Every good anime and manga fan should know Osamu Tezuka, the creator of the very first manga and anime, Astro Boy (the manga is actually being released in the Netherlands at the moment by Standaard Uitgeverij). But aside from that, he also created another manga, considered his 'life work', and his greatest work aswell. He never got about to finish it, by the way, before he died. Anyways, the name of this manga was 'Hi no Tori', and that, my friends, ofcourse ringed a bell ^_^.

Now I wonder if Konami's Hi no Tori (also know as Firebird) has anything to do with that...

A couple of URLs:
http://www.sharemation.com/~mangasearch/tezuka/phoenixshitajiki.html

http://www.angelfire.com/art2/unicorndreams/cinema/Hinotori.html

Actually the latter page kind of confirms my thoughts, at the bottom there is a short referral to MSX. Actually it's Cyberknight's page, I remember I visited it before a long ago. Isn't he somewhat wellknown? Ah, well, anyways, it is interesting to discover such things. I wonder if there is someone who played the game and knows the manga (or just read up on it on some sites) who can tell how much of it is the same... Is there a lot of story in the game? Damn I think I need to play it myself after all ^_^ I wonder if it's translated.

~Grauw

Wow, this is cool! Look at the last page ' The ending vocal appears in the computer game Hinotori, once available for MSX machines.'

Quote from http://www.angelfire.com/art2/unicorndreams/msx/ about the MSX game:

"This game is based on the anime of the same name. Hinotori is a legendary goddess that appears as a flaming bird. She helps, in her ways, the human kind to evolve. But she is not the central character of this game. It is Gaou, a man with only one arm, moved by the need to find a reason for life. At a certain point in the anime, he wanders alone in the ancient Japan, searching for his destiny. This is when the game is situated. The Hinotori song is the only music from the anime used by Konami, all others were specially composed"

-Dan Derpaux

I once saw the cover of the Hinotori (the MSX game) box as a poster in a store in Japan... Signed by the author (Osamu Tezuka) himself. As you can conclude, the cover was taken from the original anime as well. I didn't buy the poster, although it was really something. As you might have guessed: the Tezuka sign made the poster really expensive and I didn't feel like spending about 100 Euro for a poster...