ERRATA: Game #42 is actually called "Golvellius" (the same as game #41). Also, game #50 - "Illusion City" is technically an MSX TurboR game, not an MSX/MSX2 game. Thanks @Rafael Lima for pointing that out!
It's a great gaming system. There's a shitload of games for it, and a lot of real good stuff. Konami really made a name on it, EVERYTHING they made on the MSX was pure gold. There was never another company with so many high quality releases on a system like what Konami did with the MSX. Compile did some really excellent stuff too. There was great arcade ports from Namco, and some good games from Taito too (Though Scramble Formation on it is really awful). And many great games from so many other companies. I got mine in 1986, and is still working and connected to a TV at my gome in 2021 :D
Cool patron Steamkey: it's BOOK OF DEMONS, a 2018 combination Diablo hack-n-slash with deck building mechanics, from developer Thing Trunk. Looks like a fun little 10-15 hour campaign. Cheers!
@@JasperTedVidalTale It does have ranged weapons/abilities/spells, but it's hard to describe the combat. Definitely not real-time. It's turn-based with card management. You don't roam freely, you walk along these set isometric paths and then use your abilities to fight beasties you find along the path. And the combat feels more like an old-school dungeon-crawler as you shuffle through and choose which abilities to use for each attack. If you're interested, check out gameplay because it's definitely unique and my sense is some people enjoy it but some people don't.
16 games I'd like to try, 6I knew were on here and 8 I have on other systems. I never think of this one when I think of retro consoles as I never even heard of it until the 00s or 10s and never saw one in real life. It had some good stuff but I prefer the NES/SMS/Genesis versions of these.
I always thought MSX games were so hard. I now realise I was just really crap and very young. I still have our MSX. I will have to drag it out one day.
Games that stand out to me are the Aleste games, D-Dash, Space Harrier clone Feedback, Guardic, Herzog, SD Snatcher, Thexder, the Ys games. I recognize several games I've played in their PCE version (or other 3rd/4th gen console version) -- so I wonder if MSX is superior in any of these? This video is super-interesting from a historic point-of-view, yet I'm wondering if I would enjoy *playing* more than 10 or 20 of them today? Was it fun to capture this footage, of games you had no nostalgia for? I can happily play Atari 2600 games, or many NES/SMS games from this period ... but mid 80s computer games, especially action games, always have felt too jerky in their movement ... even when I tried to play them as a teenager in the 80s. I always felt they were less fluid than games in the arcade, though I did play a ton of Lode Runner & Karateka on our Apple IIe. For me, the best computer games of this period were RPGs, dungeon crawlers, adventure games. Am I being closed-minded when I say it took some Nintendo magic to make action games fluid on home console? I'm no Nintendo fanboy, but that's sort of how it feels.
Playing for footage was a bit of a mixed bag; there were definitely lots of titles that I think hold up reasonably well today - but there were also many titles that were clearly evolutionary footsteps that have been surpassed by their descendants. Still, I'd say there were about 20 or so titles that I bookmarked as "go back and play" For the most part, I'd say the experience was more similar to NES gaming than say the 8-bit computers of the time. In still-shot comparisons, I'd say that pixel-for-pixel, the MSX library was far higher quality graphically than the NES. However, in motion - that's where things break down a little. The MSX clearly had some issues with scrolling - which is why many of the scrolling games are quite jerky; and why some cross-platform titles (like Castlevania and Contra) were switched to a flick-screen approach. Where I think the MSX library is really interesting (and unfortunately is not captured very well in this video, due to language barriers) is the birth and evolution of the JRPG. I'm not a big JRPG fan personally, but you can actually chart the formative years of evolution in the MSX library. An interesting comparison - the PC Engine vs. the MSX(2). Indeed there was lots of cross-platform porting going on - but a definitive answer of "which versions were better?" would need further research! The 8-bit NES hardware definitely seem to have better scrolling; however, the NES also had deficiencies of its own (e.g. some terrible problems with sprite flicker which I didn't see any trace of in the MSX titles). So this may be a bit of an apples and oranges situation!
