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Non-NEC Console Related Discussion => Console Chat => Topic started by: apachacha on May 16, 2011, 03:49:23 AM
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I'd like to ask if anyone here knows any good MSX games. I already went and played through Parodius (which I liked) , Penguin Adventure (which was a liiiittle too long :P) , Psycho World (realy awesome game) and Andorogynus (which is realy good, but can be a tad slow on the scrolling, especialy before the boss fights).
Also, not a big RPG player. :P
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Akumajou Dracula
Zanac
Zanac EX
Aleste
Aleste Gaiden
Aleste 2 (Play this on 2+/Turbo-R mode)
Space Manbow (Again 2+/TR)
Gofer No Yabou Episode II
Gradius 2
Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Contra
LayDock
Super LayDock
LayDock 2
Mr. Ghost
Thexder
Firehawk: Thexder 2
Salamander
Fray (Turbo-R version)
Undeadline
If you really want to see what the MSX can do. Play Aleste 2 on a 2+ or TR.
It is insane. Beating the first stage mid-boss is a real feat. All the youtube videos
are pansy players playing it on "standard 2 mode" which has much less bullets, and
is a lot slower paced.
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Akumajou Dracula
Zanac
Zanac EX
Aleste
Aleste Gaiden
Aleste 2 (Play this on 2+/Turbo-R mode)
Space Manbow (Again 2+/TR)
Gofer No Yabou Episode II
Gradius 2
Metal Gear
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Contra
LayDock
Super LayDock
LayDock 2
Mr. Ghost
Thexder
Firehawk: Thexder 2
Salamander
Fray (Turbo-R version)
Undeadline
If you really want to see what the MSX can do. Play Aleste 2 on a 2+ or TR.
It is insane. Beating the first stage mid-boss is a real feat. All the youtube videos
are pansy players playing it on "standard 2 mode" which has much less bullets, and
is a lot slower paced.
I fully admit I'm a pansy then :P
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If you're not an RPG player you should still try Fray. Because I said so.
Super Deadite doned prty good there with the game suggestions.
I'd also like to suggest
Gall Force
Knightmare
Maze of Galious
Kings Valley 2
Ninja-kun
Manbow 2 (a homebrew game)
Gulkave
Candoo Ninja (funny nonsense)
Ganbare Goemon
Relics (MSX 2 version. You might not like it)
When I get home i'll dig through my pile more and pick some others.
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If you really want to see what the MSX can do. Play Aleste 2 on a 2+ or TR.
It is insane.
That is pretty cool. I was under the impression that all of the MSX games had Ys III style scrolling. Maybe it's just Youtube, but Aleste 2 looks really smooth. What's the deal?
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If you're not an RPG player you should still try Fray. Because I said so.
Super Deadite doned prty good there with the game suggestions.
I'd also like to suggest
Gall Force
Knightmare
Maze of Galious
Kings Valley 2
Ninja-kun
Manbow 2 (a homebrew game)
Gulkave
Candoo Ninja (funny nonsense)
Ganbare Goemon
Relics (MSX 2 version. You might not like it)
When I get home i'll dig through my pile more and pick some others.
I looked up Candoo Ninja and it looks like a regular ninja game with low quality graphics. How exactly is it nonsensical ? :O
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oh, the game in general is just funny because its so dopey. lol
As for the scrolling on MSX:
Not every game is a victim of blocky scrolling. even so, the games that do have blocky scrolling (Konami shooters whut whut) are still playable. Anyone who disagrees is a toolbag.
Alot of games had work arounds and managed smooth scrolling, even on the MSX2. Even on the MSX1 actualy. Golvellius did, Aleste, Manbow, Manbow 2, Gulkave... lots of games were smooth. It just depends if the programmers wanted to do the extra work to make it happen. But this is all irrelevant to playing games!
It was more prevalent with the MSX2+. Some people put the MSX2+ video chip into the MSX2, making it a 2+ also. The 2+'s video chip is nicer.
and then the TRBBRBRBRBR, it is positively epic. If you use the R800 inside of it, games with slowdown (undeadline) don't get bogged down. Yay.
You have to be careful with playing games on Turbo R sometimes. You can enable/disable the R800 cpu on the Turbo R when you boot it up. Some games dont work right on the Turbo R. Metal Gear 2 locks up sometimes, for example.
