspective. Story videos about other machines were very detailed about how things went in their most successful markets, to the point that there's even one very good special about the Sega consoles in Brazil.
Saying that the MSX1 video was inferior to the C64 or CPC is questionable as can be easily seen when comparing Gradius for all these platforms. As you mentioned in one of your videos comparing the speccy with the CPC and C64, its a mater of wether you prefer more detailed graphics or more colorful ones. The MSX1 had exactly the same resolution as the speccy, but 8 times more color resolution and double the amount of colors per block. In fact, its the machine that can put more colors simultaneously per 8x8 block, even more than the NES.
fr_schmidlin It's an eleven minute video, not a full length documentary. What do you expect him to do in eleven minutes? MSX was a failure for several reasons. It's capabilities as a games machine are only as good as the games produced for it. It's no good claiming games *could* have been better, the fact is,many weren't brilliant. The hardware wasn't exactly revolutionary, in fact it bordered on obsolescence by the time the MSX2 was trundled out, with too many competing companies trying to produce compatible, but different computers. Nice idea, wrong product.
I have to agree, this video felt rushed and not up to Nostalgia Nerds usual qualities... Just look at the graphics in Salamander and or Nemesis it really shows the power of the MSX system:D
Post-MSX follow up video?
I had a Toshiba HX10 (8:25) although I can’t remember where & when I got it although believe it was back in the 90’s and have no idea what happened to it although I do remember that MSX was supposed to be the connectivity standard much like USB is now today, I believe I used mine with a Star Micronics Dot Matrix Printer! 🇬🇧
The very first gaming system my family had, I believe it was an SVI-728. Later lost the power supply so we couldn't play it, shame since I remember enjoying Penguin Adventure and Road Fighter a lot, among others. Great video!
Penguin Adventure was MSX2 so I believe it was the first episode, Antartic Adventure :) But most Konami games were great. Magical Tree, Pippols, Knightmare..
Theo Buunermond I see, it must have been then, does sound familiar. Didn't know there were two games. Yeah, Konami games were special, wish I'd had more of them.
+Theo Buunermond Nope. Penguin Adventure was an MSX1 game just like Antarctic Adventure.
nice presentation
Charrs!
Ok so when will be separated material on MSX2 🙂
Hi. I'm doing a videoclip for a song I created in contribution to the MSX. Would you allow me to use some footage from this video to create it? I'm just interested in some loose seconds here and there from some clips with the keyboard and things like that.
great vid, you really put a lot of effort in your vids. I can never do mine as professionally as that.
+Odd pod Ahhhh, it nearly kills me. I'm usually up to 3am the night before, finishing these ones off!
Nice Hoodie.
It's Kazuhiko, not Natsuhiko.
Dude, you need to give the MSX a new video like you did with the Sinclair.
I owned a HX 10 back in the day, they where already on sale then. A C64 was too expensive for me.
they were about £279 when they first came out, my parents got me one for christmas '85 when the price dropped to £89
still got it, and still works
1:48 what the heck is this map?
It is hard to have love for the MSX. We were already full on Mac when MSX happened, and it was a huge step back from Philips previous Z80 machine, the P2000T, in certain areas, most noticably the worse BASIC, the lower vertical resolution (which was really low on an MSX, we went back from 240 to 192 lines), and bad readability of its font.
The hotswapping of cartridges at 3:03 still makes me cringe...
+Doktor Hachi Roku The Toshiba have one reset interruptor into cartridge slot
+Doktor Hachi Roku the Toshiba hx 10 allows the cartridge out and put the computer is on because it has a switch inside the slot which makes it off and on when remove or put the cartridge. Sorry I don't speak English well.
+Doktor Hachi Roku the switch It is a safety device that allows you to remove and put hot cartridges without the computer being damaged
I have a Toshiba and I have never done or would. I understand it is a security measure, it is certainly gamble and mistreat insert and remove the cartridge with the computer turned on.
MSX not all have this security measure, just a few.
There was a Yamaha MSX model that I really wanted to get back in the day because it also doubled as a music production system. Can't recall the number or name of it, but I saw it in a copy of Keyboard magazine and wanted it desperately. Maybe someday....
was it the Yamaha CX5M or something similar?
RockRedGenesis
Could be. It's been easily 30 years since I saw the advert. I don't remember if I saw it in Keyboard Magazine or one of the computer mags of the day. I just remember seeing it and going 'I need this. Right NAO!!'
Brazil here.. I had a ZX Spectrum (TK 95) and my friend had an MSX and I remember the graphics and speed on MSX was better, but it had way less games. 😅
wants to actually try out a msx , never had one these machines
oh wow.. @ 3.11 just pulling cartridges in and out the slots while the machine is on! omg.
Nice vídeo!, although there are several inaccuracies in your info.
MSX was great in Holland beating the c64
But then came the Amiga 500......
Living there, I went from P2000T straight to Mac. Never cared about the C64, MSX nor Amiga. All inferior machines to the once great true Philips product, the P2000T, especially the MSX was a huge step back for Philips. But in the late 80's we were about to enter Jan Timmer time, so the great doubts began, and they also started to bet on a PC future. The company evaporated in the nineties and became navel lint. Today I reside at the once holy Philips ground, gentrified hipster high density boring area with 3 buildings left reminding of a glorious past..