MSX Magazine sells over 5000 copies in pre-sales!

It seems amazing, but even before ASCII's MSX Magazine 2003 hits the streets, more than 5000 copies were sold already. The MSX Magazine website was entirely restyled, adding a full list of online stores that are already pre-selling MSX Magazine 2003. Also there is a collection of screenshots of the games that are included on the CD-ROM.

The MSX Magazine is considered to be the start of the MSX Revival. 10 years ago the last version of ASCII's popular and official MSX Magazine was released. A few years ago, Kazuhiko Nishi - the father of the MSX standard - regained interest in MSX after visiting an MSX fair in Japan and he started to make plans for the future. In 2001, he gave a lecture on the MSX fair in Tilburg of which a full report can be found in our reports section. Here he announced the introduction of MSXPLAYer, the official MSX Emulator. In his lecture Nishi described MSXPLAYer is intended to make people interested in MSX again.

After starting the MSX Association the time has come to release MSXPLAYer. Since the MSX-BIOS (especially the BASIC) is still copyrighted by Microsoft, free distribution of the MSXPLAYer turned out to be impossible. Together with ASCII Corporation, a new edition of MSX Magazine was created. This 'permanent preservation edition' features a CD-ROM which includes the MSXPLAYer and a list of commercial MSX software, as well as previously unreleased software. Now, with over 5000 copies sold in pre-sales already, the MSX Association and ASCII seem to have succeeded in gaining attention on MSX, almost 20 years after its introduction.

If the plans Nishi revealed in Tilburg are still valid, the next steps are the MSX-Server project which enables MSX users all over the world to buy MSX software for low prices and -finally- a revolutionary one-chip-computer. Of course, the MSX Resource Center will keep you posted.

Relevant link: http://www.ascii.co.jp/pb/ant/msx/