Happy 2010!

And so, we've arrived in yet another new year on this blue ball. This year should be the year of the big MRC-redesign. The concept started in 2007 already, but due all kinds of unexpected situations it'll now be 2010, according to our gang of developers. As all news programs on TV have done in the last week, a news overview of 2009 will be in place, to highlight MSX events that proved to be important or popular. Behold..

January saw the release of an MSX2 remake of Alien 8 which was colorful and downright impressive, a trick Manuel Pazos would repeat later that year. At the very end of the month, nearly all MSXdev'08 entries were submitted in a massive flood. Leading to the closing of MSXdev'08 with twelve entries in February. More gaming glory from Arturo Ragozini (ARTRAG) and Daniel Vik (dvik) who won the 4KB section of the Mini Game competition with Intruder 4K. In March the results of MSXdev'08 were published: Deep Dungeon got the expected MSXdev'08 gold. The game which ended up third place (La Corona Encantada) would eventually cause more ripples in the water than any other entry. Also in March a video of an upcoming remake was spotted: Knight Lore MSX2, a remake with exceptional graphics. Further gaming news included the Gradius 2 enhancement patch which introduced smooth scrolling on MSX2+ and turbo-R.

April's attention was dominated by Syntax Infinity, an impressive MSX demo by Traktor and Tulou which ranked fifth in the Console/Real Wild category at Breakpoint 2009. In May MSXdev'09 was announced, with a shorter amount of development time (and a new MSX1+ prize was introduced a week later) but otherwise with familiar rules and specifications. A new version of blueMSX was released, after almost a year after the previous release. Another popular emulator to be updated was the MSX1-only meisei. The announcement of the MSX2 remake of Knight Lore already raised some eyebrows, and the highly anticipated release was met with great enthusiasm. In June MRC added a Japanese section and a cross-development section to the forum.

In July, a new version of openMSX was released, and Franky was announced by SuperSoniqs as a daring Sega-meets-MSX hardware project. Passion MSX closed the first edition of the PassionMSX2 contest, with (only) two entries. Infinite won with a bejeweled clone. Norakomi, from Manbow 2 fame, introduced his new plans: a tile-mode platform game with multi layers. Not wanting to do most of the development himself, a team has been formed to give his plans a firm shape. Less optimistic news was the announcement that the yearly Bussum would be no more, a long tradition that once started as the famous Zandvoort fairs. There's now one major Dutch MSX fair left: Nijmegen. In August, the FutureDisks were added to our freeware downloads database and MRC celebrated 5000 user accounts. Earlier in 2009 a new digital magazine was released: Retroaction. In September the third issue was released, a vast and colorful magazine for retro computing and retro gaming. So far each edition has mentioned MSX! More MSX in the media on the Brazilian MTV.

In October we hit newspost #5000, while a new dvik&joyrex demo hit the stage: Bold, winner of the 2009-edition of Alt Party. Meridian, once hailed as a promising tracker for Moonsound, was officially discontinued by the author. On the up-side: the sources were declared public domain. A new website was opened at the end of October: CheatMSX, a rapidly expanding home for game cheats, maps from MSX Solutions, openMSX dev builds, and who knows what more in the future. In November, video playback for the VSU was announced. An extended version of Monster Hunter (the winner of MSXdev'06) was announced. The final month, December, was a real game month. First there was MSXdev'09 which ended with nine fine entries. Less entries than previous years but overall of an higher quality. Secondly, the amount of game related content (walk through videos, maps, game translations) kept us busy. A few weeks later the results of MSXdev'09 were published: Infinite's ridiculous Dr.Pill struck gold in this edition. Finally, MRC is now available in French. In short: more then enough news in a single year to keep one satisfied!

Traditionally, we have a few statistics for people who like them:

• News posts: 364 (368)
• Forum posts: 15888 (13995)
• Reactions: 3228 (2877)
• Page views: 2.075.164 (1.983.652)

The values in parentheses are the statistics of 2008. Another tradition is the mentioning of the most active MRC member (crew not included). In 2009, the following 10 MRC members were the most active, based on a score of 6 points per news post, 2 per forumpost and 1 per reaction, doubling the score on 'first posts':

1. manuel (1381)
2. Leo (937)
3. ARTRAG (881)
4. muffie (870)
5. DemonSeed (704)
6. dhau (649)
7. Vampier (648)
8. MäSäXi (636)
9. Yukio (633)
10. l1nux1n (549)

Prolonging his status as most active MRC member of the year for the third time in a row, manuel will yet again receive a small present from the MRC crew as a token of our appreciation. Our thanks go out to him all the others who contributed to the MRC. Next year we will also reward a prize to the most active member at the MRC. We hope you will keep visiting and enriching the contents of our website for a long time to come!

We would also like to thank all the active MSX developers who keep bringing us new and surprising hardware, software, websites and magazines. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank all the people who have sent us a donation by bank or PayPal this year. As the MRC is growing and growing, so are the costs to keep the site online and in movement. Even with small donations, you helped (and are helping) to keep our site online. Respect!

The entire MRC crew would like to wish you a happy, healthy, prosperous 2010 and we're all looking forward to celebrate the 27th anniversary of our beloved MSX computer system in style. To a year loaded with MSX action!