Nostalgia, like love, is a weird thing. It causes otherwise well-adjusted people to dive into fits of longing for no very good reason. This is especially true with game machines and computers, with diehards still holding on to their Apple IIs and Amigas and others getting a taste of the past via emulation. fen attended the last Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas and is a diehard 8-bit Apple freak, so not even he is invincible.

Japan is little exception. The most popular home computer throughout the 80s was the MSX, a co-venture between Microsoft and ASCII Corporation. A public specification, any company was allowed to make an MSX, and many did, putting out dozens of models in Asia, Europe, and nearly everywhere but the US. Many of the game series we know and love today (Dragon Warrior, Metal Gear, Snatcher) got their start on the somewhat NES-like machine. Even now there's a large, demented community of fans producing software and holding meetings like MSX Den'yu Land, the penultimate show in Japan. In this article, PC Watch reports on the show and its keynote speech, done by Kazuhiko Nishi, original developer of the MSX.

The line to get in was THIS BIG

On August 20th, MSX Denyu Land 2000, an event devoted to exhibiting and selling the works of the MSX amateur comminuty, was held on the fifth floor of the Hirose Musen main building in Akihabara [Tokyo]. Last year's event, held at the same location, was a major hit, attracting 2,000 people over two days. Although there were other events like the unveiling of the Matsushita F1-A1GT [a very late-era [early 90s] "super MSX" computer] and other ex-vaporware machines, the crowds were mostly thanks to Kazuhiko Nishi of ASCII's keynote speech.

This year was no exception, with ASCII vice president Nishi and media technology development head Yoshizo Yamashita, the two men behind the MSX, holding keynote speeches. As a result, MSX users from both within Japan and from foreign countries were at the show.

MSX EMULATOR AND ONE-CHIP MSX DEVELOPMENT

Nishi, waxing 8-bit

Nishi, who came into the conference room before the MC could introduce him, was welcomed by a wave of applause from the packed house. Beginning with "I'll start at the conclusion," Nishi talked about what the future has in store for the MSX.

"In 2001 we will release MSX emulators for Windows, MacOS and Unix." "A one-chip version of the MSX in 2002." "By 2003, portable phones, notebook PCs, cell phones, and even refrigerators will have the one-chip MSX inside." The MSX's future seems bright indeed with Nishi's revelations.

Nishi emphasized the new speed possibilities of the one-chip MSX - "If we use the technology we have now to put the MSX in a chip, we'll be able to aim for a clock speed of 100MHz [the original was 4MHz]." He also said that portable MSXes could be sold for 9800 yen.

Nishi closed by rousing up the audience with how he sees the MSX's revival in the future: "To be honest, before I gave the speech at last year's show, I had given up on the MSX a long time ago. After that event, though, I did some deep thinking about the MSX. What I came up with, my reply to the community, is here."

A MULTIPLATFORM MSX EMULATOR
After Nishi's speech, Yamashita, also head of the emulator project, spoke: "We plan to have Windows and Dreamcast versions of the emulator out within the year. The details of the release aren't set in stone yet, but it'll basically be a free product." The emulator will be developed on "intent", a multi-platform environment created by ASCII and Britain's Tao Systems.

According to Yamashita's description, intent is built on features including the realtime OS Elate, a Personal Java environment called intent Java Technology Edition, a Multimedia Toolkit drive library for 2d/3d graphics and sound, and a public-key encryption system called Tumbler.

Elate OS works by layering itself on top of Windows, Linux and other host OSes and running its own special Elate applications. The idea is similar to Java, but Elate OS's virtual processor, the VP Architecture, works by converting all applications (assembler, Java and so on) to its own VP code. It then translates this VP code in realtime to the native CPU's code and runs the resulting program. The result is speeds comparable with real native code.

"Obviously I know you're all thinking 'Not again' or "Yeah, sure' if I only tell you this much, but Tao Systems has vast technological abilities. Elate OS is done almost entirely in assembler, which is rare these days. I didn't really believe coding in assembler had any size or speed advantages over using a C compiler these days, but the end result is definitely smaller and faster," said Yamashita. The intent demonstration he showed during the speech seemed very quick in its executions.

As you can suppose from the above, programs written for the intent OS have very high compatibility, and can be run on anything with an intent environment on it, from Windows to Dreamcast and Linux. "Although intent is also attracting attention as a high-speed Java execution environment," said Yamashita, "the first portable phone with intent built in was released last October from Motorola."

intent's release is still in the works, but according to Yamashita, "Rather than selling it as a package, it will probably mostly be embedded in cell phones and other applications." intent will probably be included in some way with the MSX emulator.

As an aside to all this, Yamashita also revealed that the Amiga has also been ported to the intent technology. Not only will the Amiga be emulated like the MSX, but many current Amiga applications will be rewritten for intent, as the system will try to become the new Amiga environment.

MAIN EXHIBITIONS

ONE for the MSX. It definitely doesn't look half bad

The flashiest product on display at the show was undoubtedly ONE, a port of a Windows game from Tactics. In a rather strange licensing procedure, a company called Leisure Soft bought the rights to the port and are leaving the coding to a core of user groups. As a result, Leisure Soft said that there's the chance that ONE might not be released if they don't see it as profitable.

The code is completely rewritten, of course, and the graphics have been revised to look best with the MSX's capabilities. The above image is an example of the result. Although it doesn't look perfect, it is amazingly close to the Windows version. The screen mode ranges from 5 to 8 and 12, depending on the situation. [The numbers are graphic modes. The default MSX screen mode is 256x212 or 512x212, with 256 or 32,000 colors available.]

All three versions (Windows, PlayStation and MSX) were on display at the booth. The game will be released on a CD-ROM, with versions playable off a hard drive or 3.5" disks. If you don't have your MSX connected to your hard drive, then you'll need to copy off about 40-50 disks to play. The price will be in the 5000 yen range.