@@GaryRetroGamer Really interesting, and yes I agree that "screenshot" wise, many of these games are very nice and slightly different from NES. I'd love to do a little research one day on early JRPGs. Western games like Wizardry and Ultima series were my favorite computer games as a middle schooler in the early 80s; then Japanese devs took inspiration from games like that and tabletop D&D to create the sub-genre of JRPGs, which would be so central to my gaming life from the late 80s on.
Do you want a list of good games on the MSX? D-Dash is actually awful. The gameplay is really bad on it, the game suffers from severe slowdown when the screen is scrolling and then it moves at blazing speed when the screen is standing still . Also keep in mind the MSX 1 was a less capable hardware for games than the NES. No hardware scrolling, just 4 single color sprites per scanline. The MSX2 is a lot better but it's still lacking proper horizontal scroll support (It can be achieved with some tricks though). MSX2+ was the first one to have proper scroll to every direction :D But I can easily make a list of 100 games that are worthy trying on the system. There are lots of good games out of this video, while there's a fair amount of stinkers, mediocre and badly aged games on this video. - And no, the MSX won't be superior to the PC Engine in any game. I dunno what games you saw here that have PCE versions, but Valis 2 is really pushing the hardware to its limits (or maybe beyond them?) and it has terrible slowdowns in many places (and it is never very smooth even when running at full speed).. It's way better on the PC Engine.
@@rafaellima83 Thanks for the tips! I'll do some exploring, will expect some serious slowdown, and will be ready that MSX2 has a big boost during movement.
@@sonicmania9993 It really depends on the game. Konami games, for example, tried *hard* to avoid slowdowns and flickering. Except by Salamander. This one has a bit of flickering and slowdowns, but that game is a tour-de-force for the MSX 1. It's not an arcade port, it's actually an expanded game with more levels than the arcade one and a few cut-scenes between and it's throwing SO MUCH shit on the screen at the same time, it's really impressive for an MSX 1 (As Nemesis 3/Gradius Gofer No Yabou Episode 2 also is) Compile games in the other hand didn't care, there's a shitload of flickering and Aleste , for example, seems to be running in a nearly constant state of slowdown. (Aleste 2 in the other hand, I don't think it *ever* slowdowns and it's another impressive game, one of the best games in the system by far) But if you start with Konami and Compile games, you'll be getting some of the best games on the system. Compile actually supported the system for quite a while and it was one of the last big names to drop support for the system. (If you consider Compile a "big" name). Also Puyo Puyo started on the MSX :)
Yeah, that's a very fair point. I did originally consider splitting this into two videos (MSX1/MSX2) - but when researching lists online, most people tended to combine the two into a single list. So I went with it.
@@GaryRetroGamer It's not THAT much of a difference, like NES and SNES. You still had the same Z80 processor at 3.5 mhz up until the Turbo-R was released. But the thing is that if you had an MSX2+ (like I do), you still had access to the whole MSX 1 library. So you don't feel they are really different systems. It's like saying games for a Pentium 3 800mhz using a TNT2 video card aren't for the same system as games for an I5 with a Radeon 580 video card :D It's a computer, not a console, and the MSX 2 was an "upgrade" to that computer. To be quite fair, the only real difference between MSX 1 and MSX 2 is the video processor, and the base RAM for MSX 2 was a little bigger. (no MSX 2 had less than 64 kb, while there were MSX 1s with just 8kb of ram)
@@rafaellima83 I think the fact that MSX1 machines CAN be upgraded to MSX2 via one of the cartridge slots with just the video chip v9938, video memory and a MSX2 BIOS ROM makes MSX2 much closer to MSX1 than most people realize.
Great collection of MSX games! Quiet some Japanese games are running at 50Hz though here which is a shame. They are designed for 60Hz and the slower speed doesn't do them justice.
