MSX - 20th anniversary

Today is a very special day for the entire MSX community. The MSX standard is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It´s already 20 years ago that Kazuhiko Nishi of ASCII Corporation and Bill Gates of Microsoft, including several other major companies attempted to revolutionize the computer-world. As can be seen on the 20th anniversary page on the website of MSX Association, the MSX standard was formally announced during a press-conference on June 27th, 1983. Many people have enjoyed and are still enjoying the MSX computer. Over 5 million MSX computers were sold in a decade in which computers at home were still for a small audience. The MSX died a commercial death in 1992.

However, the MSX Community could not leave this computer system alone. Using the machine was and is still relatively easy. Learning to code in several languages like BASIC, PASCAL and C is easy as well. Even Assembly language for the Z-80 based MSX computer is perfectly understandable for a lot of people within the MSX community. The open documentation on the MSX computer system and it's relatively simple hardware design allowed many computer hobbyists to understand how this machine worked. This way, many people learned how to create new hard- and software for it.

For many years people created new hardware and software, compatible with the MSX standard. And guess what? Ten years later, we are still here. Thanks to these people, we now have many useful tools, enjoyable games, demos and impressive hardware. We even can connect our MSX to IDE and SCSI devices, CompactFlash cards and even the Internet.

20 years after it's birth, the MSX system still has a future. Websites about this computer get increasing amounts of visitors, the software developers are getting more active again and in Japan several commercial companies, led by the MSX Association have become interested in MSX once again. This so-called MSX-Revival has already received a lot of attention after the release of a new MSX Magazine in December 2002. This magazine included the official MSX Emulator, MSXPLAYer. If all goes well, another MSX Magazine - including an improved version of MSXPLAYer, ported to several other systems - will be released this autumn. The final goal however is a low-budget one-chip computer based on the MSX philosophy, which combines several interesting projects. Although many MSX users are excited about the MSX Revival, some follow the MSX Revival with mixed feelings.

Several members of the MSX community have decided to celebrate this 20th anniversary in a special way. Eduard Robsy Petrus (known as pitpan in our forums) has started the MSXdev'03 competition. Olivier Hustin (known as Maggoo in our forums) has released a special 20th anniversary demo. We will report about some other celebration-activities later this day when needed.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, we have created a flash animation which you'll see if you go to our frontpage. We used the MSX logo, which is a trademark of MSX Association.

The MSX Resource Center team wishes all our visitors a happy anniversary!