MSX Magazine 3 - Contents revealed

Hideo Kojima... Hideo Kojima.. HIDEO KOJIMA!!!! Just check that picture of Hideo holding the box of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake whilst standing next to Snake himself. (In the PDF) Accept no substitute.

Looking at this and the other contents, I think ASCII have really outdone themselves... and... MSX Magazine 4 has already been announced! It certainly are exciting times...

Er, week .

Will we ever have this excellent magazine in English? Maybe a version without MSX player? To keep microsoft happy ?

djh - I corrected you on this one several times before. Now Bazix is here, Microsoft is no longer a problem. The tremendous costs of (and time-consuming) translation and near-impossible distribution, let alone print of ~200-300 page books in full color in relatively low amounts are. (I don't expect to sell 50.000 copies of an English MSX Magazine just yet, if you get my drift). Unless someone's got a couple of thousand of euro's lying around to invest in this project without any chance of breaking-even, an English release of the Japanese MSX Magazines is not going to happen. I'm sorry ;)

The Hideo Koijma pic is simply PRICELESS !! :O :O :O :O

This things makes me happy!

snout,

Let me see if I get it:

"The tremendous costs of (and time-consuming) translation and near-impossible distribution"

I'm amazed how open source projects that can't afford a single employee can have manuals and text files in so many different languages. ;-)

Come on, tremendous costs of translating a magazine ? We have friends in MSX community that translates japanese manuals and games in no time, how hard (and expensive) can it be to translate a magazine to english ? If what you're saying is true, japanese people will never be able to read Shakespeare and Milton in japanese because these books are far bigger and more difficult to translate then a technical magazine. :-) Near impossible distribution is something strange, since people manage to buy from Japan MSX magazine in very small quantities, most of time just one.

And honestly, I know japan market is great, but I don't believe that all msx users around the world (Europe, South America, Asia and so on) doesn't justify an english version of a magazine. Again, if all this people using MSX outside Japan can't justify printing an english version because it won't cover the costs, then ASCII should stop trying to bring MSX back, because they will loose money with it.

Just to make things clear:

Why they don't do with the english version of the magazine the same thing they did with the usb cartridge reader and that "amazing" MSXPC ? They could set the prices for printing it as a function of the quantities sold. People would register to buy/buy in advance and then they would print only the exact number of magazines. Is that so hard to be done ?

Come on, tremendous costs of translating a magazine ? We have friends in MSX community that translates japanese manuals and games in no time, how hard (and expensive) can it be to translate a magazine to english ?I'm not sure, but aren't we talking about 100+ pages here? You really need to *love* MSX if you're gonna translate 100+ pages from Japanese to English... Sounds like a hell of a job to me...

I have a master's degree in Japanese, but there's not a single hair on my head that is thinking about translating the whole magazine. It would take me months to make such a translation, but even then I would have to work on it day in day out. And it's not that I don't have other things to do . Certainly not, knowing that probably not even 100 copies would be sold...

Apart from that, every bit of news that is new to non-Japanese MSX users that is published in MSX Magazine, will be published on MRC sooner or later anyway. You don't need a translated magazine for that.

Then my only concern is about the distribution of the 1CM outside of Japan. Will it be official distribution channels here (hint: Bazix) or should we contact some japanese friends to buy them and send to Europe? I really don't care that much about a magazine with an emulator, but I would be really disappointed if I cannot put my hands on a 1CM.

Bart,

"Comparing the OneChipMSX hardware product with a 100+ pages magazine is totally useless ... Apples and oranges... No one needs 100+ pages of text to be able to connect a VGA cable or USB cable to the OneChipMSX... It's good to have criticism but you're talking nonsense."

I see you missed completely the point. I suggest you to read again my message. I didn't compare 1CM with a magazine, and for sure never said the magazine would be need to use 1CM. Where those ideas came from ? What I said is that, if you can't make people outside japan to buy the only MSX magazine being published, how will you expect they to buy 1CM when there are many msx emulators available for free with much more options and resources then 1CM has (at least at this moment) ? I welcome your comments, but please, be sure to discuss the right things. :-)

Those are the points I meant when I wrote the letter. I certainly didn't say people would translate the magazine for free also; This magazine is sold, the idea is making money, so people who translate should be payed to do that. This behaviour of MSX association makes many people in Brazil to not believe in the MSX revival. They don't seem to care about what we do with MSX, since they can't even publish a magazine in english (or they are thinking we all can speak, besides our born-languages and english, japanese as well).

snout,

I welcome your thoughts and valuable comments. you understood my point and gave reasonable answers. Let's see what can be done. I agree with you about the softwares licenses, I don't know about the other msx friends, but I don't care about MSXPlayer or the other old softwares. I would'nt care if the magazine came without the CD, and I believe that would help to reduce the price.

About the other points you mentioned, the suggestion I gave in the last message would help reduce the risks involved with the english version. People would register to buy the magazine (they would give the price based on the quantities that could be sold) and they would only print the exact number of magazines. Each one would go directly to the buyer's house. If the number of people interested in buying don't match their needs, they won't bother to translate and printing it. I believe this is a good solution (it worked with USB cart reader and the MSXPC) that would avoid risks and problems with distribution, etc.

What games did that "Kazuhiko Uehara" do btw? I only know the composer from MG2 and SD-ns. because those games show the credits at the start

King's Valley II, for instance. His compositions are present in a lot of games for other systems, too.

I agree with Bart and I would say even that you had to put the word digital between() since I see overhere that many people even would accept the one and only original. Big advantage seems to me that MSX Association/ASCII wouldnot mind to e.g. 20000 copies plus some to Europe let say 50.
Doing pessimistic. But let's try to make that happen and amuse 50 people or more. Gives the impression of taken serious , gives info and as said the most important articles will always come translated in due course.
If people want to pay in advance who knows if something can be organized.

