
Whatever Happened to MSX Computers? - bane
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/whatever-happened-to-msx-computers/
======
pbiggar
Boring story time!

I grew up on the MSX. My dad bought two of them in around 1985 or so. At
school we were taught Logo on BBC Micros, but we didnt have a BBC micro at
home, so my dad sourced MSX Logo [1].

Unfortunately, it was localized in dutch, so instead of the "forward" command,
there was the "vooruit" command. So to make it the same as we learned in
school, my dad made a set of English functions which wrapped all the Dutch
functions. He is an economist/diplomat, not a programmer, and it was quite a
few years until I realized what he had done and how impressive that was.

[1] [http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/philips/msx-
logo/relea...](http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/philips/msx-
logo/release/2568/)

~~~
DanBC
This isn't a boring story!

I wish there was a site where this kind of information could be collected.
Personal history of computing is important and a lot of it is being lost.

~~~
bane
Actually, old-computers.com lets people post personal stories about the
machines they have in their museum.

example: [http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=90](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=90)

I wish it was used more/better known though.

------
Theodores
Windows Phone is the new MSX!

MSX came along in the UK when the home computing market was well established.
We all knew 'network effects' even of we did not know the phrase, hence, if
you were in the Sinclair ecosystem and only owned a ZX81 you wanted either a
ZX Spectrum (48K) so you could play the same games as your friends or a BBC
Micro like what the school had. Similarly, if you owned a Commodore Vic20 then
a Commodore 64 was the way to go. Beyond these few brands there were plenty of
Ataris (400/800), Ti/994a's, Dragon 32's and so on, none of which had 'network
effects'.

The UK home computing market morphed into Amigas, Acorn Risc machines, Ataris
and the Amstrad versions of the Sinclair machines, at which time Microsoft
were still trying to foist a tarted up version of MSX onto the marketplace,
but nobody was buying even if the MSX machines were very nice. They just never
managed the 'network effects' that the popular machines had.

History is rhyming with itself as far as Microsoft is concerned, their Windows
Phone is entering a crowded marketplace that is settled. People with old
Android phones go for new Android phones, people with old Apple phones go for
new Apple phones. It is that simple. Regardless of the benefits of Windows
Phone it just does not matter. They can tart it up all they like but nobody
cares.

------
bane
Fun fact, the Sega SG-1000 (precursor to the Sega Master System which is
_almost_ the same hardware), Colecovision and the original MSX are _almost_
the same hardware. So close that porting software between the systems (so long
as it fits in RAM) is pretty trivial.

In some markets, porting games provided much of the libraries. It's
interesting that so many NES games, a different architecture all together,
started on the MSX.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365887)

~~~
agumonkey
Only slightly related, but the Nintendo AVS (unreleased) has a design similar
to many MSX models
[http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071214134519/nintendo/e...](http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071214134519/nintendo/en/images/1/1e/Nintendoavs.jpg)

------
ANTSANTS
Was MSX really a failure, or just a failure outside of Japan? I was under the
impression that MSX was _the_ 8-bit micro in 80s Japan. I don't know too much
about it's history, but given that so many important game series got their
start on MSX (including Metal Gear and Bomberman), it doesn't seem right to
call it a failure. It sounds like when people say the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16
was a failure because it bombed in America, when it was more popular than the
Genesis/Megadrive in Japan.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#Franchises_established_on_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#Franchises_established_on_the_MSX)

~~~
bane
Dvorak has lots of little factual errors in the article. I posted it hoping
for a good discussion.

It was a pretty big success in Japan indeed and did respectable numbers in
other world markets outside of the U.S. (and _was_ eventually released in the
U.S. but was DOA).

There's a few interesting variants of the hardware too, like dedicated MIDI
composers, and a version that let's you do video compositing (display MSX
graphics over top of video using a dedicated "transparent" color) like an
early video toaster.

There's still a surprisingly active scene for it (unlike the Amstrad or Atari
8-bit machines). Nowhere near the C64, ZX, or Apple II levels.

