MSXdev'05: closed

Yesterday the third edition of MSXdev, an MSX1 game development competition, was closed. Like last year, when the competition resulted in 16 new MSX1 games, the competition was a huge success. This year, no less than 21 brand new MSX1 games were released in the MSXdev'05 competition and all are worth playing. An overview in alphabetical order:

Blusy shop - An MSX conversion of Taito's Plotting/Flipull
Bombman - Find the bombs before they explode!
Caverns of Titan - An addictive platform game
Cheating wives - The funniest way of finding out your wife has been cheating on you
Cosmic Battle - A colourful shoot'em-up
Crazy buggy - Impressive game inspired by Choro-Q
The Cure - Vampire Killer on MSX1?!
Griel's Quest for the Sangraal - A large maze game
Lode Run - Indeed, a Lode Runner port for MSX1 we missed out on previously
Magical Stones - A puzzle game inspired by Columns
Manicomio - A Spanish text adventure
The Mansion - A graphical text adventure
Namake's Bridgedrome - A puzzle game with a penguin
Pair Logic - The classic pairs game coded in BASIC
Parachuteless Joe - Jumping out of an airplane without a parachute never has been this much fun
Saimazoom - An impressive MSX port of Dinamic's Saimazoom
Snoopy town - A horizontal shooter featuring the one and only Snoopy
Space Crussader - A nice spaceship simulator
Tragaperras - A Jackpot slot machine for MSX
Universe : Unknown - A shooter in the tradition of Gradius
Viking - A strategy game

Once again the MSX community has shown that it is easy and rewarding to develop games for MSX1, and that more than 20 years after its launch, MSX1 games can still be impressive and addictive, offering gameplay and originality rarely seen on consoles these days.

Now, the time has come for the juror, Patriek Lesparre and the visitors of HispaMSX.org to award the prizes to this challenge. Until then, the MRC crew are wondering what you think of all entries. Which one is your favorite, and why? Please let us know by posting your reactions.

Relevant link: MSXdev'05 status page

Comments (40)

By snout

Ascended (15187)

21-12-2005, 15:28

/me takes a deep, deep bow to pitpan and all contestans for their amazing efforts. MSX RULEZ!

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

21-12-2005, 15:40

right now I can't stand some of the games for a while since I've been part in betatesting them

By ro

Scribe (4914)

21-12-2005, 15:49

I never thought it would be pulled of, deep respect for the initiater and all people who joined in and made it work!
20 entries, 20 games, 20 times hurray!!!

By ro

Scribe (4914)

21-12-2005, 15:49

eh +1

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 16:16

Congratulations to all contestants and good luck to everyone.

Thanks to all the people who have made MSXdev'05 possible and have given support to it.

By meits

Scribe (6533)

21-12-2005, 16:51

_O_

Who will put them on cartridge

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6430)

21-12-2005, 17:03

It's not the 2d edition, but the 3rd edition of msxdev'.

You have forgotten the 2003 edition, with only 3 games. One of them is Guru Logic (MSX1 version), the forbidden game !

By snout

Ascended (15187)

21-12-2005, 17:06

Indeed! Fixed newspost.

By viejo_archivero

Paragon (1395)

21-12-2005, 17:29

My bets:

MSXdev'05 GENERAL CONTEST: Griel's Quest for the Sangraal
MSXdev'05 BEST SHOOTER: Universe: Unknown
MSXdev'05 MOST ORIGINAL GAME: Cheating Wives
MSXdev'05 MOST ADDICTIVE GAME: The Cure

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 17:45

Only Patriek knows!

He's pretty busy now playing/judging all the games. I hope that the final result won't take very long to be published.

And then, the PRIZES!

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6932)

21-12-2005, 17:57

IMHO caverns of titan has the best musics
for sure they do not use my 6ch psg player ....

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 18:03

AFAIK, the 6-channel replayer requires the whole CPU time for it, doesn't it?

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6932)

21-12-2005, 18:14

I was just kidding, yes the 6ch player needs
the complete cpu (and it isn't sufficient)

By dvik

Prophet (2200)

21-12-2005, 18:44

My bets:

MSXdev'05 GENERAL CONTEST: Griel's Quest for the Sangraal
MSXdev'05 BEST SHOOTER: Universe: Unknown
MSXdev'05 MOST ORIGINAL GAME: Cheating Wives
MSXdev'05 MOST ADDICTIVE GAME: The Cure

Yep, thats my bets too. Griel's Quest for the Sangraal was quite addictive too but ended way too soon (want more levels ) Still the best game overall though.

By KNM

Master (172)

21-12-2005, 18:53

What a great sensation to look al entries of the dev ready to be donwloaded and played at last!! .Very nice games this year,some of them really impressive.I liked so much Cheating Wives,Parachuteless Joe and the "stars" of this year : The Cure and Universe Unknown.But you can play also with saimazoom,griels....even Namake´s

There´s a lot of brand new games for MSX1....!!!!What else needed to showtime?!

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 18:57

dvik: 28 levels are currently being added for a "Christmas special release". Quite difficult some of them, I shoud say!

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 19:11

I must admit that until now VIKING is the game that I have played most. Just love it!

Hopefuly I'll have now some spare time to play extensively all the games.

By dvik

Prophet (2200)

21-12-2005, 19:26

28 levels are currently being added for a "Christmas special release". Quite difficult some of them, I shoud say!

Nice Then I'll have some fun over the xmas break.