Xevious: Fardraught Saga sort of blew me away when I first saw it. Not the greatest game, just that there was a Xevious game/sequel that looked pretty close to arcade and where you can choose different craft. I think there is a PC Engine version too.
Knowing almost nothing of the MSX, I can't tell if you're experiencing emulation sound issues in a lot of these games or if they're really just that ear-grating.
It's emulation issues, a ton of hastily ported ZX-Spectrum games that sounded awful on their home platform already, combined with games intended for Japanese NTSC MSX machines running on an emulator with PAL-settings. Source: A guy who owns actual NTSC MSX hardware.
MSX1 and MSX2 should be on separate videos... Mixing the two on a single video is like making a "100 Playstation1/Playstation2 Games" video. Also, crappy ZX-Spectrum ports are not exactly what I would call an "MSX game".
Illusion City is an MSX Turbo-R game. Not MSX nor MSX 2. Golvellius 2 isn't called Golvellius 2. Its just "Golvellius", it's a remake of the original game for the MSX 2 with a couple of new areas to explore. What the heck happened with the sound of Magical Kid Wiz there? The game has great music and proper sound effects, not that farting effects shown in the video. Also, shame about some of the games being played at wrong speed on the video :(
Hey, thanks for the feedback - clearly, you're much more knowledgeable than I am on the MSX! This was my first hands-on exposure to the MSX, so there's plenty of learning... I got the name "Golvellius 2" from a fan-made list. However, starting the game right now (with its lovely title screen!) I can see that indeed - it is just Golvellius. Thanks for the correction; I'll post an errata. I wasn't aware of the the speed issue(s) until you (and a few other commenters) pointed it out. Also, when playing Magical Kid Wiz, I *thought* the sound was pretty bad - but I wasn't sure if it's because my copy of the game was corrupted - or it was just another weak port from the ZX Spectrum!
Hay un juegos d msx q me gustaba y no se como se llama,mira q he visto top msx para ver si lo encuentro,recuerdo q era una nave q despegaba y venían muchos bichitos a poner una bomba a pie en mi base y una vez q la ponian regresaban volando.por favor si alguien lo recuerda q me ayude con el nombre a ver si lo vuelvo a jugar.saludos
Pac-Man screaming "OH SHIT!" - well that's something I didn't think I'd see today.
It was a better version of Pacman than the official Namco port :)
Who knows…maybe we should re-watch Oh Shit & The Turdly Adventures.
never thought that TechnoSoft had such a strong presence on the MSX... we learn new things everyday!
Lots of really shitty games :D
Honestly, they only became a respectable studio with Thunder Force 3.
ERRATA: Game #42 is actually called "Golvellius" (the same as game #41). Also, game #50 - "Illusion City" is technically an MSX TurboR game, not an MSX/MSX2 game. Thanks @Rafael Lima for pointing that out!
So many memories on the msx 2 loving most Konami games
MSX FOREVER !!!
quite amazing how some of those songs still stuck in there after so many decades
Awesome! A system I know barely anything about. I've never seen most of these
It's a great gaming system. There's a shitload of games for it, and a lot of real good stuff. Konami really made a name on it, EVERYTHING they made on the MSX was pure gold. There was never another company with so many high quality releases on a system like what Konami did with the MSX.
Compile did some really excellent stuff too. There was great arcade ports from Namco, and some good games from Taito too (Though Scramble Formation on it is really awful).
And many great games from so many other companies.
I got mine in 1986, and is still working and connected to a TV at my gome in 2021 :D
@@rafaellima83good info! Woah it's still is hooked up and working. Nice!
La Abadia del crimen de Opera Soft. Gran juego. El laberinto era en suma dificil, pero satisfactorio lograrlo
Jungle warrior sure does look a lot like what a very early version of Metal Slug would look like
Kings Valley Hours of Gaming #53 🤗 and Road Fighter #72 my favourite Games
Cool patron Steamkey: it's BOOK OF DEMONS, a 2018 combination Diablo hack-n-slash with deck building mechanics, from developer Thing Trunk. Looks like a fun little 10-15 hour campaign. Cheers!
