Happy 2007!

Welcome to 2007, MSX fans! Traditionally, we start the year with an overview of the year past. Again, we have had an amazing MSX year with - amongst others - the release of the new MSX computer, the One Chip MSX, another succesful edition of the MSXdev game development competition, the arrival of the multitasking window-based Operating System SymbOS and much, much more. Time for a short overview:

In 2006, the year kicked off with the results of the MSXdev'05 competition. Shortly afterwards we got to see the first sneak preview at Manbow 2, the highly anticipated shooter for MSX2 and we received 'Imported', another trackmo from an anonymous coder. Daniel Vik and Vincent van Dam Unleashed the MSX1 with more than stunning effects and 105 color mode, rapidly followed by Technicolor. We received 12 great entries to the Scene Music Remake challenge, MSX computers appeared in a Lenny Kravitz music video, Konami finally teamed up with MSX Association and joined the MSX revival by releasing Konami classics on a new retro game corner on i-revo. Matra and Bitwise announced they were to release MSX games on cartridge again, and the new MSXdev team launched MSXdev'06. More information became available on Dumas, the ethernet and USB interface with 512kB memory mapper for MSX, a final and highly improved version of Universe: Unknown was released by Infinite and NYYRIKKI surprised the MSX community once again with his amazing full-screen video on his Dragon's Lair for MSX2 introdemo. The Brazilian Group Amusement Factory pimped the Konami classic Knightmare by releasing Knightmare Gold 2 and, after a long discussion in our active MSX forum, we finally got to see the first preview of SymbOS.

After a relatively slow summer, compared to previous years, the brand new One Chip MSX was announced - revealing its new casing and improved specifications. X-Tazy became open-source and in celebration of that several demo and in-game videos were published in our downloads section. The MSX Frappr proved a cool way to show the location of a growing group of MSX fans, MSX was announced to be one of the systems supported in the Virtual Console of the Nintendo Wii, a new and improved version of Waves hit the web, the MSX retro gaming portal WOOMB.net finally saw the light of day and Manuel Pazos announced new MultiROM and MegaFlashROM-SCC cartridges. The One Chip MSX became available for pre-order outside Japan, the MSXArt'06 challenge closed with 27 entries. November 19th ended up in the MSX history books as the day on which, after a long break, new MSX computers were distributed again - even becoming available in several shops. We got another, even more impressive sneak preview of Manbow 2 on MySpace, launched the MEGA-Challenge in which you can win a One Chip MSX computer and a new version of SymbOS impressed all of us. The year ended in style thanks to the MSXdev'06 competition, in which 19 brand new MSX1 games were released.

On MSX Resource Center, we added member profiles, moved to yet another new dedicated web server, added a statistics page, passed the 3,000 members milestone, reached a respectable 250 links in our MSX links corner and a mindblowing 65,535 posts in our forum. We also improved our contacts list and opened our polls for reactions. To top it off, our Webstats4u counter broke through the 4,000,000 visits barrier and we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the msx.org domain.

As usual, we end the happy new years post with the year in numbers. Here are some statistics of the activity on our website during 2006 compared to the activity of 2005:

• Visitors: 1,074,865 (1,022,580)
• News posts: 604 (879)
• Forum posts: 17,047 (19,456)
• Reactions: 4,692 (6,002)

The values mentioned in parentheses are the statistics of 2005. In 2006, a grand total of 590 different people, more than ever before, contributed to the contents of the MSX Resource Center by submitting one or more articles, news posts, forum posts or reactions to news posts. Despite the decrease in news posts, forum posts and reactions our webstats4u counter also found 2006 to be the busiest year ever. Perhaps 'less is more' counts for the MRC as well?

Just like previous years, the most active members of the MSX Resource Center deserve some extra attention as a token of our appreciation. In 2006, the following 10 MRC members were the most active, based on a score of 6 points per news post, 2 per forumpost and 1 per reaction, doubling the score on 'first posts':

1. manuel (1951)
2. mars2000you (1821)
3. Prodatron (1085)
4. ARTRAG (1049)
5. ro (978)
6. dvik (948)
7. BiFi (907)
8. AuroraMSX (857)
9. NYYRIKKI (782)
10. Huey (764)

Of course, MRC team members were excluded from this top 10. The number one of this year, manuel, will receive a reward for his amazing activity on the MRC during 2006: an official MSX T-Shirt. Our thanks go out to him all the others who contributed to the MRC. Next year we will also reward a prize to the most active member at the MRC. We hope you will keep visiting and enriching the contents of our website for a long time to come!

We would also like to thank all the active MSX developers who keep bringing us new and surprising hardware, software, websites and magazines. 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!

With the MRC Mega Challenge just started and the Italo Challenge extended once more, the Western edition of the One Chip MSX planned for spring 2007 and many more active projects and competitions in development we can now already safely say we're in for yet another amazing MSX year. Happy 2007 everybody!

Signed,

The MSX Resource Center crew