5 years birthday In a very ironic kind of view

Sunrise: perhaps you have forgotten about MSXPLAYer, the Game Reader, the upcoming Bazix events and the first pre-ordering attempt of the One Chip MSX? Surely, with the latter several things did not go exactly as planned to say the least, but had more One Chip MSX computers been pre-ordered at the time, a lot of us would be having a One Chip MSX by now. Please do keep in mind that MSX Association mainly runs on the efforts of hobbyists, or at least of people who have other, full time jobs next to their work in MSXA. In that light, the late introduction of e.g. MSXPLAYer and the One Chip MSX does not differ that much from e.g. the late introduction of the Sunrise Network Interface, RoA2, Bombaman or CIEL3++ computer, to name a few examples. However, with 3 top selling magazines, successess with EGG, the Game Reader and MSX-BASIC for Robo Education, MSX Association has exceeded the expectations of many sceptics, just as Sunrise has with e.g. the CompactFlash interface, Moonsound and lots of great software titles. I'd rather see the second chance of the One Chip MSX go right a few weeks later than planned, than things going horribly wrong right now.

First of all your comparisons are not valid. We talk about the introduction of the All in one specific not about what has achieved, which is also be the case. Gamereader is made by Ese not by Nishi. ROA2 doesnot exist and is simple not the correct name, simply ROA . The network will never appear , so that can you strike.
And Bombaman is really ridiculous to mention.
EGG is a success in Japan. Sunrise had brought the gamereader after long negotiation , magazine 3 we bought overhere of which you always said well that will be no success here
And besides that Sunrise cannot be compared with MSXA. Since we have a couple of hands and MSXA many more and even more money, since my pocketmoney is less than Nishi ofcourse.
My expectations as regards cf and Moonsound have reached certainly the expectations and are simply manufactured wihout hesistation . For the GFX it is another story admitted.
But really if one sees in december it will start the first quarter of 2006 and it doesnot come, do the promise at the moment you are certain. And if I say in Bussum we have slotexpanders they will laying there ! My promise !

the whole pre order thing 5000 1chip msx's was a failure...... we do not live in the 80's any more.......... so its not so easy the sell 5000 1 chip msx'es.......

I have a huge respect for SUNRISE they make what they promise.
and there are not allot preorders needed when they put a product on the market wich is realy a plus (they are fair and i trust them)
and even with less pocket money than nishi they always get their hardware produced if they promise an new product you can be 100% sure that it will come on the msx market......

what about whoomb?? the new promised LEGAL msx software portal that is still closed and still displays the same as 2 years ago:

is it dead or where the stakes to high to translate the games......
(i warned abouth the problem)
English text will NEVER fit in the text space used for Japanese game texts........ its posible but games will get bigger..... and the game needs to be REBUILDED due a diverent adress of the text....... (is that why basix was looking for a programmer?)

Its not so good for a starting company To Get the Trust from possible customers...... especialy when things that are promissed never get from the ground.....

The botton line is: MSXa, do a great favour to yourself and to all the crew, make the project open source or find a suitable partner (e.g.: Sunrise) and let them manufacture the one-chip-msx. As MSX lovers we fully accept and support a unknown company to regulate the MSX market, but show us up something, because if MSXa took any action to improve our hobby until now, it wasn't seen by most of us. I'm not against MSXa, I want to be very clear at this point. But show you up first, because I'll not buy the ticket for an empty show. Hope you all understand my viewpoint.

Sunrise: what's the story with the network interface?
Is the project obsolete because of Obsonet/DUMAS?

Sunrise: The way I interpreted your post was that you stated Nishi has not kept a single promise for 5 years. In that light, I felt it was necessary to point out that several announced projects have been introduced often late, but succesfully. In fact, the only failure until now was the most daring project of all: the One Chip MSX. The one chip MSX is, by the way, also largely created by ESE and not by Nishi... but I bet that isn't much of a surprise to you.

Also, I felt it would be good to show that a lot of MSXA projects (like the One Chip MSX) depend on the activities of hobbyists (such as ESE), and as both you and I know there were quite a few hobbyist projects that took quite a lot of time to finish after they had been announced. I mentioned a few in which at least some people seemed to have given up hope completely. Given the fact that many of these projects did make it in the end, given the fact that MSXA has introduced quite a few products later than expected, yet succesully, and given the fact that the first attempt of selling the One Chip MSX to a relatively large audience did not in result to productions due to a clear limit that was set at 5,000 OCMs... (by ASCII, not MSXA nonetheless) I would not give up hope completely yet. A second chance has been announced, the improvements that have been announced so far look very promising, and it has been 16 years since the last MSX computer was introduced already. Would a few weeks more really hurt that much?