Does it have ranged weapons and also does it have real time combat
@@JasperTedVidalTale It does have ranged weapons/abilities/spells, but it's hard to describe the combat. Definitely not real-time. It's turn-based with card management. You don't roam freely, you walk along these set isometric paths and then use your abilities to fight beasties you find along the path. And the combat feels more like an old-school dungeon-crawler as you shuffle through and choose which abilities to use for each attack. If you're interested, check out gameplay because it's definitely unique and my sense is some people enjoy it but some people don't.
@@sonicmania9993 okay thanks
Nice vid
AND nostalgic too
Nice compilation!
Oooh we're going super retro today.. I'm in to it.
56. Knightmare is one of the best games of my life.
16 games I'd like to try, 6I knew were on here and 8 I have on other systems. I never think of this one when I think of retro consoles as I never even heard of it until the 00s or 10s and never saw one in real life. It had some good stuff but I prefer the NES/SMS/Genesis versions of these.
I always thought MSX games were so hard. I now realise I was just really crap and very young. I still have our MSX. I will have to drag it out one day.
Games that stand out to me are the Aleste games, D-Dash, Space Harrier clone Feedback, Guardic, Herzog, SD Snatcher, Thexder, the Ys games. I recognize several games I've played in their PCE version (or other 3rd/4th gen console version) -- so I wonder if MSX is superior in any of these?
This video is super-interesting from a historic point-of-view, yet I'm wondering if I would enjoy *playing* more than 10 or 20 of them today? Was it fun to capture this footage, of games you had no nostalgia for? I can happily play Atari 2600 games, or many NES/SMS games from this period ... but mid 80s computer games, especially action games, always have felt too jerky in their movement ... even when I tried to play them as a teenager in the 80s. I always felt they were less fluid than games in the arcade, though I did play a ton of Lode Runner & Karateka on our Apple IIe. For me, the best computer games of this period were RPGs, dungeon crawlers, adventure games.
Am I being closed-minded when I say it took some Nintendo magic to make action games fluid on home console? I'm no Nintendo fanboy, but that's sort of how it feels.
Playing for footage was a bit of a mixed bag; there were definitely lots of titles that I think hold up reasonably well today - but there were also many titles that were clearly evolutionary footsteps that have been surpassed by their descendants. Still, I'd say there were about 20 or so titles that I bookmarked as "go back and play"
For the most part, I'd say the experience was more similar to NES gaming than say the 8-bit computers of the time. In still-shot comparisons, I'd say that pixel-for-pixel, the MSX library was far higher quality graphically than the NES. However, in motion - that's where things break down a little. The MSX clearly had some issues with scrolling - which is why many of the scrolling games are quite jerky; and why some cross-platform titles (like Castlevania and Contra) were switched to a flick-screen approach.
Where I think the MSX library is really interesting (and unfortunately is not captured very well in this video, due to language barriers) is the birth and evolution of the JRPG. I'm not a big JRPG fan personally, but you can actually chart the formative years of evolution in the MSX library.
An interesting comparison - the PC Engine vs. the MSX(2). Indeed there was lots of cross-platform porting going on - but a definitive answer of "which versions were better?" would need further research!
The 8-bit NES hardware definitely seem to have better scrolling; however, the NES also had deficiencies of its own (e.g. some terrible problems with sprite flicker which I didn't see any trace of in the MSX titles). So this may be a bit of an apples and oranges situation!
@@GaryRetroGamer Really interesting, and yes I agree that "screenshot" wise, many of these games are very nice and slightly different from NES. I'd love to do a little research one day on early JRPGs. Western games like Wizardry and Ultima series were my favorite computer games as a middle schooler in the early 80s; then Japanese devs took inspiration from games like that and tabletop D&D to create the sub-genre of JRPGs, which would be so central to my gaming life from the late 80s on.
Do you want a list of good games on the MSX?
