Happy New Year 2019 from the MRC!

What a hell of year this was! Look at this list and beware what our community made possible (again)!
Remember the Obsolete Procedure Call (OPC) protocol from konamiman? This was our first newscast in 2018. And it should become a great MSX year for the community!
BiFi released short after the DalSori tools to manage that great sound device, but Victor did a another great job for all MSX gamers:
The Usas patch, which enhanced this great game to the max. Support for two PSG an an additional SCC chipset and alot of smoothness in gameplay inspired the community in the still young year. But this would not be Victors last patch for the community...
Not to forget the Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier drum kit enhancement patch by sd_snatcher, also he did the Columns enhancement patch.
Jan van Valburg, known as janvv had done a SCC patch for Vampire Killer and Duncan made a CasDuino possible for MSX computer. We talked about MSX related Podcasts, which file has grown over the year, La Valeur had become an english translation by all-known user DJANGO, Radam translated Mr. Ghost and about the picture hosting site MSX.pics has grown again.
Do you remember sd_snatcher had presented us that amazing collection of MSX pixel art?
In first part there has been over 3100 files!
Kai Magazine presented us the GFX9000 game Life on Earth, which runs on every MSX2 with V9990 cartridge and pronounced his new game
The openMSX scene released a new version of C-BIOS and the Sinterklaasphemy edition of their new emulator software, Goldrush got its second release in Meits New Old Stock series as also the Impact BBS Promo.
Manuel and Bas040 was visiting Philips Vintage Weekend located in the Philips Museum in Eindhoven to present the MSX products of the dutch companies history.
Speaking of museums, there is also a new HomeComputerMuseum in Helmond since march, maybe a good reason to visit it in this christmas holidays?
We also got plenty of fantastic music contribution, SD Snatcher Intro by Wolf, Great Strategy 2 - ReMSX by Meits and EisBaer23 and Jorito's Nemesis 3 - Stage 1 & intro remix just to named a few.
Of course there was the Barcelona MSX users meeting, RU04MSX in Sevilla, the Nijmegen fair for the dutch MSX fans and the 7th RetroRio.
WebMSX has shown again its improvements and possibilities, just visit the homepage of user TFH where we can enjoy latest demos, apps and patches online.
Franciscos Prisoner of War and MICROMANCERS's Children of the Night has been only two more superb games for the MSX1, also Aetherbyte's Inferno was made available on cartridge and digital download. Carambalán Studios released their game Burn Us EXP. Imanok made his last years hit game Tina's Adventure Island available for free downloading, which gives a lot people the chance to play this fantastic game even on emulators.
MSXdev18 has 10 great entries until, a contest that gains more and more publicity.

David Heremans programmed a panorama viewer software for our MSX

With the blessing of Kai Nishi Nextor had become open source. and the platform for future MSX developments and the Rookie Drive NX gained USB FDD support.

New magazines has been printed and especially one book has made its way to the shelfs: Konami's MSX Legacy by wimpie3 is what we waited for a long time.
Of course there are a lot of projects not mentioned, a lot of new hardware, like MSXCalamars PGCard, the MSX FPGA board by 8bits4ever and look at Kimo-hachi's hand-made MSX!
Even Nishi is working on the Next Generation MSX, and a cartridge board for Raspberry Pi's is on is on its way to your desks.
At the end of the year we had much fun with the annual MSX Christmas Quiz, and two(!) wonderful MSX calendars.

There is so much more to come.
The MSX community continues to grow and this is also reflected in these fantastic projects.
We would like to thank all those who share their ideas, their heart and their soul.

And we want to thank all those who support us.
Your contribution will keep our dream alive.
Your contribution in the forum and your contribution to financially support the site.
MSX.org will surely change in the future, we want more of your ideas and wish to have this website tiled. Offer workshops again and support your projects.
But we can only do this with you!
Therefore a successful new year for all MSX possessed in the world!

Comments (28)

By Pencioner

Scribe (1609)

01-01-2019, 02:24

Happy New Year to all MSX-ers! Let 2019 bring more interesting stuff related to our hobby!

By tfh

Prophet (3423)

01-01-2019, 09:16

A very nice overview of 2018!

I wish everyone the best for 2019!

TFH, or ehh... THF... The Hunter-File, erhm, The File-Hunter!

By hamlet

Scribe (4106)

01-01-2019, 09:37

Thanks HTF, I corrected that typo!

By gdx

Enlighted (6424)

01-01-2019, 10:13

Happy New Year to MRC team and its users!

By KdL

Paragon (1485)

01-01-2019, 11:49

Happy New Year !!!

By mstz80ax

Rookie (26)

01-01-2019, 12:46

Happy New Year.
明けましておめでとうございます。

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3675)

01-01-2019, 13:00

Happy new year!

