MSX games finally come in

[Ghost]

Hello all,

Last year around Christmas I had ordered two MSX2 games for my collection as a Christmas present for myself; War of the Dead 1 and War of the Dead 2.

Unfortunate something went wrong after the store had imported them from Japan and was sending to to me through courier, apparently the courier lost all packages of this store it had to deliver that day.
The store had to re order all the stuff they had lost that day and it meant I had to wait longer.

But finally the games I had ordered came in today, and they look really neat regarding packaging and such.
As I once told people before the Japanese had a higher emphasis on packaging their games better than we had the time in the west, they also did a lot better effort on the manuals which really are the prototypes of the manuals we later got.

There were moment that I really though that the store had actually tricked me the first time, that they were in need of money and offered stuff they didn't really have, fortunate this did not turn out to be the case.

[Harrison]

That is good news that you finally received the games.

I don't know these games so will have to look them up to see what they are about. Update: Just had a quick look and spotted a comment from you here.

Do you own an MSX2? The MSX system is one I've never physically seen or used, but I've seen a lot of pictures of real systems, and played the games via emulation.

[Buleste]

I keep meaning to buy either an MSX or MSX2+ but I never have enough money plus once I buy one I then have to find out how to get the computer to load and play the tape,disk or ROM images (I still remember how long it took to load tapes and I don't want to waste what's left of my life waiting for Knight Lore to load). Ghost is right about packaging but if I remember rightly Ultimate not only made some of the best games but the packaging was good as well.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

Yeah I wanted to know if the game was anything worth purchasing.
After I played the game through Emulator I discovered that it was a pretty fun if somewhat simple action RPG.
I think the publishers should have tried to get it released on the NES or Master System, I think it would have sold.

I occasionally visit that website to check out if any MSX games offered on EBay look interesting enough to purchase.
A lot of the JRPGs do, but they are often very expensive which makes it difficult to get them all.
Still would like to have SD Snatcher though, and I also think Konami should rerelease it again on Wii network.

Regarding if I own or owned a MSX2.
Yes, years ago my father bought one from a friend of my brother's for administration but ended being used by me for games, I think that must have been the first game machine after that old Video Pac we had I owned.

Last year I got my Brother's wife's MSX2, a desktop model complete with monitor and keyboard, I haven't checked yet if it also includes a mouse.
Sometimes I really would like to have a MSX2 Turbo R but those aren't cheap plus what would I really do with it?

It is a shame they could never make a MSX3 with things such as Mode 7, I think it would have been able to compete with the SNES as popular home machine.
The X68000 would have been even better but that is unknown here.

To be honest, if more Japanese games had been properly translated I think the MSX would have been a serious contender to the Commodore 64 in Europe.

Last year I started to play with the BlueMSX emulator, discovering such old school gems like SD Snatcher, Psycho World, and of course the Metal Gear games but those I also had on my special edition of MGS3.
Also been playing an old school classic called King's Valley again.

Buleste,

Well fortunate there are emulators on which you can run games, or even remakes that in general update classics to somewhat modern standards (smoother graphics, color) but keep what is good intact, allowing you enjoy these games once again and make you remember what made them so enjoyable.

I am pretty sure there were some Western publishers back at the time that really took care of quality when it came to packages, manuals and such, but they were often the exception and not the standard compared to most who just put it in some cassette case with a flimsy cover, or some simple cardboard box.

I was honestly stunned when I got the first MSX game I had bought online back home and saw how much superior the quality of the boxes was, not to mention decent detailed manuals full of nice illustrations.
With my copy of YS3; Wanderers of Ys, I even got a set of cards with illustrations on them and a mouse pad while the instruction manual had hard covers.

Now compare that to the one or two sheets we usually got with a lot of older games in the West.

[Demon Cleaner]

Just buy a Dingoo console, and put MSX emulators plus TOSEC, ready you are