De pequeño no me enseñaron en el colegio que no se pueden enviar
ficheros adjuntos a las listas de correo obsoletas porque el servidor
los filtra...
Menos mal que de mayor me lo ha enseñado el señor Periscop. Asín que
aquí reenvío el algo, esta vez copypastando el texto a saco.
(Inicio del algo)
Bueno, pues ya está hecho. El artículo está enviado a Holanda, desde
donde a su vez será enviado a Japón.
Adjunto una copia del idem. Si quereis patearme por algunas omisiones o
fallos, guardad la mitad de las patadas para el saeboso, que estuvo ayer
en mi casa revisando el algo.
Pos eso: que alea jacta est, lupus lupi homini est, coitus interruptus,
y todo eso.
--------------------
MSX IN SPAIN: THE COMMERCIAL PERIOD
-----------------------------------
The European presentation of the MSX System was done within the context of the
Informat fair in Madrid by Sony Spain, in 1984; the model HB55P was exposed
then. Sales started at the end of September of the same year, the first models
available were Sony HB55P, Toshiba HX-10 and Spectravideo SVI-728. The
expectation about the new computer was high and there were a lot of discussions
regarding the compatibility issues.
The "best seller" MSX machines were from Sony and Philips. Initially Sony was
the most sold MSX mark, but soon Philips reached a similar sales level; they
had about 75% of the spanish MSX market. There were also companies that sold
MSX machines with success, like Toshiba and SVI; the most popular models were
SVI 728 from Spectravideo (distribuited under the Spanish company Indescomp),
Canon V20 and Toshiba HX-10. There were more marks that sold MSX in Spain, for
example Dynadata (actually produced by Daewoo), Sanyo, or Goldstar; but their
sales were not so high.
Even there was a 100% spanish MSX computer developed under the spanish company,
Dragon, only 500 units were sold, so it is a collectors loved machine.
Apart from all the hardware made in Japan and Netherlands (Philips), there were
some hardware made in Spain: diskdrives from Indescomp, MSX-SVI adaptor (for
making fully compatible the old SVI computers with MSX standard), Memory
expansions from several independent hardware developers, and even a Gunstick
developed by MHT ingenieros.
The hardware prices were quite high, if we look them from the perspective of 20
years ago. The price of a MSX1 computer, depending on the model, ranged from
300 to 600 euros (typically about 400 euros); an external disk drive costed up
to 500 euros.
Spain produced a lot of commercial software productions for MSX and MSX-2,
during the first years Opera Soft, Dinamic and Topo Soft for example produced
good quality entertainment software. Professional software was also avaliable
under spanish software companies; for example, Ease was a complete home office
system for MSX-2 computers, made by Opera soft in clear competence agaisnt
Hibrid from Sony; Idealogic produced also good office software like the text
processor Ideatext or the database system Ideabase. The most popular format for
software was the cassette tape, and the prices ranged from 3-15 euros (cassette
games; they initially costed 10-15 euros but the price was reduced to 3-5 euros
in 1986) to 60 euros or even more for some professional tools. The typical
price for a cartridge game was about 20-40 euros.
Of course, also several of non-spanish software marks sold their products in
Spain.
The most sold mark by far was Konami, but also Activision, Hal Laboratory,
Ultimate,
Aackosoft, Ocean and Gremlin Graphics were quite popular amongst the MSX users.
In January of 1985 a computer magazine called "Super Juegos" included
an MSX Extra, and this was the first MSX magazine in Spain. Due to the success
of that extra number, the magazine decided to include in all the next numbers
more MSX Extras. Finally, the magazine was only for MSX and his name was:
"MSX Extra". Four months later, the same firm of MSX Extra created a new MSX
magazine called: "MSX Club". With the pass of time, this was the "official"
MSX magazine in Spain. These magazines usually included many BASIC listings and
interisting technical articles, all of this intended to encourage users to
enter into the programming world.
In 1986 a new MSX magazine appears, it is "Input MSX", a full color magazine
with lots of screenshots, maps and photographs. It had the best look,
and sometimes, the best contents. There were also a "MSX Magazine" (nothing to
do with the Japanese one), which was sold also from 1985. There were also some
more magazines but their life was very short; some of them included a tape with
software (usually simple BASIC games), for example "Data MSX", made by Geasa.
In April 1986, the MSX2 computers were introduced in the Spanish market; almost
all models had 128K main RAM+128K VRAM and floppy disk drive built-in. This
time only three companies accepted the challenge: Sony, Philips, and in less
proportion Mitsubishi. Unfortunately, this time the sales were very low and did
not match the expectations of these companies; this was mainly why the MSX
started to decay in Spain about 1988.