By turbor

Hero (528)

01-01-2019, 13:07

Best wishes for 2019!

By ToriHino

Paladin (925)

01-01-2019, 14:04

Happy New Year to all!

By Latok

msx guru (3959)

01-01-2019, 20:33

What a newspost, respect!

Happy New Year ☺️

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10135)

01-01-2019, 21:08

Best wishes all. I can already promise some new decibels during this new year!

By Wolverine_nl

Paragon (1160)

01-01-2019, 22:35

Best wishes to all

By ren

Paragon (1945)

02-01-2019, 15:48

Nice post!

O/c the risk is (impossible to avoid I suppose) you'll forget some stuff.. At the risk of doing the same, some things that come to my mind that are worth a mention:

ghost_jp continued to amaze/surprise with no less than two original games (released for MSXdev)*;
N.I. continued to throw psychedelic games & demos;
Grauws' VGMPlay for MSX received further improvements, able (with the right hw) to play Mega Drive vgm's now (and some other noteworthy stuff probably );
Mstz80ax released XPL-A;
fr3nd created/released MsxHub & the MSX-vi editor;
We've seen some more great/interesting OPLL/PSG arrangements by Mstz80ax & gyabuneko. Meanwhile our 'own' JohnHassink continued his services as well as OPLL/PSG/SCC/OPL4 composer/arranger. Next to honoring the Sensei, and a lot of other things, he released a soundtrack excerpt of the unreleased/unfinished game Deva;
Next to Mr. Ghost, and a handful of patches, MSX Translations gave us English translations of Puyo Puyo, Tempo Typen & Sorcerer Lulba;
Wiki got tons of updates (...)
hamlet continued the annual Christmas Quiz tradition ;-)
...

* not meaning to discredit other entries (haven't even checked them all out), but I believe this deserves an explicit mention anyway

Other peep got something to add? :-)
(Hmm.. did Tiny Yarou do something noteworthy this year? )

By ListoMefisto

Champion (435)

02-01-2019, 14:58

Happy new year!
We had a very fruitful year and this new one seems that it will be very good also....
We would like to mention more MSX stuff :
- Stuff as TSXDuino from Pablibiris. It supports these files: .TSX .CAS .TZX .CDT .TAP and it has several more features.
- The stuff from Carmeloco : SD card, slot expander, joymega, etc.
- The FlashJacks cartridge from Aquijacks. .... It's evolving every day and another interesting related piece of hardware is OPL4 from Pablibiris.
- Life on Earth from KAI Magazine. The sequel to Life on Mars. A run and gun that takes advantage from the V9990.
- Lost Wind Collector's Edition from Oniric Factor. A beautiful Collector's Edition that includes the MSX game and the boardgame. The Lost Wind is also sold without the boardgame as the standard version.
- Chibi Akuma's - Collector's Edition from Poly Play. Another Collector's Edition that works with or without V9990.
- Hans' Adventure Deluxe version from The Pets Mode. It includes Stan The Dreamer the first on the world point & click adventure for MSX computers.
- Inq & Suq vs Nightmare from GW's Workshop. A Shoot'em-up for our MSX.
- Shoulder Blade OVERDRIVE from GW's Workshop. A fast game similar to Feedback.
- Buddhagillie from GW's Workshop. You control the Shiddhartha prince against the evil forces.
- Quest for the Golden Chalice from Óscar Toledo Gutiérrez. It's based on Tim Robinett's Adventure for Atari VCS2600.
- Module Man from Óscar Toledo Gutiérrez. Back in time this classic game was published for Dragon32 and Tandy CoCo computers and now it can be played on MSX computers.
- A soundtrack CD from a new MSX game, such as the musical CD from Life on Earth by Manuel Dopico (Blue Warrior, Monster Hunter). We love that sensation of having a new soundtrack from a MSX game.
- The MSX VR computer. We feel that it will be released in the near future. It's such a big thing without being like Panasonic, Sony, Philips, etc. A team working with Alberto De Hoyo are working hard with that project... It's incredible the illusion and desire the MSX VR team is putting in the project. We love being able to be spectators of that. And they have the approval of Nishi.
- To JOESG, we loved the CCR El Algoritmo game, we enjoyed it a lot...
- To the brazilian MSX users. They are very focused with the MSX scene.
- We hope the dutch people will be doing more stuff. Although they released their V9990 stuff. We would like that UMAX and Parallax returned to the MSX scene.
- The MFR update. The MFR and old rockers never die. We love the MegaFlashRom cartridge.
- The MSXDEV and the people who work on new projects.
- The people who works hard to build a box and a instruction manual from a possible new Konami game for the April Fools' Day hehe.
- And many more things...