D-Dash is actually awful. The gameplay is really bad on it, the game suffers from severe slowdown when the screen is scrolling and then it moves at blazing speed when the screen is standing still .
Also keep in mind the MSX 1 was a less capable hardware for games than the NES. No hardware scrolling, just 4 single color sprites per scanline.
The MSX2 is a lot better but it's still lacking proper horizontal scroll support (It can be achieved with some tricks though). MSX2+ was the first one to have proper scroll to every direction :D
But I can easily make a list of 100 games that are worthy trying on the system. There are lots of good games out of this video, while there's a fair amount of stinkers, mediocre and badly aged games on this video.
-
And no, the MSX won't be superior to the PC Engine in any game. I dunno what games you saw here that have PCE versions, but Valis 2 is really pushing the hardware to its limits (or maybe beyond them?) and it has terrible slowdowns in many places (and it is never very smooth even when running at full speed).. It's way better on the PC Engine.
@@rafaellima83 Thanks for the tips! I'll do some exploring, will expect some serious slowdown, and will be ready that MSX2 has a big boost during movement.
@@sonicmania9993 It really depends on the game.
Konami games, for example, tried *hard* to avoid slowdowns and flickering.
Except by Salamander. This one has a bit of flickering and slowdowns, but that game is a tour-de-force for the MSX 1. It's not an arcade port, it's actually an expanded game with more levels than the arcade one and a few cut-scenes between and it's throwing SO MUCH shit on the screen at the same time, it's really impressive for an MSX 1 (As Nemesis 3/Gradius Gofer No Yabou Episode 2 also is)
Compile games in the other hand didn't care, there's a shitload of flickering and Aleste , for example, seems to be running in a nearly constant state of slowdown. (Aleste 2 in the other hand, I don't think it *ever* slowdowns and it's another impressive game, one of the best games in the system by far)
But if you start with Konami and Compile games, you'll be getting some of the best games on the system. Compile actually supported the system for quite a while and it was one of the last big names to drop support for the system. (If you consider Compile a "big" name).
Also Puyo Puyo started on the MSX :)
Road fighter, always wandered why it made a sound passing the blue car...
とても懐かしい。日本で発売されていないゲームもあって、よかったです。MSXって性能良いですね。
Good video, but the MSX and MSX2 were as different as the NES and SNES. It's like making a video with the best PS1 and PS2 games.
Yeah, that's a very fair point. I did originally consider splitting this into two videos (MSX1/MSX2) - but when researching lists online, most people tended to combine the two into a single list. So I went with it.
@@GaryRetroGamer It's not THAT much of a difference, like NES and SNES. You still had the same Z80 processor at 3.5 mhz up until the Turbo-R was released.
But the thing is that if you had an MSX2+ (like I do), you still had access to the whole MSX 1 library. So you don't feel they are really different systems.
It's like saying games for a Pentium 3 800mhz using a TNT2 video card aren't for the same system as games for an I5 with a Radeon 580 video card :D
It's a computer, not a console, and the MSX 2 was an "upgrade" to that computer. To be quite fair, the only real difference between MSX 1 and MSX 2 is the video processor, and the base RAM for MSX 2 was a little bigger. (no MSX 2 had less than 64 kb, while there were MSX 1s with just 8kb of ram)
@@rafaellima83 I think the fact that MSX1 machines CAN be upgraded to MSX2 via one of the cartridge slots with just the video chip v9938, video memory and a MSX2 BIOS ROM makes MSX2 much closer to MSX1 than most people realize.
Nice video. I’ll die without seeing all that msx has to offer. Those games are in 50hz….the music and pace are too slow.
Great collection of MSX games! Quiet some Japanese games are running at 50Hz though here which is a shame. They are designed for 60Hz and the slower speed doesn't do them justice.
Xevious: Fardraught Saga sort of blew me away when I first saw it. Not the greatest game, just that there was a Xevious game/sequel that looked pretty close to arcade and where you can choose different craft. I think there is a PC Engine version too.
