Further Reading
Early MSX History
Special thanks to Sander Zuidema of www.msx.org for providing extra information on a variety of early MSX subjects:
Re: The spreading of
games software
A large selection of disk magazines (Genic/Sunrise, Picturedisk, Futuredisk, Dragon Disk, Quasar, BCF DiscStation, ...) ensured a steady flow of new releases and offered a platform for people who liked to create small demo’s.
On both the printed magazines and disk magazines one could often find courses, explaining how to accomplish certain effects on MSX, such as smooth scrolls, screen splits etc. This greatly helped a new generations of MSX developers.
Apart from that, some of the most important MSX software development groups are:
FAC (Federation Against Commodore): For creating a music tracker that supported both the MSX-MUSIC and MSX-AUDIO sound chips. Finally people could use home-made, extremely cool music in their own creations.
FAF: Federation Against FAC. Need I say more?
Stiching Sunrise: For offering splendid new hardware and software at an extremely impressive price. Life wouldn't be the same without their Compact Flash IDE interface, Moonsound and countless classic games, all worth playing to the bone.
MSX Club Gouda: For delivering high quality hardware for low prices to the masses for many years. Most of the Panasonic turboR computers that came to Europe were imported by these guys.
Fuzzy Logic: For combining humour with spectacular effects time and time again.
Impact: For creating marvellous music disks that raised the bar for MSX music composers around the world, and also some humorous demos.
N.O.P. : For creating several mind blowing production, including the masterpiece “Unknown Reality”. Seeing is believing.
ANMA: For having a style on their own and delivering an impressive game-a-year.
Station: For proving MSX can do 3D colour-filled vector graphics.
Umax: For bringing truly spectacular RPGs to the MSX. There are many good RPGs for MSX, but only a few that are community-made.
And there are many, many, many more that I could mention.
Personal Statement
A fascinating personal statement from Tobias Keizer, which is an insight into the MSX homebrew scene:
For me the best Dutch game ever to be released was Akin. It was made by Parallax (http://www.shape9.nl/parallax/menu.html), a famous Dutch-scene group. Akin is regarded by many as one of the (technically) best games to come from the scene, apart from Coredump perhaps. Parallax was mainly one person, namely Cas Cremers. For both Akin and Coredump he had a lot of help from Patrick Smeets, who did most of the graphics for both games.
Akin pushed the MSX2 system to its limit, or so we thought... Great graphics, music and fast animations on nearly the whole screen, often even in “multilayer”. Then of course, came Coredump. Even more impressive, but unfortunately never finished.
Another Dutch scene legend was Alex Wulms, aka Xelasoft, the author of the famous MOD player for the MSX turboR. Xelasoft however, didn’t release too many games, although Zone Terra was particularly impressive. This MSX turboR game had very nice SCREEN11 graphics and PCM samples. This may not sound very impressive, but it’s actually quite a feat since the PCM sample device is very CPU intensive.
Another group worth mentioning is the Dutch group Umax. Though their games were not of a technically high level, they were often very nice to play, which is what really matters of course. They released many RPGs and ‘Board Games’, a few of them featured stunning Moonsound (OPL4) music. The graphics were often very good, something you didn’t see too often in the scene.
Relative newcomer Team Bomba released their first production last year, an action-packed Bomberman clone called BombaMan. It may have taken over 4 years to develop this game, but it certainly shows. This is as ‘finished’ as an amateur production can get… Released on both CD and two 2DD disks, the game has DOS2 support, which means it’s installable on both harddrive and Compact Flash cards. It supports a whole range of soundchips like the standard PSG (AY-3-8910) for sound effects, MSX-MUSIC (OPL-L), MSX-AUDIO (OPL1), or the Moonsound (OPL4) for all digital sound.
There are a lot more games of course, but these are the games I personally liked best. Retro Gamer readers might also want to take a look at games like Shrines of Enigma, Dass, Retaliator, and a gazillion others I can’t think of right now.
Most of these games have promos floating around on the web, some of which can be found in the www.msx.org downloads database. Other games have been declared Public Domain by the authors, meaning they can be downloaded freely. The Coredump promo is especially nice, though I never got far enough in the game to see all the hip special effects the graphics engine had.
All of these games were really made just for the fun of it. Although the authors did charge a minimal fee for them, it was nothing compared to the effort that went into making these games. At the time (mid-90s), a game would cost something in the order of 25 Dutch Guilders, around £10. Since colour Inkjets weren’t that common at the time, having a manual with a colour cover meant going to the local copy-shop and shelling out 2.50 Dutch Guilders just for that alone. In any event, if you were lucky and your game did will, you’d probably earn enough money to take your girlfriend out to dinner some time. Not bad, considering you only spent a year developing your game.
During the mid 90s, the Sunrise Foundation became active as a publisher for independent developers. For a small fee, they would release your game for you while taking care of a variety of tasks such as disk-duplication, label printing, manual printing and even some level of publicity/advertising as far as their limited budget would allow. Since this meant the average developer would have a whole lot less to worry about, and a game released by Sunrise would usually sell a minimum of 250 copies, almost every Dutch scene production was published by the Sunrise Foundation.
On a technical note; any programmer who is familiar with the MSX2 system or similar platforms from the era will quickly notice the tell-tale signs of ‘creative programming’ in the Akin and Coredump screenshots. The screen is set to 192 lines (instead of the standard 212) to reduce the size of the screen a little while squeezing out that little bit of extra VDP time in the process… Big borders, to somewhat reduce the play-field window… Large areas with only one colour, since FILLs are executed faster than COPYs. Use of the static backdrop picture combined with open spaces in the foreground layer, this often means that portions of the screen which show the backdrop don’t need to be redrawn. No use of hardware sprites at all, since they greatly slow down the VDPs command speed. Pretty much every trick in the book (and those not in the book) is used to make these games possible on such a relatively low-spec system…
Other Companies
Special thanks to Mr Ruud van de Moosdijk for providing the following information.