MSX Magazine disappeared in 1987; then, Input MSX in 1988. About 1989 (some
companies even before) the game developers started to use cross code conversors
to develop the MSX games, so the games released for MSX were direct conversions
from Spectrum, and therefore of very poor quality; besides many of these
conversions were not fully compatible with MSX2. The production of
entertainment software for MSX2 was very low, and there were only a few
conversions made by Opera of their games. Idealogic was one of the rare
companies which produced some spanish games for MSX2 during the commercial
years, distribuited under the Philips mark.
The last "commercial" mention to MSX2 hardware is from a Sony catalog of the
beginning of 1989; in 1990 there were no MSX hardware for sale in the stores,
only some old MSX1 stock. MSX users were quite disgusted, since felt that they
were suddenly abandoned.
The end of the commercial period for the MSX in Spain can be dated in December
of 1991, since this is the month when MSX Club, the last MSX magazine sold in
Spain, published its last number; the last games for MSX were released some
months before.
The MSX was once the second home computer system after Spectrum, estimations
can afirm that during the heydays about 250.000 users could enjoy with MSX,
most of them sold in 1985.
The "official" or big commercial piracy was very rare in Spain. Some flea
markets distribuited bad quality copies of several games (specially from
Konami) with B/W papers and bad recorded tapes. There was a company named Onaki
which sold pirated Konami games under their brand; and a magazine named
"Load'N'Run" which was sold with a tape containing (illegally) European games
translated to Spanish.
MSX IN SPAIN: THE NON-COMMERCIAL PERIOD
---------------------------------------
In 1992 many users abandonded MSX and bought a more modern computer or game
console; this is the logical consequence of the complete lack of hardware,
software and magazines. However a signifiant percent of the users sticked to
MSX, mainly attracted by the great japanese games that were commented in MSX
Club during 1990 and 1991. Some of them had a MSX2 computer, others had MSX1
and switched to a second-hand MSX2 (not very difficult to find at those times
since as mentioned, a lot of users were quitting); and the most lucky ones
could buy a MSX2+ or MSX Turbo-R. Although these computers were never
officially sold outside Japan, in Spain it was possible to bought them thanks
to a small (one person!) importation enterprise named LASP, located at
Zaragoza. He imported also some hardware and japanese games, although the
prices were very high (he was selling Turbo-R GT for about 850 euros).
At these first non-commercial years Internet was not popular yet, and BBSs
played a key role to allow users to stay in touch. Nexus BBS (maintained by
Angel Cortes) first, and soon also Luznet2 BBS, Project Thunderbolt BBS and
Conecta2 BBS (this one still alive nowadays) were the most important MSX
related BBSs in Spain.
User-made fanzines appeared very soon. In the last number of MSX Club, Ramon
Casillas, one of the redactors of the magazine, announced that he personally
would make a fanzine, and gave contact information; that was a really good
idea. The name of the fanzine was Nihongo, and was sort of a continuation of
the "Japanese games" section of MSX Club. Six numbers of this fanzine were
released.
But even before Nihongo, there was another fanzine. Hnostar, made by Tarela
brothers (Galicia), started in 1989 as a poor quality A5 B/W fanzine, but with
the years it evolved to a A4 publication with professional printing quality.
Tarela brothers also performed distribution tasks, so one could easily buy
spanish, dutch and japanese software and hardware by contacting them. The last
number of their fanzine was released in the summer of 2000.
Other spanish MSX fanzines were/are:
FKD Fan by FKD, Barcelona (A4); it started immediately after Nihongo
disappeared, at the end of 1992.
Nexus, by Angel Cortes (the same person responsible of Nexus BBS), A4.
Moai-Tech Magazine from Moai-Tech, Barcelona (A5, colour covers); this one is
quite recent.
SD Mesxes from Club Mesxes, Balearic islands (A5); started in 1994.
MSX Lehenak from VAJ Club, Basque country (A5, colour covers)
MSX Spirit (A4, colour covers)
Super Juegos MSX by Traposoft, Barcelona (A4, colour covers)
There were also several disk magazines: Telebasic, Eurolink, Draken, BCN
Disk and Roby Disk were the most important ones. Currently only the fanzines SD
Mesxes, Moai-Tech and Lehenak still being published in a (more or less) regular
basis. The prices of the fanzines are usually 2 or 3 euros, although the price
of Hnostar was 6 euros when they reached the professional quality.