It's incredible but the MSX is more alive than ever.
Happy new year!!

By Oniric-Factor

Master (176)

02-01-2019, 13:44

And Oniric Factor as invisible as always. "Thanks" again.

We are are seriously thinking about to quit from MSX development due to this constant attitude from MSX.org.

By hamlet

Scribe (4106)

02-01-2019, 14:25

Dear Oniric Factor. I am responsible for this New Years newspost.
I am a great fan of your work, I bought all games the last years. I am sure you remeber me, we've written some mails back then.
Of course it is not possible to mention all projects that had been realized the last year. I wrote this news post when you propably sit with your friends and family and had a good time waiting for the new year to come. And I wondered how much has happened in the scene.
I'm sure you are going to help me next time when sending me a mail or submit a newspost about new things that happened.
Nowbody at MSX.org wanted to harm your projects. As I said, I really like what you do.
Keep on doing good work. Thanks.
I have to apologize to all I did not mention in this news post. I know there are alot. Some I just did not know, some I simple forget over the year. I like to please you to help us doing this important work when submitting news post here in the forum, keep us informed and mail us about your projects. You are very welcome.
And maybe be happy about the lot of things that was mentioned. And not be angry about the things that don't.
You are dealing with humans here!

By Sander

Founder (1872)

02-01-2019, 14:29

We are all human, but instead of correcting us mildly and add your fantastic productions to the list in the comments so we can add them to the main post you start complaining. Why? You decide what's visible on msx.org, together with us. You can apply for a trusted user right so you can publish directly on the frontpage and if we get articles that we can publish without much editing, it will be publish here faster also. Like we said many times before: it's all hobby. We have absolutely nothing against Oniric Factor, we love all contributions to MSX. Again: you decide how much exposure you get here.

By Sander

Founder (1872)

02-01-2019, 14:31

Hamlet beated me, but I'll guess we are trying to say the same.

By Hydragon

Paladin (751)

02-01-2019, 14:56

Also the MSX Challenge continues this year on Twitch, live done on real hardware. https://www.twitch.tv/mrhydragon
The 24 Hour MSX stream to celebrate the 500+ followers, was a blast and amazing start to get into 2019!

By dan

Master (248)

02-01-2019, 22:45

Happy new year and best wishes. Thanks for the overview, hamlet. I regret having joined the forum so late and missed so many things but I’m certainly making up for lost time.

By Oniric-Factor

Master (176)

03-01-2019, 00:35

Thanks Hamlet.

Now i know that if i want to get coverage, the way is writting in english to the international staff.

By DrWh0

Paladin (842)

03-01-2019, 01:41

Hi, in first place I would like to clarify some facts because you are having a wrong point of view around Oniric´s perspective.

The problem IS NOT in the international section of the site, I believe that this time seems to be a simple mistake.

Oniric has "exploded" and he is complaining because most of developers from outside of certain circle (he is one of them) are systematically ignored and/or "forgotten" IN THE SPANISH SECTION of the site and doesn´t translate the news of them (the very few you can read in english are the ones we uploaded directly).

Curiously, most of the "forgotten" have a very clear stance about publishing games and prefer selling only physical copies at low prices and give digital as donationware or free (from my personal perspective at least).

Obviously you can think that this seems a tantrum "Hey, I am an attention whore" , but in fact they don´t care if others have a more commercial perspective how homebrew software should be.

The problem comes when you submit news about software, hardware,article etc from certains circles and you see how those news only reach front page when we upload directly to the international site, and curiously a lot of little news are posted quickly when is related to "commercial" projects (no problem with it but apply the same rules to everyone).

On the other side, in spanish section takes systematically an abnormal delay (or simply are not published) and never translated by local admins.

Comparing to the news posting from certain circle of people who has news posting even in preliminary steps of a soft development, hardware, social project, whatever and reposted when the product is on sale.

We did the same to verify if we were paranoid and....

Simply those news are discarded because certain admins says "there already a thread about it/there is already a news post about that project" while those people has higher visibility and are not under the same rules.

We are trying to introduce new blood in the homebrew scene and bring new talents even financing projects through the ler-sor.es initiative but each time we are trying to promote those people/projects/activities but we hit each time a wall and we suffer a double standards comparing to those people, in other words we are under less flexible conditions regarding to the rules).

We simply want an equitative treatment to all projects/activities/collectives no matter the size of it because those "interests" are killing little independent "outsiders" and people like Oniric are tired of it.

Note that I am not pointing to anyone in particular because I don´t want that this post could be interpreted like a gratuitous attack against anyone instead an improvement of the site that will benefit us all.

