Happy New Year 2020!

What a freaking year it's been. MSX seems more alive than ever, judging from our statistics. We've seen a bunch of new hardware on the scene, lots of new games and the forum's boosting on activity. Yes, 2019 was a good year. Hope this one will be too; happy 2020 every body!

When looking at the numbers, the MSX Resource Center (or MRC for short), was alive and kicking its ass throughout the past year. Lots of news and forum posts, all flooded with heart warming MSX talk. We had more than 170 front-page (English) news posts, almost 1400 new forum topics created, more than 17.000 forum comments and almost 3500 news post reactions. And talking about numbers, we've made a top-10 of the most active users here on MRC.

Active User top-10
Topping at number one is long time MRC member Manuel with runner-up gdx. Here's the whole list:

1. Manuel (1105 points)
2. gdx (757 points)
3. sdsnatcher73 (506 points)
4. NYYRIKKI (396 points)
5. alexito (347 points)
6. PingPong (344 points)
7. Takamichi (288 points)
8. Pencioner (281 points)
9. ARTRAG (276 points)
10. thegeps (275 points)

* Points are granted like this: New Node (forum topic, news post, download submission etc) are worth 2 points, Wiki Editing gets 1 point, just like a general comment.

Hardware
In the past year we reported a lot on new hard- and software. The most surprising were probably the *new* MSX machines that popped up. Like Omega, MSXVR, SM-X, SX-1 mini, a Raspberry PI MSX clone, and even a suggestion for a Lego MSX. Wow, just like that. Just have a look at all the hardware news posts here on MRC.

Software
We had more than 30 news posts about software for MSX, reporting a mind blowing list of new games. Yes, it's been a particular good year for new MSX games. Some in development and some published. Some just for download and some available as a physical cartridge. About 20 new pieces of MSX 8-bit game software we've seen in 2019:

• MSXdev'18 - XRacing announced
• Multiverse
• Nogalious by LUEGOLU3GO Studios released
• MSXdev'18 #11 - Barbarian The Duel
• MSXdev?18 #12 - XRacing
• MSXdev'18 #13 - PWND3
• MSXdev'18 #14 - Quartet
• MSXdev'18 #15 - Goal
• The Awakening
• Night Knight released
• Green Gravity Guy Plus - new MSX game for V9990
• The Sorrow of Gadhlan'Thur
• Los amores de Brunilda by Retroworks released
• Venganza by Physical Dreams - English version
• Pre-order now your copy of QUARTET
• Moon Light Saga by Maple Yard for free download
• Mag the Magician - MSX port on sale
• Farm
• Shoulderblade OUTERSPACE
• ISITAR 7
• MSX in a row! by Mapax released
• La Guerra de Las Vajillas converted to MSX

See what we mean! And that's just the *new games* list, there's translations and patches of earlier games as well. Just browse the news posts about software to see the whole. It is stunning.

While there's tons of good MSX stuff visible in 2019, there's also less cool stuff going on. We won't list like above, but we should atleast mention the MRC admin-crew change, where some dinosaurs left the building. Admins that were here from the beginning are slowly retracting. The current crew is doing well, sure. But it's a daily job maintaining the site, and sometimes that leads to delays on new submitted material. But the biggest one is the money thing, you know the thing that makes the world turn. We've reported about it in our recent x-mas post.

Now that 2019 has just waved goodbye, we welcome 2020. And if this year is anything like the last, it's gonna be a good one too. With our two MSX calendars you will certainly find it easy to navigate through the year. MSXDEV'20 has just started, so we expect new stuff coming in very soon. Talking about a good start :) In the meantime, enjoy every moment, be kind, keep cool, keep on coding and above all: swing!

Happy 2020 ya'll!