I think one of the problems was that the architecture was dated when it
started, and relied on an architecture that wasn't going to go anywhere (Z80).
So building a cheap 8-bit machine at the beginning wasn't hard. And in the
later years building the most powerful 8-bit machines imaginable became easy
as well. But the move to bigger bit architectures was very hard. The Turbo-R
spec tried, but the market had already moved on.

In Japan, other PC standards caught on and lasted longer. The NEC PC-88 line
for example, was a business oriented 8-bit computer that was Z80 also. But
when the market clearly needed a 16-bit upgrade, they simply moved to the 8086
line. Which as you can guess gave them a core architecture that lasted well
into the 80386 days...but was not entirely IBM PC compatible.

Other Japanese PC standards like the Sharp X1 were _also_ Z80 based. But when
they jumped to 16-bit they went with the Motorola 68k architecture and
produced the X68000 which also got it up through the 32-bit 68030 days.
Despite being fantastic hardware (much more capable than the comparable
Amiga), Sharp never released the line outside of Japan.

Well after the IBM PC standard had won the battle for PCs (with Apple hanging
on), Japan _still_ tried to produce non-PC compatible systems. Fujitsu's FM
Towns is the most well known. Basically a 32-bit super desktop PC built around
the 80386SX (and went up to the Pentium line) with lots of custom, Amiga like,
hardware to support an a CD-ROM drive as standard. It had great graphics and
audio capability for the time. The system was designed to boot to live
software from CDs, so users wouldn't have to muck around in DOS or Windows to
launch software. It worked great, but the fact of the matter is that most of
the software on the FM Towns are just ports of PC software with small upgrades
in graphics or sound. You could also boot direct to "Towns OS" in _1989_ 2
years before anything else could boot to an OS from an optical disk. There was
a brief play to try to "consolize" the FM Towns and a variant called the "FM
Towns Marty" was released which was the first 32-bit console ever released.

If you ever get a chance the FM Towns ports of LucasArts games are generally
superior to the PC releases and ScummVM supports them.

------
saljam
Guess I'll join in. My first computer was also an MSX. They were very popular
in the Arab World because of an Arabic branded version made by (for?) a
company called Sakhr. It played all the MSX games and that's what mattered.
I'm pretty sure there's still a Metal Gear cartridge in my parents house
somewhere.

I wonder what Sakhr is up to now, if they're still around...

~~~
obeid
A whole lot of Arabic Language technologies; machine translation, OCR and a
bunch of government-scale contracts.
[http://www.sakhr.com/index.php/en/](http://www.sakhr.com/index.php/en/)

Being from Kuwait, Sakhr was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title
of the post.

------
raverbashing
Oh the MSX was great, for an 8-bit computer.

And yes, there were drives for it, but maybe if they "didn't bundle" that was
the issue

The MSX II was an 8 bit computer though, only the "Turbo" was 16-bit

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX2#MSX2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX2#MSX2)
(The 2+ added even more capabilities, and more important, most of them were
accessible from Basic)

And it could do a lot
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=busiDuS94qY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=busiDuS94qY)

------
minikomi
The msx is pretty insane for creating music even today. This album was created
using a Sharp x68000 [http://cheapbeatsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/new-
power](http://cheapbeatsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/new-power)

~~~
ZenoArrow
Thank you for the link, some amazing sounds, but the Sharp x68000 wasn't an
MSX machine, it was pretty much the most powerful home computer available at
the time of release (1987, IIRC).

~~~
minikomi
Oops, bit of a mix up! Can confirm the guy uses MML to create the music
though.

------
DanBC
The article doesn't mention that MSX computers had little to differentiate
themselves from each other. Er, so a Panasonic MSX was very similar to a Sony
MSX. This is great if you like standards but makes it hard to chose one
machine over another. I beleive some people were paralysed by that choice and
took a different computer instead. Also, individual makers within MSX had
profits diluted by all the other MSX builders.

~~~
rbanffy
That was the whole idea. Microsoft would license BASIC and MSX-DOS for
whatever they felt like while computer makers, unable to differentiate on
features, would compete on price alone and grow the market for Microsoft.

I'm quite surprised clever execs bought that...