By the way: is there any news on MSX PLAYer for non-Windows operating systems?

Japanese generally can't read English. The fact that English is a world language doesn't change that. Japanese and English are simply too different. The Japanese market is large enough for internal producers to make their products in Japanese, all foreign television programs are dubbed and only very little Japanese come overseas. That's why an English MSX Magazine in Japan would be ridiculous. They can probably read it in English as well as you can read it in Japanese

"The 1CM is something that most of the most talented msx programmers in Brazil doesn't like (not the idea, but the way MSX association is doing it)"

I certainly dont know any "brazilian programmer" who doesnt like the one chip msx, mainly because we dont know or even saw the thing yet! How can we be against it?

The only thing was the "msx manifest", and even that wasn't against the production of a new msx... so I really dont know what this is all about

snout,

As I said before, I didn't want to change the point of discussion, it should be about the MSX magazine. Anyway, just to make things clear. I won't say names because it wouldn't be polite and I have no right to talk for anyone who spoke with me privately, but some people (and I'm included) don't like the way things are being done. I'll say exactly my point. As I said before, I didn't say people were against 1CM (the idea), they didn't like the way it is done. In our days, people don't do bussiness in the way MSX association is doing anymore. Companies try to listen to their customers to see what they would like, and try to give them what they want. For example, I'm a java programmer. Java is making huge success among developers. But Sun opened the development of the platform to the community. I can join the community if I want and tell what I think. The community has the chance of telling what they want and the java specification will respect the wishes of the people. We (and I mean you, me, sunrise, ademir carchano in Brazil, Padial in Spain, talented people like Nestor, Maarten, Ricardo Bittencourt, Adriano Cunha, Slotman, and many other msx users and developers) kept the standard alive! MSX Association wants to bring MSX back, that's great, but if wasn't for us, would be MSX to bring back ? I'm not talking about me, I don't have a history like those people I mentioned and others I didn't mentioned, but were they invited to tell what they think about how 1CM should be done, what should be on it, how the standard should be updated, etc , etc ? Everytime some news arises about it, people talks about it here in MRC, some says what they like, what should be on it, other will say what they didn't like... but what really makes me sad is that those opinions should be heard by MSX association and respected. I like the idea of a FPGA MSX, but I would like that all users had the chance of saying what they want. When Ademir creates his products (well, at least when he used to create) we all had the chance of telling what we wanted. I don't know what my good friend Slotman thinks about what I'm saying, but I believe if he reads what I wrote here, he will agree with me about this. That's what I meant by saying 'some people don't like the way things are being done'. Customers should be heard. I don't believe in any bussiness that doesn't respect something that big and small companies already know and do.

Iamweasel: I'm sorry that you got the feeling MSX Association has not been listening to you/the MSX community, but in my opinion it simply isn't true.

In 2001 Nishi and Yokoi visited Tilburg. Nishi revealed his plans on the MSX revival on the MSX fair in Tilburg and a day later Yokoi discussed about what the One Chip MSX should (and could) be like with a large group of active MSX users. It resulted in a mailinglist on which these MSX users could continue following the project, give suggestions and opinions et cetera. Bernard Lamers was to translate summaries of the Japanese messages to English and vice versa to keep the communication going. Unfortunately this mailinglist wasn't very active for a long time, but fact remains that in a very early stage of the MSX Revival MSX Association already tried to get in touch with the international MSX community.

Through various other channels, attempts were made to contact FPGA developers from the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil. I wasn't involved in these contacts myself, but as far as I know, in most cases it were the developers, not MSX Association who weren't really interested in continuing the contacts.

I know for a fact that many people in MSX Association closely follow what happens on the MRC. Just because they don't always send a message back, doesn't mean they don't hear you. A few examples: When I visited Japan in 2003, Niitani of Aiky told me he had noticed Zanac came third in the Best MSX game ever mega-poll, and Aleste 2 came third in the Best MSX2 game ever mega-poll. He could only have known that by repeatedly visiting the MRC. Which he did, and does. Yokoi sometimes asks about discussions on the MRC, Miyashita (the main coder of MSXPLAYer) responded to several MSX-revival related newsposts (and the comments) a few times, using Excite translation tools. They are out there, and especially when you actively try to get in touch with them (e.g. through Ikeda or Bernard), you will. Besides, I don't think it's fair to complain about how MSX Association communicates with the international MSX community if you have been passively waiting for Nishi to ring your doorbell. Communication runs both ways, you know

I'm not saying that communication has been optimal, but for a Japanese company of which most employees/volunteers involved don't speak, read or write a single word of English, MSX Association has been trying to cross the language barrier in a way which is quite remarkable for Japanese companies in general. Now that Bazix is here, a language barrier has been taken away, making it a lot easier to communicate.

Besides, don't forget that -apart from Mr. Nishi- MSX association and the people helping the MSX Association are active members of the Japanese MSX community who have not left MSX alone during the years it wasn't commercially produced. They kept the MSX standard alive just as much as we did. The One Chip MSX is mainly a product of ESE's Tsujikawa, who brought us the wonderful MegaSCSI, for instance. During the development of the FPGA, he kept in touch with several MSX groups (including Sunrise, who have demonstrated the developers board on several MSX fairs already). This gets me to think: If Tsujikawa had released the One Chip MSX as 'ESE Artists' factory', would you be thinking similarly about it? Or if MSX Association had released the CompactFlash interface instead of Sunrise? Food for thought...

It would be nice tho, to get those few JP msxA ppl that can read/write english a bit to write here about their thingies .. we won't nitpick on the typos, eh

(just as much as I would like certain other ppl, like Wammes, to vent some more here.. I'd prefer some input from a different generation now and then..)