Myths and Dragons ready for release

The Capcom homage and "King of Dragons" clone: Myths and Dragons for MSX2 + V9990 graphic card is now finished.
This game intends to be a re-imagined "King of Dragons/Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom/Shadows over Mystara" version for MSX2 and the graphic chip V9990.
The game works on an 8-bit computer and it controls two 16-bit chips (the V9990 graphic chip and the OPL4 sound chip) pushing the 8-bit processor to the limits.

GAME FEATURES:

The game is a typical Capcom beat'em up, but with RPG elements. This means you can repeat stages to earn more gold and experience. You can purchase better weapons (purchasing a better weapon increases the strength and the range of the weapon) and restore your health in the shops arround the province of Tarragonia.
This RPG feature is not meant to artificially extend the life of the game, since the game can be beaten without dying and without repeating a single stage. This is meant for those who are not experiencied in this kind of games, so they can improve their characters and beat the game regardless of their skills.
If a player beats the game without dying and without using a password, an extra will be unlocked.
The game can be played alone (1 player) or with a friend (2 players, cooperative mode). Each player can get his own password so they can save their individual progress.
As a matter of fact, 2 players can meet at someone's home and bring their individual passwords and play cooperatively with their individual characters using their own passwords, so you can carry your character arround and play with it at anyone's home. Just take a picture of your password with your cellphone.
You can also fight versus the other player at any unlocked stage. Friendly fire is on, so, have fun!
The game has 2 different characters to play with (warrior and wizard) and the gameplay is different with each of them.
The pre-purchase version includes an exclusive third character: the princess, which is basically like the warrior, but in female version.
The game includes 9 stages and 2 unlockable secret areas. Once unlocked, you can save this achievement with your password.

HARDWARE FEATURES:

Kai Magazine always aims to support as much hardware and MSX peripherals as they can.
This game supports the following sound chips:

• PSG for sound effects
• FM-PAC (OPLL) for music
• Music Module (OPL1) for music
• FM-PAC + Music Module (both at the same time)
• Moonsound (OPL4) for music and sound effects

It is optimized for the following CPU's:

• Z80
• Z80B (Panasonic 2+)
• R800 (Panasonic Turbo R)

It works with any V9990 MSX compatible cartridge and any OPL4 MSX compatible sound cartridge.
Minimum requirements:
V9990, MSX2 with 64k of RAM and FM-PAC or Music Module
Recommended:
V9990, Panasonic 2+ or Turbo R with OPL4 and 128k of RAM

RELEASE:

The game will be released on December 9th 2017.
The pre-purchase period at a reduced price which also includes an extra playable character (the princess) will finish on December 3rd (included).
There is a digital version to be used on a real MSX computer and another version specially patched to work on the openMSX emulator, but this version will suffer a lower performance due to the software patch we had to code, using R800 CPU power. Therefore this openMSX special version will only work on an emulated Turbo R.

THINGS WORTH MENTIONING:

This game is a 2048k ROM and took around 2000 manhours of work to be created.
This has become the biggest MSX production Kai Magazine ever did so far.
It is worth mentioning that they did it knowing that it will also be the less sold one since it requires a V9990 graphics card and not many people have one yet.
The amount of preorders so far are around 50 and there's doubt they will reach 60 or 70 any time soon, so it is by far the less renumerated game Kai did, but the most expensive MSX game to produce.
They say they did this because:
1: They are crazy
2: They want to support MSX hardware, both old and new, even if they earn no money

The profit collected so far barely covers the musician expenses, the V9990 cartridge and a slot expander which died during the development of this game (R.I.P.), so the total amount earned so far is zero.
Anyway, they'll continue to produce V9990 games with the hopes that other people do as well and once there are enough v9990 games for MSX, the purchase of a V9990 chip becomes a valid option for most users who might like to evolve their MSX.
In order to realize such a huge project, as many other current homebrew developers did, they used some graphic assets from other games (some sprites and backgrounds) and reworked them or worked over them.
Kai Magazine does not intend to claim all graphic assets are 100% original. While Capcom had a staff of 30 people for each game and a funding of thousands of dollars, this game had just 1 coder and graphist (the same person), so he did this in order to finish the game in a reasonable amount of time, with a yet unreasonable amount of work, for a null profit.
This game doesn’t use the famous "Team Bomba" V9990 library. This game uses direct OUT commands to the V9990 chip from Turbo Basic in order to control it.
No existing driver, binary or library is being used to control the V9990 at any time. The research and development of the Turbo Basic OUT based commands took many months of extra work which aren't included in the aforementioned 2000 hours of production for this game.

SPECIAL THANKS

Kai Magazine wishes to give special thanks to:

• tvalenca and Hit9918 for sharing their findings on a V9990 thread on MRC. Those findings were of great help to me. They both will get a free digital copy of the game and the source code of the game to use at their will
• Victor Sanchez for his constant help and support
• Xavi Sorinas for his patience and help
• John Hassink for his professionalism and his talent
• All the beta testers for their hard work testing the game, finding bugs and helping me improve the game in all aspects with their ideas and suggestions
• All those who supported the game before its release. Without them this game could have never been made possible

ORDERS:

If anyone is interested on placing a pre-purchase they can contact Kai Magazine at: kennethalbero@hotmail.com
He answers all the emails in a period of less than 2 days. If after 2 days you don't receive an answer this means he hasn't received the message for some reason. In that case please contact him via Facebook.
Kai Magazine would like to thank everyone for their constant support!

Relevant link: Official site
Relevant link: Facebook post
Relevant link: Gameplay video on MSX2+ with Princess character
Relavant link: Gameplay video on MSX2+ with Wizard character