10 Amazing MSX2 Facts

Even though the MSX2 lacked horizontal hardware scrolling, several game developers used some screen calibration capabilities to achieve smooth horizontal scrolling (albeit with shaky left and right borders). Interestingly, the horizontal scrolling capability of the MSX2+ works very differently than the MSX2 vertical scrolling - probably for backwards compatibility reasons.

Salamander (Life Force) has a pretty significant patch made for it. Not only does it improve the scrolling, it performs some bug fixes, incorporates the Nemesis 2 cartridge data to allow the true ending (normally Nemesis 2 would have to be in cartridge slot 2 to access the extra content), and adds voices for the pilots taken from the arcade and Gradius Gaiden if you have an extra sound chip.

That Philips tape drive at 10:38 is amazing... I want that...

Being American I was never able to experience the MSX but now with emulation I can play the games and enjoy them. Great video by the way.

Just a little reminder: the lack of horizontal scrolling wasn't an exclusivity of a MSX computer, being also lacking for a series of 8-bit home computers in Japan (notably on PC-88, Sharp X1 or FM-7). That's something of note that the MSX community has such concern specially because it's widespread worldwide. Despite the lateness of such upgrades at the time, the MSX2 was still a up-to-date hardware. Great show! Hoping to watch a Turbo-R episode, which has increased its popularity thanks to the homebrew community, or about those Japanese computer systems I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

3:00 'Backwards Thinking' well played. Never used an MSX back in the day or recall even seeing one. This was very informative thanks!

Coleco Adam was released in small numbers in Australia. I saw it in two Grace Brothers stores in NSW back in the day. It wasn't popular and I don't recall a lot of cassettes for it. Both stores had the expansion version that required the Coleco game console. I actually saw it on clear-out for the shop demo and to this day, I regret not purchasing it, as it was going cheap. I cant tell you how long it was around for sure now, but it could have been just a few months.

I still have my SVI-328. Its pre MSX. But the basic was just wonderful. Microsoft Basic was far superior than many basic dialects....back when. C64 had Peek and poke for sound and graphics....on but on MS basic you had, SPRITE, SOUND, etc. Less peeks and pokes. I loved it...and start programming as a kid. Just realizing how old I am...sigh...:)

The Sony MSX2’s were the coolest looking computers of that era bar the x68000.

Very nice piece of knowledge.

I wonder if /any/ games supported the SVI-738 directly? As far as I know it used the same video chip as the MSX2 but everything else was MSX standard (amount of video RAM, sound chip etc). I think it was impressive that it had a 3,5" floppy on the side as well, with Microsoft Disk Basic in ROM.

By the time the MSX 2 and plus came out 16bits were becoming affordable, I'm surprised the Japanese bought these machines at all.

I dropped a technical challenge to the Agon Light community on its facebook forum - is it possible for the Agon Lite to implement MSX2 standard? The Agon Light is 50 Euros from Olimex. If MSX implementation can be pulled off, it would become a very affordable means to acquire brand new hardware for MSX And it uses an eZ80 CPU so it runs the instruction set natively

Msx was killed by Commodore marketing in North America and somewhat in Europe.

The disk drive wasn't a particular MSX2 feature. There are MSX1 machines with disk drives as well, and also MSX2 machines without. And smooth scrolling patches for all these Nemesis/Gradius saga games have been released, most need only MSX2, not even 2+. MSX-DOS2 was released as a separate upgrade for MSX2 and up, and the turboR included it. The turbo mode you mentioned is not available in all Panasonic MSX2 computers. In fact, it's only available on their MSX2+ machines and is hardly used. I don't know any demo scene products that make use of it. Do you?

Was that ring king msx

Zemmix super v link?

I never heard of the msx 2 and msx plus,except for that consolized version, But yeah it’s the same bizar thing for what commodore did, Because after the (from the vic20 to the upgraded) C64, they came up with the C16,C128,c64 max,C64 plus and the C64 GS,(not mentioning the revisionelized C64 pet and the C64 C and C64 GX) well how could commodore just be that desperate in an attempt to target sooo many different markets while compeating against it’s competitors as well such as the msx line up,man just think about it how they had to set up people and make sooo many plants at sooo many different places to makes all these variations of it,same thing with the msx,phew🤣

Msxvr where do I find one of those

There is an MSX Turbo? Please do one on that.