Also, the fact MSX was obsolete when compared to similarly priced Commodore
and Atari machines of the time didn't really help. Also, MSX2 and 2+ were
still 8-bit designs, Trbu-R being the first and only major overhaul, far too
late to really matter.

~~~
rglullis
But why wouldn't the clever execs buy it? They are consumer electronics
companies. The TVs they manufactured followed standards (PAL/NTSC), their
videocassetes were all VHS... why should it be different for home computers?

~~~
mgkimsal
tv/vcr/radios/etc are all for content consumption - it's generally a read-only
experience. "computers" have a (imo) somewhat "hard to define" level of
interactivity that wasn't taken in to account. For execs that hadn't worked
with personal computers before, this would be an unknown.

~~~
rglullis
Hindsight is always 20/20\. If I were a Panasonic/Sony executive in the 80's
seeing the success of Atari with no means to compete, and had some company
showing up with a standard that would allow me to just do my core business
(manufacture at scale), _of course_ I would get into it.

The only problem is that the MSX standard failed to gain adoption, not with
the strategy itself. If you think about it, it is no different than what
Google did with Samsung/LG/HTC/any other mobile manufacturer. And these
executives are not seen as stupid for adopting Android and growing the market
for Google, are they?

~~~
mgkimsal
I think because of the 70s/80s, you now have at least one generation of execs
that at least have a more basic understanding of tech, and I suspect
Samsung/LG/etc have a better idea of what they're getting in to.

Additionally, these players got in early enough in to a market (smartphones)
which wasn't already saturated with competing standards. Indeed, many of these
players were already in the phone market, and this was a more natural
evolution for them. Contrast this with the MSX trying to get in to the market
with Commodore, Atari, Apple, IBM, Acorn, Sinclair and others all vying for
the same (albeit growing) pool of dollars. At that point it's about as 'me
too' a play as you can execute.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but even in 1985 I could somewhat explain why
computers were different than VCRs - I'd spend every waking hour working with
my ZX81 then later my C128. We used a VCR a few hours a week to watch a movie
- passively. Fundamentally different use cases and interaction modes.

~~~
rglullis
I think we are using different points of reference here. if you take the
iPhone as the ground zero of smartphones, then Android was still new. But I'm
looking at the Palm OS/Windows CE/Blackberry/Symbian days. This makes the
parallel between MSX/Android and Panasonic/HTC even more clear.

And to go back to the point: OP implied that it was a stupid strategy of the
manufacturers to embrace some standard. I see no fault at the strategy. It
didn't pan out, that's all.

------
doelie_
They were quite popular in Belgium as well. I got a Philips VG8020 in '87 at
age 12, a bit after my uncle got one cheap as a Philips employee. I remember
spending almost every evening at his place before my parents got me my own :)

------
danmaz74
I had a Commodore 64, but my best friend (we were 10 yo) got an MSX. I still
remember how he repeated the sales pitch that "it was far superior to the
Commodore 64". It's the first time I remember questioning a computer salesman
pitch. But it was just the start of a long career helping friends to defuse
all their bullshit.

~~~
gillianseed
Heh, I was so proud of my Amiga which was the best thing here in europe at the
time, I had a buddy over who's parents were from Japan and tried to impress
him with the quality of the graphics and sound, he was like 'yeah it's ok but
my machine is much better'.

I remember scoffing at his statement saying something like 'dude, only the
arcades are better than this', he then invited me to his place where he had a
Sharp X68000, I remember being totally stunned.

This was a home computer with arcade perfect ports, he showed me ghouls'n
ghosts, gradius, space harrier, r-type, they looked (and to my ears sounded)
exactly like their arcade counterparts, it was apparently never sold outside
of Japan.

~~~
agumonkey
The case design is timeless
[http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/307077SHAx68000XVI1D.jpg](http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/307077SHAx68000XVI1D.jpg)

~~~
bane
It's probably one of the most beautiful computers ever made IMHO. Also the
perfectly square screen with square pixels, incredible sound hardware.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJhPvI-H9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJhPvI-H9A)

It's kind of like the Lamborghini Countach of the computer world. Iconic and
timeless.

~~~
agumonkey
Somehow the x68000 gave genes to wii and ps4

------
gandalfu
Both my secondary and high schools had labs filled with MSX keyboards, B/W TVs
and tape recorders. My intro to programming came from Joe Pritchard books "MSX
Exposed" and "Machine Language for MSX"... and I still have notebooks full of
hand written programs... and a fully functional DAEWO MSX keyboard in the
closet.

Happy poking!