MSX users meetings are an important piece of the spanish MSX scene. The first
meetings to be celebrated, and also the most important ones, are organized
twice a year in Barcelona by Asociacion de Amigos del MSX (MSX friends
association). The first of these meetings took place in 1991, and from 1994 it
maintains a stable assistance rate of 80-100 persons; during many years, Ramon
Ribas (the main redactor of the disk magazines Telebasic and Eurolink) was the
main organizer of these meetings. The second important meeting is the one held
in Madrid, since 1994 and once a year, organized by MSX Power Replay (Rafael
Corrales); this one has usually more foreign assistants than the Barcelona
meeting, but less overall assistance rates.
There were also meetings in Cartagena (Murcia), but these meetings had only
three editions. Special mention goes to the monthly mini-meetings of 5 to 25
persons that were organized in Badalona (near Barcelona) by MSX Boixos during
many years. Many old users that were disconnected from the MSX scene rejoined
it thanks to these mini-meetings. The last one was celebrated in the middle of
2002.
Speaking about spanish software, there is a lot, and usually with a very good
quality; normally they are games, but there are some utility applications as
well. Usually games are not developed by "official" groups, but by the joint of
two or three persons (typically a coder, a graphist and a musician) that are
otherwise not related except for being MSX users. In the case of applications,
they are usually developed by a single person.
There is a (non exhaustive!) list of spanish MSX programmers with examples of
their productions:
- Manuel Pazos, developer of Sonyc, a clone of the popular Sonic for MSX2+
- Armando Perez AKA Periscop, developer of KPI Ball, a clone of Pang.
- Nestor Soriano AKA Konamiman, developer of utilities, worth to mention
NestorBASIC (BASIC extension) and InterNestor Suite (TCP/IP stack for DOS 2).
- Daniel Zorita, developer of Sir Dan, a Maze of Galious-like game.
- Marcos Vega, developer of the game Pentaro Odissey and its second part.
- Sergio Guerrero, developer of some utilities, for example a CD replayer
programmed in BASIC, or a EVA video player for IDE interfaces. He also
developed an adapter for using Sega MegaDrive joypads on MSX.
- David Madurga AKA Trunks, also developer of utilities, for example the
offline mail reader QWK, useful for BBS users.
- David Fernandez AKA Imanok, has released very nice BASIC games like Bubble
Rain (Puzzle Bobble clone) and Cat'N'Mouse (Chu-Chu rockets clone).
- Raul Ramirez AKA Traposoft, another BASIC games developer, he made for
example the game Speedline.
- Matra Corporation, they are not a MSX group but rather a group devoted to
ancient computers, however they have made some very good games for MSX, for
example Ark-a-Noah (Arkanoid like) and Don't Cock it Up (Tetris like).
- Kenneth Albero AKA KAI, missing from the MSX scene since long time ago,
developed some BASIC games with very good graphics and even movie-styled
animations, for example Lilo (known in Japan as Ninjin Kun) or No Name.
- Juan Salvador Sanchez AKA SaveR, he has developed impressive clones of Konami
music games for MSX, including the music peripherals to play them! For example
Hajiku Mania (including a guitar) and Doramus (including a complete drumset).
- Manuel Dopico, music composer. Many of the recent spanish MSX games have his
musics. Also, he has released some music disks, the MoonDop saga.
- Miguel Angel Fernandez AKA Sutchan, graphic artist. He drawn the graphics of
games like KPI Ball or Sir Dan.
- Pedro Cruz AKA PCM, he has developed accounting programs.
Speaking about hardware, Leonardo Padial from Madrid is for sure the most
important developer. He has produced from simple 1M and 4M memory expansions to
8 slot expanders, a Z380 card, a video card, and even he is working in MMSX
(Modular MSX), a project to build an entire MSX from scratch! His prices range
from the 50 euros of the 1MB RAM expansion, to the 200 euros of the Z380 card,
or the 500 euros of the video card.
Another hardware developer was Angel Culla, his most famous invention is
ACCNet, an interface which allows to directly connect a PC internal modem to
MSX without having to use a RS232 card (the price was 50 euros). And most
recently, Calamar Group also produces small (but useful) hardware gadgets, for
example an interface to use Play Station joypads on MSX. Also, Manuel Pazos and
Armando Perez (which normally develop software) have produced a cheap (50
euros; 100 euros for the version with SCC soundchip built-in) Flash-ROM
cartridge that allows to easily load and execute any ROM or MegaROM image file.
Nowadays the spanish MSX users have in general a pretty well equipped machine.
On the basis of a MSX2 (Philips NMS-8245/8280 and Sony HB-F9/F700 are the most
common models) or a MSX2+ or Turbo-R, almost all users have at least 1MB RAM
and a hard disk interface, mainly the Sunrise IDE, although MegaSCSI is also
very extended. The Sunrise Moonsound is also well known in Spain.