Last but not least, please do not put my opinion on selling MSX Magazine in Europe out of context. On the MRC, we discussed the possibility of translating MSX Magazine to English, printing them, handling the software licenses and putting it to market. The costs of such an operation will, unfortunately, most likely not outweigh the profits. Differences in language, culture, distribution methods and financial situations (how much money people are willing to spend on such a magazine) are just a few of the many problems you'd run into. Surely, there always will be people interested in buying the Japanese thing, but that's something completely different. In order to get ASCII and the sotware licensing partners interested in an outside-Japan-distribution and localization deal, you should be able to offer them a market which is intersting. In Japan, literally thousands of MSX Magazines have been sold. (unofficial figures are an average of 40.000 per magazine). In all the rest of the world, I'm afraid we would not even be able to sell 10% of that, not in current conditions, especially not when the price is going to be quite steep. And yup, we did have several discussions with potential magazine publishers about the matter.

Poisonic: Surely, it took us a long time, but several games and their manuals have been translated, the result is great... we're working hard on the finishing touch, but unfortunately it all takes quite a bit more time than we could estimate beforehand. (also caused by changing - improved - circumstances and other activities of Bazix and their members). I can safely say WOOMB - is - to be launched in 2006, and you can keep me to that promise.

Alexandre: so far, the 'show' you talk about has mainly been focused on Japan, indeed, but even if the things might not mean a lot to you personally, a lot certainly has happened. Bazix has had a slow start, but at least there is an official representative of MSXA, to make sure that their activities will not go overlooked outside Japan either. The MSX Revival is (and always has been) a process of taking one step at a time. I'm quite confident that both MSXA and Bazix will pleasantly surprise you in the future.

Snout, thanks for the kind response, but unfortunately shown nothing we wanted to see. I -WANT- to support MSXa and Bazix, but for that I need to see some good work. As a matter of fact, while "several games have been translated and their manuals..." none has been seen by the MSX users, while a effort of a group of Brazilians has already translated 6 or 8 games to portuguese. MSX Magazine is great for japanese people. Unfortunately nothing here for us, on the rest of the world. If MSXa has done lots of things in Japan, maybe they should remember that people on europe and Latin America - which are the biggest hardware/software creators of the world - still got nothing. I will buy the ticket, but I want to see a show, not a promise of one. If I support a company that has vapour, I'm not a supporter or a customer, but I'm a partner because I'm putting money up front. And I'll not get revenue on this. So this is not an usual business model.

Please, tell to all of us in short and simple words: WHAT WILL MSXa (and bazix, woomb, ascii or whatever) DO FOR US, USERS OUTSIDE JAPAN????????? Please, tell me about the CONTRIBUITIONS to the scene ASCII abandoned for 12 or 13 years.

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Last but not least, please do not put my opinion on selling MSX Magazine in Europe out of context. On the MRC, we discussed the possibility of translating MSX Magazine to English, printing them, handling the software licenses and putting it to market. The costs of such an operation will, unfortunately, most likely not outweigh the profits. Differences in language, culture, distribution methods and financial situations (how much money people are willing to spend on such a magazine) are just a few of the many problems you'd run into. Surely, there always will be people interested in buying the Japanese thing, but that's something completely different. In order to get ASCII and the sotware licensing partners interested in an outside-Japan-distribution and localization deal, you should be able to offer them a market which is intersting. In Japan, literally thousands of MSX Magazines have been sold. (unofficial figures are an average of 40.000 per magazine). In all the rest of the world, I'm afraid we would not even be able to sell 10% of that, not in current conditions, especially not when the price is going to be quite steep. And yup, we did have several discussions with potential magazine publishers about the matter..

That ins NOT WHAT I MEANT. I am referring to its original. With the introduction of the first Magazine you have had the opportunity to take several magazines with you from Japan. That was not interesting when I visited your booth.

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Poisonic: Surely, it took us a long time, but several games and their manuals have been translated, the result is great... we're working hard on the finishing touch, but unfortunately it all takes quite a bit more time than we could estimate beforehand. (also caused by changing - improved - circumstances and other activities of Bazix and their members). I can safely say WOOMB - is - to be launched in 2006, and you can keep me to that promise.

Translating games with simple text as in aleste 2 is possible......
but translating the clasics with huge texts in japanese will result in crapy english.... thats where im refering too the games !

you can make game manuals as big as you want while translating them from japanese to english.....

but games have their limited size..... you can not put extra text pages in it....... you have to do it with the space in the game where the text is stored.... or you need to modify the game....

in some games replacing the japanese texts to english some times actualy work.......
but in games like metalgear2 aka solidsnake the story in the game could not be transtated in a normal way so it was not 100% translated ........ the engish sentence's did not have such dept as it would have been translated to the fully japanese/english 100% translation....

This is the OCM!!!

http://www.tecnoglobe.es/tienda/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=193

And it is on sale!!!

I would like to get more info about the msx part of this device but it seems very nice!

Funny !

But it's old news, see here : http://www.msx.org/forumtopic3694.html

Well, it's bigger and it costs €386. Definitely I'm going to buy it

Btw, I wonder from whom they've stolen the MSX emulation.

why don't you just all buy an xbox 360,run an emu and call it a day?
you make it seem like a hostile business, people not keeping promises and such,
tssk tssk...patience still is a virtue,maybe in our current society we want results
right away,but that's not the way it works...then again,what do I know...
or see if I care

Because I want to mess with the hardware. If I wanted to play nemesis I'd fire BlueMSX and load Nemesis ROM. I want to push the envelope, and take MSX to the next level.