/vr/ - Retro Games

It's a japanese computer with 100% made in american hardware and OS. How come american industry was so based bros?

>>6517287
Unions weren't as powerful as they are now so it was affordable to have industry in the US back then because workers weren't getting paid six figures.

>found a cx5m online for a decent price
>got interrupted by customs, had to cough up some extra
>almost fry the thing cause i forgot japan is 100V
>have to spend even more on a power converter
>hook everything up, it's finally working
>try to mess around with the midi
>it doesn't do shit to my synths
>try to find a solution online
>turns out first gen cx5m can only send midi to some yamaha keyboards and nothing else
>smashed it to pieces on the side of my desk out of sheer frustration
that's my msx experience

>>6517321
>had to cough up some extra
What shithole country do you live in where you have to bribe customs to get your shit and don't say the US because I get shit from Japan all the time and have never had to bribe customs for anything not even my "questionable materials" and sex lubes.

>>6517319
Is this bait or retardation?

>>6517328
Neither. I'm a labor relations expert.

>>6517321
>>6517324
If he's from the U.S. (which he's not) he's even more retarded since JP voltage is close enough to U.S. voltage to not require a stepdown converter for short-term usage. Also the CX5M was released in North America and advertised as a Yamaha synth programming module. Nice bait to that guy though, good enough we both replied.

>>6517346
I assumed he would need a power converter if he's using it for sound shenanigans. There's a truckload of this shit out there from that time that weirdos are still using to make tracks.

>>6517236
There are really to many variants, as well as upgrades. I thought it was supposed to be a "standard" but it's really just a bunch of random parts thrown together in various combinations.

>>6517321
>be retarded
>fail ensues
shocker

>>6517236
I love the Casio models, I'd be tempted to get one but the keyboards are just so bad.

>>6517324
I'm from eastern europe, customs officials can suck a dick.

>>6517346
>would use a JP device with US voltage without a converter cause it's """close enough"""
>calls me retarded
that's retarded.

>>6517449
My condolences, slav. Next time, channel your gopnik powers and break into customs.

>>6517236
Haven't played much MSX yet, but I've been enjoying reading the magazines recently and making notes of the games that I'll probably try in the future

>>6517319
What?

>>6517546
Your garden variety union laborer can make over 100K USD a year. Most guys at our company made ~130K a year. I recently quit, got sick of it and had an early mid life crisis. Decided to coach football. I start in August, gonna see how it goes.

>>6517537
Fray is worth it, its a cute top-down action game with lite-RPG elements in the town. A walkthrough for town areas should be enough to play, though I might recommend the PC Engine CD version over the MSX2/2+/Turbo-R version at this point.

>>6517449
>that's retarded.
Says the guy who went into a retard rage and destroyed vintage hardware he could have sold for a profit. Great job, retard.

>>6517626
Nice to know how much i was lied to. I graduated in cs and have been unemployed for 3 years
Got my first job doing part time min wage

I want those speakers

>>6517319
Best post in this thread. Careful, though. This is one of the most reddit, boomer boards on this website.

>>6517762
I want that monitor.

>>6517762
So many MSX rigs are sexy.

>>6517772
Everything is great about that except the chicklet keys. Hard pass.

>>6517761
don't worry bro it gets so much worse

>>6517319
wow check out this LABOR-UNDERSTANDER over here

retard

>>6517781
I have the later Hit-Bit model, the HB-101. The keys are way better.

Is a huge lack of prepatched rom/disk images for MSX/MSX2 out there. Heck some translations just happen and disappear, I recall a site that had a bunch of prepatched stuff years ago like Yuurei-kun and the Ashguine games, as well as reworked versions of Konami's Phoenix/Firebird and Treasure of Usas that changed those games weird single kanji collectables into something more english friendly. Usas is fine without but damn it helped in Phoenix knowing what doors you could unlock. Are a bunch of those old Oasis translations out there too.

man even a non functioning one of these last I saw went for $999.99 on eBay, nuts! it is nice though

>>6518127
what does the speed controller do?

>>6518127
Almost the same as mine. Except there is no red "bar" and the arrows has a joystick in the middle. Cool machine indeed. Looks better with the red though.

>>6518151
you can make games go faster.

What would be the most common models of MSX? If I wanted to try my hand at some homebrew, which hardware should I program against?

>>6517321
I have this with a keyboard. took me a long time to figure out just to run the fucking thing. you have to type /callmusic in basic for the midi to activate.
I think this might be before GeneralMIDI was established. Probably why it only works with 2 kinds of keyboard brands. But you might be able to fashion your own MIDI cable for this to use it with a regular keyboard.

all said, this is not as cool as I thought it would be. It's quite limited. You are probably better off getting an Atari STfm for MIDI music

>>6517438
can confirm! I have a black version of the OP pic. Keys suck ass. but then again, most games are played with a joystick.

I just found out these things can be made MSX-compatible with the right expansion cards. Thinking about building one just for fun.