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oh, the game in general is just funny because its so dopey. lol
As for the scrolling on MSX:
Not every game is a victim of blocky scrolling. even so, the games that do have blocky scrolling (Konami shooters whut whut) are still playable. Anyone who disagrees is a toolbag.
Alot of games had work arounds and managed smooth scrolling, even on the MSX2. Even on the MSX1 actualy. Golvellius did, Aleste, Manbow, Manbow 2, Gulkave... lots of games were smooth. It just depends if the programmers wanted to do the extra work to make it happen. But this is all irrelevant to playing games!
It was more prevalent with the MSX2+. Some people put the MSX2+ video chip into the MSX2, making it a 2+ also. The 2+'s video chip is nicer.
and then the TRBBRBRBRBR, it is positively epic. If you use the R800 inside of it, games with slowdown (undeadline) don't get bogged down. Yay.
You have to be careful with playing games on Turbo R sometimes. You can enable/disable the R800 cpu on the Turbo R when you boot it up. Some games dont work right on the Turbo R. Metal Gear 2 locks up sometimes, for example.
The only game where it bothered me so far was Andorogynus. Mostly because 1. the levels are rather longish and when you have a slow ass descent through an empty space with nothing in it, you expect it to be the boss room and it turns out you're just half way, 2. It always takes around 20 plus seconds to descend to the bottom of the boss room even if you already know it is a boss room , 3. The game makes you redo the first 6 stages again, just as a woman. I like that and all, but when you have to go through the same levels with the same speed problems, you tend to lose your patience.
Stil it's a top to bottom vertical shooter, and you don't have too many of those (I can't remember a single one besides this game).
Also outside of Parodius and Andorogynus, are there any other quirky shooters on the MSX ?
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Well Adorogynus isn't slow scrolling due to hardware issues, its just by design. They wanted it to be slow for whatever reason.
What alot of people dont notice with blockscrolling is the games scrolling at the same rate whether its block or smooth scroll. Its just more visually destracting when its block by block. Thats all. Eye tricks.
Anyway, as for quirky shooters, I think Andorogynus takes the cake.
You could try my friends game, Equivocal. Its a contest entry MSX2 game that rips Aleste alittle, and uses funny bird names to make the game sound perverted.
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You can disable the R800? Never knew that, how is it done? I've played through Metal Gear 2
twice now by just turning it on with the cart in, never locked up on me.
And again all the youtube vids I've seen of Aleste 2 are only being played on a 2.
On a 2+ the bullet count is tripled and they move faster.
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You can disable the R800? Never knew that, how is it done? I've played through Metal Gear 2
twice now by just turning it on with the cart in, never locked up on me.
the cracked disk version locks up, I should have specified. Its the version hes likely to be playing since the real versions f*cking expensive.
Im not sure if the cart ROM crashes. I dont recall it crashing.
I play the real one too, but the disk one is nice to figure up when youre too lazy to get the nowind out of the msx, lol
Anyway you hold 1 down while booting up lol. or it might be 2. Im pretty sure its 1 though.
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Ah ok, yeah i only play originals. I always thought the R800 was only
being used when that one special LED turns on.
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Thanks for the info Arkhan, and sorry for clogging up your thread apachacha.
I'll go ahead and recommend Metal Gear II. If you like the MG Solid series, it's cool to see where 90% of the "new" gameplay features actually came from. That, and it's worth it just for the 80s action hero rip-offs.
One of these days i'm gonna pick up an MSX myself, but I've got no space. I was really interested in that "One Chip MSX", but those are frackin expensive now.
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The One Chip sucks. A lot of games are not compatible with it. Neat idea, but you can get a real Turbo-R for the same price and have no compatibility issues.
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That's too bad. I don't like how big most of the MSXs are, so I was hoping to be able to put a tiny system together.
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That's too bad. I don't like how big most of the MSXs are, so I was hoping to be able to put a tiny system together.
Well, its a computer... lol. I guess you could get a cart-only MSX2, gut it and put the board and stuff in a tiny keyboardless case if you want.
The OneChip is dumb. Total piece of crap.
anyway yeah you hold 1 to disable the R800. Some games keep that LED on even if the R800 isn't in use.
