MSX

You can choose whether to download the last release version, or an official 2.0 beta version which is faster, more stable and just generally better!

The MSX is undergoing something of a renaissance at the moment, despite being officially abandoned 10 years ago, and this port of Marat Fayzullin's MSX emulator brings the ability to join in the fun to Acorn users, thanks to the efforts of David McEwen.

The MSX series of home computers were designed by ASCII corp and Microsoft (who wrote the operating system), and were released in 1982. They were very successful in Japan and some areas of Europe (including Russia!) and South America. The console was a 'technology platform' which was licensed to different manufactures - a bit like what Acorn were trying to do with their network computer reference platform - so companies like Yamaha, Sony and Toshiba all released their own versions of the hardware with various updates. These included the MSX2, MSX2+ and the MSX TurboR.

Although the MSX only had a 3.58MHz processor, the system played host to several classic games, including Castlevania, Virtual Hydlide, Out Run, Bubble Bobble and Metal Gear (shortly due for a vastly updated release on the PlayStation as Metal Gear Solid). Rather strangely, perhaps, home enthusiasts are now continuing to develop games for the platform, and clones of games such as Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog are now available. In fact, recently a large show just for MSX fans was held in Japan, with over 20,000 people attending! Scary...

The Acorn emulator comes with a comprehensive set of OS ROMs, allowing you to emulate an MSX, MSX2 or MSX2+, and will run on all Acorn machines.

...this page last updated: 24/1/99...
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