>>6518175
any MSX2 would do. Be a superhero and make the homebrew natively in Basic

>>6518113
All the MSX fans online are backwater Europeans or Brazilians. I found a guy that made replacement keyboard bits, converts, etc and the page he had for it looked like it hadn't been updated in twenty years. If people don't make some sort of documentation on Archive.org for these ROM's and translations they're going to be lost in no time. Good luck with your searches and please document and share what you find.

I managed to find a Turbo-R locally last year. It's a cool piece of hardware but needs a V9990 and some sort of LPT sound device to play all the special tech demos and games that use the hardware. A good handful of games have slowdown problems on the machine due to the difference in the CPU over a normal MSX2+ but most if not all have been patched. It just takes a little more work setting it up.

>>6518201
Neat. Link?

>>6518207
>Neat. Link?
The link is literally in the picture.
www.rc2014.co.uk

>>6517790
Labor relations expert was my job title.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/labor-relations-specialists.htm#tab-2

>>6517626
What level of football?

>>6518485
High school. I'm also going back for a PhD, so I'm gonna try to weasel my way into the athletic department as a grad assistant. It's a P5 school, but who knows. When I was in the masters program, I had a lot of football players in my classes and the coaching staff is the same as it was then and they know I play ball when it comes to the academic side of things. Figure they owe me, but we'll see. If not, I'll just keep coaching HS or coach little league or something part time. I really like coaching, I should've just stuck with that when I was younger instead of dealing with all these union fucks.

>>6518175
>>6518206
To add to this, most MSX magazines have sections on homebrew, and usually would have BASIC commands printed out completely in monthly magazines for reader-submitted games. I highly recommend checking the scans for those, finding some games and messing with their command lines and remake some 80's otaku's game that hasn't been played in 30 years.

>>6518201
They can but that doesn't mean you should do it. There are much better and cheaper ways learn to solder, run MSX software, own an MSX, impress the ladies.

>>6517321
>>6517449
>Slav chimps out and destroys vintage hardware
Like fucking clockwork. This is why your country is a dump.

>>6518502
I think Atari 8bit, VIC-20, and C64 did it first. They were mostly janky games with keyboard character graphics.

>>6518998
They're simple, but Japanese bedroom programmers are on a different level, many of which went on to work for major publishers and developers in Japan.

>>6519064
Most people have no idea how difficult it is to program a bedroom

>>6519892
>Most people have no idea how difficult it is to program a bedroom

Z80 asm isn't super hard, and the MSX hardware is well documented. You have lots of registers to play with, memory is logically laid out, banking is easy, and there are no major hurdles for beginners like Apple II's segmented video memory and idiosyncratic display modes.

Its a well designed spec that makes programming for the MSX rather pleasant compared to the other 8 bit computers of the time.

>>6517236
Beware bros, the keyboard membranes. If you get one, make sure the keyboard is fully functional, and even then it's no guarantee. Fatal flaw of a really neat and cool computer.

>>6519064
So did western bedroom programmers, retard.

>>6520201
>Implying anything programmed for the ZED ECKS SPECCAY has any worth.
Keep seething, bong-boy.

I got this delivered a few days ago. It's a little too dense to do page-by-page scans but does anybody have any requests? I can include translation as well.

>>6518207
Found a fair few, Django's site is hard to navigate and there's full prepatched translations on random pages just tucked away. It's like a darn treasure hunt. There's an 'MSX Translations' group that has a lot of patches I was after like the Firebird translation.

Romhacking.net compiles some but not all. This whole system's a wild west of translations possibly lost to time and especially homebrew that gets made in limited runs for hobbyists. Some shit at http://www.shape9.nl/parallax/Products/games_game.html looks brilliant but no clue where to start searching for them. I found Blade Lords but that's about it.

>>6520401
What about the games pictures?, could you scan those?, also adding some translations about their names and what the games are about would be great, anon.

>>6521158
There's almost 100 pages of games featured, anon. Do you have specific games you'd like to see the write-ups for?

reported and saged let me bump off my last remaining comment on this website and then I will stop posting forever

3

>>6518127
eBay is a terrible barometer for MSX prices, they're all over the place and people in the U.S. especially have no clue about the value of various models. Better off being vigilant on Yahoo Auctions Japan and ordering what you want through a proxy service.

>>6520189
Pretty hard to do that when you're ordering through a proxy on yahoo auctions

>>6520279
The ZED ECKS SPECCAY and Amiga are where Rare, Psygnosis and Core Design got started, you absolute retard.

Anyone have this game?

>>6522550
Not retro

Is it available in teal? This determines my entire opinion of it, whatever "it" happens to be.

Just started playing Kyokugen, it's like Aleste on steroids, really hard. It does some insane graphical effects, stuff that would even make the Genesis / Mega Drive start sputtering. Will try Pleasure Hearts after this.

>>6522550
https://kai-magazine-software.fwscart.com/Life_on_Earth_V9990_chip_requiered_DIGITAL_version/p4398489_19005477.aspx

I liked drawing maps of the only game for it anyone cares about :-)