Game development companies in Holland:
Engine Software (http://www.engine-software.com):
Which is my company, basically were a MSX-scene group that turned pro: from MSX-Engine to Engine Software. We made some games as a hobby for MSX (one of them being “DASS”) and professional games after that for Super Nintendo, PC, Pocket PC, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and now Playstation Portable and Nintendo DS.
Guerrilla Games (http://www.guerrilla-games.com):
Formerly known as Lost Boys Games, which was a fusion of Orange Games (famous thanks to Jazz Jackrabbit), Formula and Digital Innovation. Got a lot of media attention recently for KILLZONE (PS2). also released Shellshock (published by Eidos).
Triumph Studios (http://www.triumphstudios.com):
Perhaps not that well known company but with a very loyal fan community. They were probably the first Dutch company since gaming got this big that scored an international hit with Age of Wonders (PC).
Playlogic Gamefactory (http://www.playlogicgames.com):
A young company (two years and counting) but with some very good investors. With Guerrilla Games, the most “visible” to outsiders. Released Alpha Black Zero (PC) and Airborne Troopers (PS2/PC). Also developed Xyanide (X-Box) and Cyclone Circus (PS2) which have not been released yet. We did a Gameboy Advance version of Xyanide for them, which has not been released yet either.
Khaeon Games (http://www.khaeon.com):
Also a young company that developed Alpha Black Zero for PC, which was released by Playlogic (see above). Working on two new projects now, but they won't tell me what.
Nixxes (http://www.nixxes.com):
Basically only do ports/conversions or partial development. Best known work includes Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Dreamcast) and Soul Reaver 2 (PC).
Streamline Studios (http://www.streamline-studios.com):
Founded by two Americans (Hernandez brothers) that got into the industry through the modding scene. Specialize in making FMV sequences for games, and did for example the movies featured in James Bond: Nightfire and Ghost Recon 2.
Overloaded (http://www.overloaded.com):
Focuses purely on mobile content.
Little Chicken Game
Company (http://www.littlechicken.nl):
Focuses purely on online games, and are damn good at that.
Other development
groups, whose MSX software can be found on the downloads page at www.msx.org,
are:
Hegega, Parallax, Team Bomba, Cain, Paragon, Arno Dekker, Fony, Delta Soft, Manuel Bilderbeek, FCS, NOP, Olaf Benneker, TeddyWareZ, MCE, BCF.
Be sure to investigate www.msx.org for all your MSX needs, they have plenty of information, free software downloads and an incredibly helpful forum board.
Website Links
Special thanks to Rene Lips for providing a great deal of retro information and many of these links. www.renelips.nlRene’s Retro Computer and Games Site. http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl/retropagina.htm
Details on a Dutch retro convention from last year. (contains MANY fantastic photographs!)
MSX and Videopac Collector, the owners of some proto's of the Videopac (Spiderman, melrep and Spaans)
Probably the biggest Atari collector in the Netherlands and manufacturer of the MyIDE interface.
http://www.bonami-spelcomputer-museum.nl/
Game Console Museum, very nice people.
Probably the biggest Vectrex Collector in the Netherlands
HCC Commodore club, they organized the Retro Computer Day
http://www.clubs.nl/community/default.asp?clubid=123890
Retro games and retro computer Club
The website for all your MSX needs! Plenty of downloads, information and a friendly forum board.
Official BAZIX website
The emulator, blueMSX, can be found here. It can be legally used without the official BIOS roms.
Dutch Gaming Society Online. A Dutch website dealing with modern gaming.
A mostly Holland based group responsible for the phenomenal Bomberman clone, BombaMan, which is being published through Sunrise and being sold for only €14 Euro. Well worth checking out!
http://www.shape9.nl/parallax/menu.html
The website for the development group Parallax, the people who freely donated Blade Lords for this month’s cover disc!
A rather long link, but this takes you to the Lemon64 page featuring Radarsoft games.
Special Thanks
Thanks, in no particular order, must go to:
Patrick Smeets:
For providing personal statements and a great deal of general information regarding the MSX scene and Holland in general. Also for arranging with Cas Cremer the donation of Blade Lords for this month’s cover disc, as well as general support.
Cas Cremer:
The founder of Parallax, who agreed to donate one of his games, Blade Lords. Also for his diligent work over the years in the MSX homebrew scene.
Rene Lips:
For providing the exclusive screenshot of the Dutch made Emerson Arcadia 2001 clone, the “Ormatu Videospelcomputer 2001”. Also for providing a vast amount of URLs to various retro themed Dutch websites and other retro based information. He also kindly donated a large selection of personal photos from the Retrodag 2004 convention.
Sander Zuidema:
For very regular email contact and assistance with acquiring various sources of information. Thanks also for checking and confirming the usage of various photographic galleries found on the MRC and other general help.
Tobias Keizer:
For providing a well written personal statement on the MSX homebrew scene, and also for acquiring and providing a very large selection of MSX game screens.
Ruud van de Moosdijk:
For providing a list of Dutch based games companies and related information.
Rick Lindeman:
For providing a great deal of information on Radarsoft and other assistance.
Stephan Szarafinski:
For donating some of the photo galleries found on the disc this month.
Manuel Bilderbeek:
For revealing some very interesting facts about gaming in the Netherlands, and general assistance.
Benoît Delvaux:
Assistance with the blueMSX emulator.
Maarten ter Huurne:
Assistance with the openMSX emulator.
For providing assistance and resources.
Providing information and of course their continuing work with the MSX hardware and software.
For making a great Bomberman clone and for providing information
And anyone else, who may have been accidentally left off the list!