Hugh Falk wrote: >Was it even available (sold in) the U.S. market? I didn't think it was.
Ok, here comes a wonderful history lesson on the MSX. MSX stood for MicroSoft eXtended. It was a computer standard that over 15 manufacturers (most notably Sony, ASCII and Phillips) participated on with almost 60 models of the machines coming out over 3 generations of hardware specs (MSX, MSX2 and MSX2+). It was largest in Japan (being the birth machine for Metal Gear... how I loved that game) and had a following in Europe (primarily France and Holland) and Brazil (really huge there due to local production... the Brazilian market is fascinating... can tell some great Sega stories from there). It was sold in the States briefly in the early 80's (knew a few people in Seattle that owned them) but was quickly abandoned, because it didn't hold up. Hardwarewise it was a Z80 machine, standard config was 64k, making it roughly as powerful as a C64. But because of the Z80 compatibility most non-Japanese games for the system were straight ports of Spectrum games which meant a far reduced color pallette and limited gameplay (Metal Gear looked wonderful on it... for the time of course). Most software stores in Argentina didn't bother keeping Spectrum machines setup in the shops for copying purposes but just used MSX's which could copy the software (the compatibility was really that great). Microsoft abandoned the standard after the MSX2 (which had an OS virtually identical to MSDOS3.3) and ASCII continued using it for a few more years, upgrading graphics, etc. The system finally died in the late 80's. Still has a cult following in Japan though. So, hope this was an informative trip down memory lane. :-) Karl Kuras Please visit Our House, the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