~~~
smsm42
My school had MSX comps too, the Yamaha MSX (probably ones mentioned in the
article that were sold to Soviet Union). A lot of experiments with low-level
programming were done on them. Most docs were not available then (it was time
before the Internet :) so it was a lot of piecing together random info and
lots of trial and error. Also, it had a bunch of very addictive games (ah,
King's Valley)...

~~~
gandalfu
I was never any good, but what about nemesis?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_2_(1987_video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_2_\(1987_video_game\))

------
boomlinde
The MSX scene is alive and kicking. Compared to the C64, there isn't that much
of a demoscene presence, but a lot of original games and tools are released
every year.

I have a soft spot for these scenes that cater only to its insiders. Outside
reactions and impressions are secondary.

~~~
bane
This appears to be the center of the MSX scene
[http://www.msx.org/](http://www.msx.org/)

But I'd add there's also a /r/msx on reddit that has a little life amazingly
enough.

------
cscheid
If you can get your hands on an emulator, you owe it to yourself to try "The
Castle" and "Castle Excellent", two of the best puzzle games ever created.

But do play them on an MSX; the NES version is nowhere near as good.

~~~
anon4
Also Metal Gear!

~~~
chongli
And Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious! Very good early Metroidvania game
(only a year after Metroid) with a novel character-switching mechanic (later
seen in The Lost Vikings, Trine and various Castlevania iterations).

------
emeraldd
It's interesting to note that the image at the top of the article is a
wikipedia hotlink:

    
    
        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Msx.png
    

Ah well ...

~~~
rasz_pl
Dvorak is an asshole, what else is new?

------
googamooga
I was born in USSR and my first computer in 1985 was YAMAHA MSX II with
external floppy drive and great color monitor. I still own a class of MSX II
KYBT: teacher's computer with two floppy drives and color monitor plus eight
students' computers daisy-chained to each other via RS-232 network. Everything
is still in pretty much decent condition and can't resist to play Knightsmare
or nostalgically run Turbo Pascal. :)

------
ciclista
My very first programming experience was on an MSX. At least in my small
circle, MSX (and the MSX-2) were at least as popular as Spectrum or the
Commodore 64 in Europe. In the 90s (not sure what the current status is) the
retro scene interest for MSX computers was quite active as well.

~~~
Ecio78
Me too. We had a MSX II (with tape drive, Floppy disk, green monitor etc.) I
suppose it was the mid/late 80s, I was just a kid and I was using it to play
games, use some programs (and MSX-DOS) and also do some experiments with MSX
BASIC. I remember it as a nice machine, and I was sad that it was not as
popular as Commodore 64

------
ralphc
I remember reading about MSX in Creative Computing magazine, there's also 4
pages devoted to it in the book Digital Retro.

In addition to the reasons listed here I'd say that what killed MSX is what
killed everything else back then, the rise of the PC compatibles. In the early
80's there were "personal computers" based on 8-bit processors that were for
the home hobbyist, and the IBM PC-type computers that were so expensive that
they were mainly owned by businesses. Basically everyone wanted the PC
compatibles to run all the available software, so when prices came down no one
wanted the 8-bit Z80 and 6502 machines anymore.

------
bluedino
Too bad 3DO (or was it 3D0) didn't learn from this mistake ten years later.

~~~
ZenoArrow
In my opinion the 3DO was a great idea, but the execution was poor. Valve are
attempting something very similar with the Steam Machines, perhaps this is the
time it'll succeed (Oculus Rift being a 'killer app' of sorts).

Interesting that both the 3DO and Atari Lynx were designed by ex Amiga
engineers.

------
jamesbrownuhh
Atari ST introduced in 1984 while Commodore released the C128? Er... No?

------
greatsuccess
I remember having one of these. But I had completely forgotten about it until
I read the article. Logo, wow.

