With all the discussions about new MSX developments, I've been wondering what the expectations actually are? That is - if a new MSX mainboard apears, is afordable and you get one, what do you want to use it as at the end of the day? An everyday computing platform (even considering its limitations) or a console for many old and a few newly developed games? Can you sum it up in a brief funcionality wish-list?

There are many new MSX developments going on. Some by 'amateurs', like the ESE-MSX, the CIEL3++ and the Padial eMSX2++. I consider these projects to be very interesting. The result of either of those projects will be a backwards-compatible hobby-computer. I don't expect to be able to do every-day-computing tasks on it, but a bit of browsing/chatting on the web won't do no harm. Furthermore I expect these devices to be excellent gaming/development platforms.

I have the same expectations for the official one-chip-MSX, announced by Kazuhiko Nishi of MSX Association. However, my expectations of this one-chip-MSX are even a bit higher, as I expect it to be suitable for everyday computing tasks, ready to compete with the computers of nowadays. In an ideal case the new MSX brings back the fun in computing, the excitement in learning to develop for computing on high and low levels and, like the original MSX computers, invites the users of the system almost automatically to explore its capabilities.

"Is MSX a computer or a game console?"

That question has been asked by people for more than 20 years already...

Answer: neither, and both

Answer: It's a computer

It's a cool classic videogame computer

Comes with games better then those from NES/Famicom (King of the Hill for that era) on cartridges (no sexual abuse with slow and unreliable tapes or floppies), but stimulates hacking with a nice basic and simple enough architecture to start doing some assembly coding.