Thanks for reading this long post, and happy new year

By Hydragon

Paladin (751)

03-01-2019, 01:53

@DrWh0 that's also why I opened a thread to put the stuff in there, since also several news items were submitted and I was told none was submitted, truth to be told, it was even done on a live stream a few months ago. Even promises that something would arrive and months of waiting and nothing appeared with the words "lack of creativity". Fortunately one of the team members actually picked up on the topic and did check out what it was about and I was very happy to see, that the moment he joined into the channel a news item also appeared a few hours later. And I do understand it's done as a hobby, but being ignored mostly, even if you do great stuff for the community, it somehow sometimes seems, that it became a selective procedure. Back in the day, even if it just had the name MSX in it, it would have appeared on the site, I hope they recruit more admins to actually handle the news items properly and we get faster updates on the news.

By Grauw

Ascended (10819)

03-01-2019, 04:28

Opening a thread about projects and activities is a great way to gather attention and involve the community. I do that all the time, and have a lot of fun with it. News posts about particular events (like releases) aren’t actually very important that way, the most of the communication and building anticipation happens in the project forum threads. Sharing what you’re working on, and releasing bits of information that are nice to show as you go along; I would recommend it to everyone.

And when I do have a release to announce in a news post, I always do the work to carefully write and submit them myself, in English, sticking to the common format of msx.org newsposts, so that they can be published quickly on the most international part of the site. It’s not that much trouble I think.

This site does have some staff (read: community members who are putting in some extra effort), but their time, attention and awareness of everything is limited, and in the end it is all community-driven. The easier you make it for the staff to push the “approve news” button, the faster they will do it.

It sounds to me like this all comes down to marketing really, and it takes effort to get the word out. If you just release a game on the Android app store, nobody will notice it either without marketing. For MSX it’s a bit easier to reach the users fortunately, but you still have to do promotion. Though I don’t see it that way personally, I just like to chat in forum threads about my projects a lot . But effectively, it’s promotion.

Anyway lastly I always do enjoy seeing Oniric’s projects, they look really nice I think. Especially the graphics really appeal to me. And the board game is a super original concept. So if there’s anything I missed, I’d love to read more about it!

p.s. @ren Thanks for the mention! And Tiny Yarou always does something noteworthy. Tiny Sound Module was this year, wasn’t it?

By hamlet

Scribe (4106)

03-01-2019, 06:24

Dear Doctor, Hydragon and friends.
The MRC does not act commercially and has no such background. We do not select topics according to such backgrounds but simply according to your participation. As Graw wrote, Information has to come from the community, also from you, in order to be published here.
I will gladly write it down again for you, even without reference to dog pictures: we are happy to help. But we have to know where and how. And we are doing this thing as pure home activity. And love.
With your help and your interest this forum will gain content.
We take criticism and propose seriously. Criticism of the creator is necessary, but should not exclusively determine your doing.
Show your creativity and fill the MRC with content.
Thank you.

By Pac

Scribe (7103)

03-01-2019, 11:53

DrWh0 wrote:

Are you suggesting that we forget developers or whatever deliberately? Being the person in charge of the Spanish MRC site (alone and recently with help of ListoMefisto in translations), I must say that I DON'T ACCEPT LIES like this. The same for the international part. 100% of new posts uploaded to MRC are translated to Spanish language (and vice versa), again 100%! Even those I perfectly know that Spanish users will pay zero attention such as fairs outside Spain or similar and why? Just to keep everybody informed, because in my opinion everything related to MSX is important for the general interest. I even contact developers time before they launch a final product to collect as much data as possible to get ready the news posts in advance.

Once again I have to tell you the same I explained (to you) last September about RU05 Seville. Please go and ask Oniric how many times I contacted him in order to get more information about his products. Delay? Yes no objection, because I have my own life, because some people work in three shifts and have to find the moment and becasue I'm not your servant, is that clear?

DrWh0 wrote:

On the other side, in spanish section takes systematically an abnormal delay (or simply are not published) and never translated by local admins.

My answer already on top. try to find a news post not translated into Spanish language in the last 6 years when I started to support the site (maybe few expection due a mistake). Believe me that I put all my efforts to avoid that. There is not news submitted to the International MRC or Spanish MRC. All of them go to the same bag.

DrWh0 wrote:

And that's very welcome. Ask Lerma about his "bad" experience when contacted me in order to promote his initiative. The newspost was published almost inmediately.

DrWh0 wrote:

There is no discrimnation at all, what is the benefit on that for us?

DrWh0 wrote:

I hope so as well...

By mesiasmsx

Prophet (3454)

04-01-2019, 20:35

Thanks for your excellent musics for Zanac-Ex patch!
And happy new year!

By mesiasmsx

Prophet (3454)

04-01-2019, 20:48

Thanks MRC Team and all developers.

Happy New Year 2019 from the MRC!

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