There are two MSX emulators developed in Spain. One is MSKiss, developed by
Isaac Santaolalla; and the other is AmiMSX, for Amiga computers, developed by
Juan Antonio Gomez AKA Darth007. Both have a very good quality. However the
generalized feeling in Spain is that an emulator, even the most perfect one,
cannot provide the same feelings as a real MSX machine, so emulators are
generally not used by regular MSX users; new users usually try to obtain a
second hand real MSX before having to stick to emulators.
Nowadays Internet is the most important method used by users to stay in touch,
as BBSs were ten years ago. There is a mailing list about MSX in spanish,
Hispamsx, and it is at least as active as the main list (the dutch one) is. For
example, most of the information in this article has been provided by various
MSX users through messages sent to HispaMSX. Also the ESP.MSX list in Fidonet
(a BBSs network) still very active.
The most surprising thing, is that even nowadays, there are new users that
enter into the MSX scene, sometimes even without any previous experience with
MSX! For example, Juan Luis Martinez AKA MSXKun entered in the MSX scene one
year ago, and he has developed already two BASIC games under the seal Paxanga
Soft: "MSX Hot Numbers" and "Don't warro! Be japo!". Such things make us to
hope that MSX will survive in Spain for many more years.
Appendix 1: Here are some URLs related to the spanish MSX scene:
http://www.aamsx.com - Asociacion de Amigos del MSX
http://www.konamiman.com - Konami Man (Check out InterNestor Suite!)
http://mesxes.msx.tni.nl - Club Mesxes
http://soft.mundivia.es/mpazos/ - Manuel Pazos
http://www.kurarizeku.net - Armando Perez (he will release a new game soon!)
http://www.imanok.cjb.net - Imanok
http://www.ctv.es/USERS/hnostar/ - Club Hnostar
http://www.moai-tech.com - Moai Tech
http://pagina.de/calamar - Calamar Group
http://madrisx.cjb.net - MSX Power Replay
http://traposoft.papipapito.com - Traposoft
http://matranet.net - Matra Corporation
http://es.geocities.com/magapeich/index.html - MSXKun
http://lpadial.aamsx.org - Leonardo Padial
http://www.salleurl.edu/~is05562/msx_ing.html - Isaac Santaolalla
http://www.arrakis.es/~joanant/amsx.html - AmiMSX page
Appendix 2: Here are the prices of MSX computers in Spain in 1985, all in euros.
Canon V-20: 360
Philips VG 8020: 405
Sony HB-101P: 320
Sony HB-75P: 420
Spectravideo SVI-728: 300
Spectravideo SVI-738: 600 (with built-in disk drive and RS-232C)
Toshiba HX-10: 325
Toshiba HX-20: 340
Yamaha CX5M: 600
Yamaha CX5M II: 730 (with enhanced FM synthesizer module)
Sanyo MPC-100: 290
Yashica YC 64: 325
Dragon 64k: 300
Dynadata DPC-200: 300
Goldstar FC-200: 300
JVC HC-7E: 360
Mitsubishi ML-F80: 360
Panasonic CF 2700: 420
Philips VG 8010: 320
Philips VG 8020: 405
Pioneer PX-7: 450
Sanyo MPC 100: 360
Sanyo PHC 28P: 380
Prices for MSX2 computers (with 128K main RAM+128K VRAM and 2DD disk drive
unless otherwise specified):
Philips VG8235: 540 (1DD disk drive)
Philips NMS8245: 600
Sony HB-F700S: 660 (256K main RAM)
Sony HB-F9S: 390 (no disk drive)
Mitsubishi ML-G3: 740 (64K main RAM, built-in RS-232C)
Philips NMS8280: 900 (video superimpose & digitizing)
Hardware prices:
Robotarm + interface (SVI): 105 (with Logo-based programming
language)
Music Module (Philips): 90 (MSX-Audio module with MIDI)
Charly (SVI): 60 (voice sinthesizer)
Appendix 3: Credits
Article compiled and edited by Nestor Soriano AKA Konami Man, using the
information provided by many spanish MSX users. Especially:
Rafael Corrales AKA MadriSX - Wrote an initial draft/skeleton of the complete
article.
Francisco Jesus Martos - Provided the hardware and computers price list and did
some useful corrections on the commercial period part.
Francisco Alvarez AKA SaebaMSX - Augmented the initial list of BBSs, fanzines,
and developers.
Francesc Xavier Blasco AKA Skyblasc - Provided a lot of photos for the article.
--
Nestor Soriano <konamiman(_punto_)com(_en_)konamiman(_punto_)com>
