Happy 2004!

Time flies when you're having fun. A year ago we had just launched our new website, and ASCII MSX Magazine 1, the first step of the MSX Revival, had just hit the streets. On our website, the amount of visitors was increasing steadily and people even started to use our forums. And, was it just us, or were the MSX hardware and software developers getting more active again? An exciting year followed. Before wishing you all the best for 2004, lets have a look at what happened on the MRC in 2003, because an amazing year it was.

Never before did we have this many visitors, newsposts, reactions or forum posts in one year. We sometimes even had trouble keeping up with all the news we received, and had a hard time selecting the most interesting newsposts for the summaries in our Newsletters. Our Nedstat counter, that counts all visits to our website ever since August 1996 recently registered the one millionth visit to the MRC. After rigorously cleaning up our user database, the amount of members steadily started to grow again. At the moment we have more than 1500 members who registered themselves to our website. Have you registered already? If not, sign up now!.

The MSX Resource Center also grew in functionality. Never before did we add so many new things to our website in one year. We added the downloads database, launched a modest online MSX webshop, added a Contacts list (members only), started a programming contest (the MRC Snowfall Challenge) and opened up a Spanish and a Dutch version of the MSX Resource Center. The MSX Resource Center even attended and reported about MadriSX in Spain and an impresssive trip to Japan. Now, lets have a look at some statistics:

• Visitors: 681.322 (155.517)
• Newsposts: 794 (445)
• Forum posts: 12.611 (593)
• Reactions: 2006 (309)

The values mentioned between the brackets are the statistics of 2002. Yesterday we already posted a downloads top 25.

In 2003, a grand total of 357 people contributed to the contents of the MSX Resource Center by submitting one or more news posts, forum posts or reactions to news posts. This is an amazing increase compared to the amount of people (118) who did so in 2002. We would, once again, like to thank everybody for their endless support to the MSX Computer system and our website. Together we can make 2004 an even more succesful year than 2003. We would especially like to thank those people who were the most active on our website during the past year. With a simple rating system that rewards every news post with 4 points, every forum post with 2 points and every reaction with 1 point, GuyveR800 turned out to be the most active MRC user of 2003, with a grand total of 3140 points. Other active MSX Resource members follow at a distance: Wolf_ (965 points), ro (944 points), Argon (786 points) and Grauw (712 points). The MRC would like to thank every visitor who ever contributed, but these 5 MRC members especially, for playing such a key role in the activity on our website. We would also like to thank every single MSX hardware and software developer, who are doing a great job at keeping MSX alive by amazing us time after time with new products that are always entertaining, interesting, and often seem to make the impossible possible. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank all the people who have sent us a donation by bank or Paypal this year. As the MRC is growing and growing, so are the costs to keep the site online and in movement. Even with small donations, you helped (and are helping) to keep our site online. Respect.

The first signs for 2004 look very promising. On the upcoming MSX fair in Oss, Team Bomba and Sunrise will release Bombaman, an excellent game we have been expecting for a long time. On that same fair several other new products will be released. If you can go to this fair in the Netherlands on January 17th, you surely must go. But there are more good signs. Soon, a new version of Meridian for Moonsound will be released, which will finally add MIDI-IN functionality and a fine-tuned GM soundkit to the already imressive list of features of this extraordinary tracker. VScreen, the impressive platform game engine will get better and better and we have no doubt that many other software tiltles and hardware products will be released. Also, MSX-Association is likely to pleasantly surprise us all several times next year, like they did in 2003. And the MSX Resource Center has a 10th anniversary to celebrate. Who knows what more will happen within the MSX Community in 2004? One thing is sure: if you keep visiting the MSX Resource Center regularly, you don't have to miss out on any MSX news.

The entire MSX Resource Center team wishes you a happy 2004!