PC Engine is a sequel to the MSX game. The MSX one had an arcade port (which is awesome) and this sequel.
Both games were actually made by Compile.
Damn the MSX was a great machine
Someone: How's your favourite game called?
Me: 12:38
Knowing almost nothing of the MSX, I can't tell if you're experiencing emulation sound issues in a lot of these games or if they're really just that ear-grating.
It's emulation issues, a ton of hastily ported ZX-Spectrum games that sounded awful on their home platform already, combined with games intended for Japanese NTSC MSX machines running on an emulator with PAL-settings. Source: A guy who owns actual NTSC MSX hardware.
I missed Elevator Action there.
you can play easily Microsoft MSX games with retroarch :)
I suscribe your channel. GOOD VIDEO
Well, is everyone excited for the release of Oh Shit World: Re-Shit on Nintendo Switch?
3:30 Well, that unnecessarily creepy.
Yeah, if you unexpectedly blown up or touched by enemies, they will jump scare at you!
this is my flash film death right before i die.
MSX1 and MSX2 should be on separate videos... Mixing the two on a single video is like making a "100 Playstation1/Playstation2 Games" video.
Also, crappy ZX-Spectrum ports are not exactly what I would call an "MSX game".
hi gary what use movie maker program ?
I use "Cyberlink PowerDirector v17"
Number 11: "A hideo Kojima game"
Wait what?! 12:38 😱🤣🤣
what's the song in the intro?
"The Goonies R Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper.
You can hear an 8-bit rendition of the song if you jump to 8:28
@@GaryRetroGamer thanks man :)
Illusion City is an MSX Turbo-R game. Not MSX nor MSX 2.
Golvellius 2 isn't called Golvellius 2. Its just "Golvellius", it's a remake of the original game for the MSX 2 with a couple of new areas to explore.
What the heck happened with the sound of Magical Kid Wiz there? The game has great music and proper sound effects, not that farting effects shown in the video.
Also, shame about some of the games being played at wrong speed on the video :(
Hey, thanks for the feedback - clearly, you're much more knowledgeable than I am on the MSX!
This was my first hands-on exposure to the MSX, so there's plenty of learning...
I got the name "Golvellius 2" from a fan-made list. However, starting the game right now (with its lovely title screen!) I can see that indeed - it is just Golvellius. Thanks for the correction; I'll post an errata.
I wasn't aware of the the speed issue(s) until you (and a few other commenters) pointed it out.
Also, when playing Magical Kid Wiz, I *thought* the sound was pretty bad - but I wasn't sure if it's because my copy of the game was corrupted - or it was just another weak port from the ZX Spectrum!
Isn’t n. 91 Castlevania?
Wait where's parodius?!
I wonder why Ys 2 is not so popular between western retro gamers😢
824 Moore Ferry
7844 Magnolia Cliffs
98861 Kuhic Route
Lucio Glen
Hay un juegos d msx q me gustaba y no se como se llama,mira q he visto top msx para ver si lo encuentro,recuerdo q era una nave q despegaba y venían muchos bichitos a poner una bomba a pie en mi base y una vez q la ponian regresaban volando.por favor si alguien lo recuerda q me ayude con el nombre a ver si lo vuelvo a jugar.saludos
Basically almost all games that weren’t natively MSX, but rather simply ported were crap 😏
Knightmare I am
明らかにBGMの速度が遅いのが混じってるし（エミュレータのせいか？）、動画の中でそのゲームMSX1でも動作するのか2以降専用なのかの区別もされてない。
これじゃあゲームの紹介にもなってない。
12:43 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
12 minutes, 43 seconds.
some of these look like badly ported zx spectrum games,
the other ones are cool tho
468 Kulas Rue
I had a ZX Spectrum in the late 80's, but the MSX looks much better. But why such terrible scrolling?
MSX 1 = No scrolling hardware (essentially the same as ColecoVision).
MSX 2 = Includes scrolling hardware and a lot more stuff.
13:36