Whatever Happened to MSX Computers?
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I grew up on the MSX. My dad bought two of them in around 1985 or so. At school we were taught Logo on BBC Micros, but we didnt have a BBC micro at home, so my dad sourced MSX Logo [1].
Unfortunately, it was localized in dutch, so instead of the "forward" command, there was the "vooruit" command. So to make it the same as we learned in school, my dad made a set of English functions which wrapped all the Dutch functions. He is an economist/diplomat, not a programmer, and it was quite a few years until I realized what he had done and how impressive that was.
[1] http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/philips/msx-logo/relea...
I wish there was a site where this kind of information could be collected. Personal history of computing is important and a lot of it is being lost.
example: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=90
I wish it was used more/better known though.
MSX came along in the UK when the home computing market was well established. We all knew 'network effects' even of we did not know the phrase, hence, if you were in the Sinclair ecosystem and only owned a ZX81 you wanted either a ZX Spectrum (48K) so you could play the same games as your friends or a BBC Micro like what the school had. Similarly, if you owned a Commodore Vic20 then a Commodore 64 was the way to go. Beyond these few brands there were plenty of Ataris (400/800), Ti/994a's, Dragon 32's and so on, none of which had 'network effects'.
The UK home computing market morphed into Amigas, Acorn Risc machines, Ataris and the Amstrad versions of the Sinclair machines, at which time Microsoft were still trying to foist a tarted up version of MSX onto the marketplace, but nobody was buying even if the MSX machines were very nice. They just never managed the 'network effects' that the popular machines had.
History is rhyming with itself as far as Microsoft is concerned, their Windows Phone is entering a crowded marketplace that is settled. People with old Android phones go for new Android phones, people with old Apple phones go for new Apple phones. It is that simple. Regardless of the benefits of Windows Phone it just does not matter. They can tart it up all they like but nobody cares.
In some markets, porting games provided much of the libraries. It's interesting that so many NES games, a different architecture all together, started on the MSX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#Franchises_established_on_...
It was a pretty big success in Japan indeed and did respectable numbers in other world markets outside of the U.S. (and was eventually released in the U.S. but was DOA).
There's a few interesting variants of the hardware too, like dedicated MIDI composers, and a version that let's you do video compositing (display MSX graphics over top of video using a dedicated "transparent" color) like an early video toaster.
There's still a surprisingly active scene for it (unlike the Amstrad or Atari 8-bit machines). Nowhere near the C64, ZX, or Apple II levels.
I think one of the problems was that the architecture was dated when it started, and relied on an architecture that wasn't going to go anywhere (Z80). So building a cheap 8-bit machine at the beginning wasn't hard. And in the later years building the most powerful 8-bit machines imaginable became easy as well. But the move to bigger bit architectures was very hard. The Turbo-R spec tried, but the market had already moved on.
In Japan, other PC standards caught on and lasted longer. The NEC PC-88 line for example, was a business oriented 8-bit computer that was Z80 also. But when the market clearly needed a 16-bit upgrade, they simply moved to the 8086 line. Which as you can guess gave them a core architecture that lasted well into the 80386 days...but was not entirely IBM PC compatible.
Other Japanese PC standards like the Sharp X1 were also Z80 based. But when they jumped to 16-bit they went with the Motorola 68k architecture and produced the X68000 which also got it up through the 32-bit 68030 days. Despite being fantastic hardware (much more capable than the comparable Amiga), Sharp never released the line outside of Japan.
Well after the IBM PC standard had won the battle for PCs (with Apple hanging on), Japan still tried to produce non-PC compatible systems. Fujitsu's FM Towns is the most well known. Basically a 32-bit super desktop PC built around the 80386SX (and went up to the Pentium line) with lots of custom, Amiga like, hardware to support an a CD-ROM drive as standard. It had great graphics and audio capability for the time. The system was designed to boot to live software from CDs, so users wouldn't have to muck around in DOS or Windows to launch software. It worked great, but the fact of the matter is that most of the software on the FM Towns are just ports of PC software with small upgrades in graphics or sound. You could also boot direct to "Towns OS" in 1989 2 years before anything else could boot to an OS from an optical disk. There was a brief play to try to "consolize" the FM Towns and a variant called the "FM Towns Marty" was released which was the first 32-bit console ever released.
If you ever get a chance the FM Towns ports of LucasArts games are generally superior to the PC releases and ScummVM supports them.
I wonder what Sakhr is up to now, if they're still around...
Being from Kuwait, Sakhr was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of the post.
And yes, there were drives for it, but maybe if they "didn't bundle" that was the issue
The MSX II was an 8 bit computer though, only the "Turbo" was 16-bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX2#MSX2 (The 2+ added even more capabilities, and more important, most of them were accessible from Basic)
And it could do a lot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=busiDuS94qY
I'm quite surprised clever execs bought that...
Also, the fact MSX was obsolete when compared to similarly priced Commodore and Atari machines of the time didn't really help. Also, MSX2 and 2+ were still 8-bit designs, Trbu-R being the first and only major overhaul, far too late to really matter.
The only problem is that the MSX standard failed to gain adoption, not with the strategy itself. If you think about it, it is no different than what Google did with Samsung/LG/HTC/any other mobile manufacturer. And these executives are not seen as stupid for adopting Android and growing the market for Google, are they?
Additionally, these players got in early enough in to a market (smartphones) which wasn't already saturated with competing standards. Indeed, many of these players were already in the phone market, and this was a more natural evolution for them. Contrast this with the MSX trying to get in to the market with Commodore, Atari, Apple, IBM, Acorn, Sinclair and others all vying for the same (albeit growing) pool of dollars. At that point it's about as 'me too' a play as you can execute.
Of course hindsight is 20/20, but even in 1985 I could somewhat explain why computers were different than VCRs - I'd spend every waking hour working with my ZX81 then later my C128. We used a VCR a few hours a week to watch a movie - passively. Fundamentally different use cases and interaction modes.
And to go back to the point: OP implied that it was a stupid strategy of the manufacturers to embrace some standard. I see no fault at the strategy. It didn't pan out, that's all.
I remember scoffing at his statement saying something like 'dude, only the arcades are better than this', he then invited me to his place where he had a Sharp X68000, I remember being totally stunned.
This was a home computer with arcade perfect ports, he showed me ghouls'n ghosts, gradius, space harrier, r-type, they looked (and to my ears sounded) exactly like their arcade counterparts, it was apparently never sold outside of Japan.
Typically the arcade to Amiga conversions were ranging from so-so to downright awful (with some notable exceptions like Pang which as I recall was very faithful), so I was amazed at seeing him loading up these arcade perfect versions on his X68000.
BTW I've been an Amiga enthusiast almost to the very end...
It's kind of like the Lamborghini Countach of the computer world. Iconic and timeless.
Happy poking!
I have a soft spot for these scenes that cater only to its insiders. Outside reactions and impressions are secondary.
But I'd add there's also a /r/msx on reddit that has a little life amazingly enough.
But do play them on an MSX; the NES version is nowhere near as good.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Msx.png
In addition to the reasons listed here I'd say that what killed MSX is what killed everything else back then, the rise of the PC compatibles. In the early 80's there were "personal computers" based on 8-bit processors that were for the home hobbyist, and the IBM PC-type computers that were so expensive that they were mainly owned by businesses. Basically everyone wanted the PC compatibles to run all the available software, so when prices came down no one wanted the 8-bit Z80 and 6502 machines anymore.
Interesting that both the 3DO and Atari Lynx were designed by ex Amiga engineers.