So, the whole LED thing isn't 100% guaranteed. It may be off and not in use even if it says its on.
You only have to worry about disabling the R800 if you're messing with cracks or homebrew stuff, which most people do nowadays.
Carts default to Z80 mode, and R800 mode comes on if its an actual Turbo R game, or an MSXDOS2 formatted disk... so some cracked disk images need you to press 1 so you dont boot into R800 mode and f*ck everything up, lol. (like metal gear 2)
If you start disks manually, it will start in R800 mode, since the R800 comes on by default if you get all the way to the prompt.
btw: theres nothing new in Aleste 2 on Turbo R aside from slowdown. Youre just playing it on a higher difficulty setting. Theres a bug that sets the difficulty higher depending what disk you use to fire the game up..
and there's nothing making Turbo R fray better other than digitized voices.
The whole Turbo-R is the best thing ever concept isn't totally true. An MSX2 really is all you need. Or a 2+ if you can find it, but you'll be fine without it.
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There's 2 version of Fray. The blue spine one and the pink spine one. Pink spine requires the Turbo-R.
Besides the voices, it also allows you to use the fastest speed setting. The fastest speed setting only
works on a TR. The manual clearly states this.
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Well, its a computer... lol. I guess you could get a cart-only MSX2, gut it and put the board and stuff in a tiny keyboardless case if you want.
Well he could go for a Daewoo Zemmix
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/golden/daewoo_zemmix.htm
Of course you'd have to get one that stil works and is a later, MSX2 compatible model.
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You still need a keyboard though. Metal Gear 2 for instance uses the Function keys
for the menu systems. The one chip uses usb keyboards, but you still need one attached
for most games. Dragon Knight 1 and 2 won't even boot unless you hold the left shift key
during startup.
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Those Daewoos look pretty cool. I bet they're expensive though, I've never seen one.
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There's 2 version of Fray. The blue spine one and the pink spine one. Pink spine requires the Turbo-R.
Besides the voices, it also allows you to use the fastest speed setting. The fastest speed setting only
works on a TR. The manual clearly states this.
I know that (I have both). Thats pointless though, and not worth buying the Turbo R at all. The Turbo R is really only for collectors, or people who don't know any better and buy into the whole OMG R800 MAKES ALL THE GAMES BETTER, which isn't entirely true. All it will do if you force a disk game into R800 mode, is prevent slowdown. There's no code in Aleste to make it add more bullets if its an R800. Like I said, thats just a bug jacking the difficulty setting up. You can play that uber bullet difficulty on a lowly MSX2. I checked, just to make sure I wasn't delusional.
Cartridge games can't even use the R800, so even if you play Manbow on a Turbo R, you aren't getting anything special. Its a placebo if you think the games playing better all the sudden. The R800 didn't exist for coders to write for when some of these games came out, so how could they have possibly planned for R800 special modes.
How fast do you really need to play Fray? The default speed is plenty perfect. Its as fast as Xak.
An MSX2+ is the ideal game machine, recommended by nearly all MSX afficionados (including myself). If you can't find one, an MSX2 retrofitted with the new 2+ video chip, and an FM-PAC will do just as good. So either get a Japanese 2/2+, or the Philips NMS82 45/50/80 if you're European.
The machines themselves are nice (HBF1-XV: built in MSX-MUSIC, rensha turbo and speed slider, disk drive. V9958..), and when applicable, games use the v9958's horizontal scroll register instead of the other smooth scroll method used on the 9938, which makes it look a bit nicer visually. On the 9938, you might notice flicker on the ends of the screen as it scrolls. You'll see tiles on the left that will then show up on the right as you're scrolling right, or vice versa.
However, if the game didn't already scroll smoothly (be it with clever V9938 use, or the V9958's happy hardware improvements), a 2+ or a Turbo R isn't going to automagically put that in for you. Thats why Gall Force still block scrolls on a Turbo R.
Look up the actual game library for the Turbo R. Its the Super Grafx of the MSX world. :) I like Tir nan og, Seed of Dragon, and Illusion City (<3), but I'm also the type of person who will pay 600$+ to play one frigging game.
The only way you should buy a Turbo R aside from collecting purposes, is if you can locate one for a reasonable (MSX2/2+ comparable) price.
You can nab a boxed 2+ for <100$ though, so I don't see that happening.