By Latok

msx guru (3927)

21-12-2005, 19:41

This is just fantastic! Many compliments to both the contestants and the organizers

By [WYZ]

Champion (451)

21-12-2005, 20:33

My bets are Caverns of Titan/Universe/The Cure. Saimazoon and Griel's Quest are really well done, but not an original game( Remaked graphics/concept is almost so difficult as a full creation) Special mention for Magical Stones, P'Joe ... and Namake is a funny game to discover. It's plenty of add-ons.

About the music, I choose Namake! You must to hear all the whole B.S.O.

By KNM

Master (172)

21-12-2005, 20:37

WYZ...please stop!

Thank you!!

By Maggoo

Paragon (1217)

21-12-2005, 21:39

BTW, what happened to ESCOTOMA ? Given the author's last year entries (Sink King & Seleniak), I was very curious about this year's entry ! Any chance to set completed someday ?

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

21-12-2005, 21:53

AFAIK, he's currently very busy with an MSX2 shooter. That's why he didn't have enough time to complete Escotoma. We'll see the results soon, I hope.

By snout

Ascended (15187)

21-12-2005, 22:03

Of course, there's always msxdev'06

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

21-12-2005, 23:08

It's a pity all that about Escotoma; finallly the only shooter (I can´t count CB) is Universe:unknown, thanks Nishi it really deserves the prize.
For me there're two winners for sure, best shooter (Universe) and most original concept (cheatin wives), the other two are harder to choose. The Cure it's clearly over the media; but it's a 48K ROM too, maybe you must compare with the original VK and imagine how hard is to fit tons of data in only 48Kb.
About the music of Caverns of Titan, it's not my music at all, I've only taken some catchy tunes and included with the game, my composition skills are below 0 (but for sure I've a good ear! )

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10092)

21-12-2005, 23:21

maybe you must compare with the original VK and imagine how hard is to fit tons of data in only 48Kb.

Vampire Killer, zip'ed or rar'ed results in ~72kb .. and that's for gfx which is worth 32 bytes per 8x8 tile. In screen 2, 8x8 pixels is worth 16 bytes. So a 1:1 msx1 conversion logically gets smaller ofcourse. It's all about having all stuff packed in ROM, and unpack it to RAM..
UU isn't any different .. nemesis1 rar'ed is also way smaller than a megarom .. about 54kb .. UU currently is 44kb (will prolly become 48 when we're done ) but unpacked, things are way bigger ..

I think 48kb is quite doable for msx1-conversions of classic uncompressed megaroms..

By marison

Expert (104)

22-12-2005, 00:26

When I saw The Cure immediately I thought to have seen the winner. I have played it to the first boss and bet that I won't see something too professional in MSXdev05.

This feeling lasted until seeing the Universe: Unknown in the last hours from yesterday.

I like too much the Nemesis saga and shoot'em up in general, reason to try to develop one.

In the last semester I did not have to the same enthusiasm that I had in the first one of this year. A bit of College issues, inauguration of a ice cream shop, disappointment with the relation "possible performance versus resources that I desired to implement x skill that would be necessary to get the other two work anyway" have mined my forces.

I could not get one music for the only one guy I know (in my circle of direct and near friends) that could compose one decent PSG song.

Two of my last efforts were:
- Create a 4 player game mode.
- Terminate a all-purpose enemy movemente and animation routine.

Maybe I will try to really conclude Cosmic Battle someday. For my honour and pride. If the MSX1 lasted 20 years, why not?

I will prepare the source code to distribute. I will try with the last one, with various partial modifications that do not work correctly.

Sorry, guys!

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

22-12-2005, 00:36

I was impressed by the quality of some of the games. I'm trying to imagine myself, twenty years ago, loading such game in my MSX. I wouldn't have believed it. Indeed, I cannot believe it today: games of such quality produced in 2005. Amazing. MSX is alive and kicking, that's a fact.

By spl

Paragon (1470)

22-12-2005, 00:56

Marison:

Your game looks great, but I can't run it in my MSX Sure that you'll finish, and if you need help... please, ask us!

Yours,

By snout

Ascended (15187)

22-12-2005, 00:58

spl: you might want to check this newspost :)

By Chardson

Champion (411)

22-12-2005, 02:32

This contest was way more impressive than I was expecting. I can't wait to see how will be '06 edition (the specs specially ). It was so good that earned a lot of credibility. I think next edition we will have even more contestants with even better quality.

Oh yes, my bet goes for The Cure! The first home made game ever to make me addict! I should give also a note to Griels, who caught the attention of my brother (and he hates MSX). I was surprised to see him having fun playing the game!

By Imanok

Paragon (1198)

22-12-2005, 09:36

Congratulations to all contestants!!

This is what I bet for:

MSXdev'05 GENERAL CONTEST: 'The Cure'
MSXdev'05 BEST SHOOTER: 'Universe: Unknown'
MSXdev'05 MOST ORIGINAL GAME: 'Parachuteless Joe'
MSXdev'05 MOST ADDICTIVE GAME: 'The Cure'

By spl

Paragon (1470)

22-12-2005, 14:21

@ Snout: Yes, I've read before this post, but it's very old

Yours,

By marison

Expert (104)

22-12-2005, 15:28

But the proposal continues.

By GhostwriterP

Paladin (683)

22-12-2005, 17:14

maybe you must compare with the original VK and imagine how hard is to fit tons of data in only 48Kb.
Just a few things to keep in mind before comparing roms. Now lets tkae The Cure by example; the
program data is about 17 kb, wich is probably about as much as in VK. These 17 kb has not a good
compression ratio. So in VK it is 1/8 of the Rom and by TC it is 1/3 of the Rom that is relatively not
compressible.

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10092)

22-12-2005, 17:20

The gfx make the difference.. msx1 gfx are 50% in size compared to msx2 gfx ..

By GhostwriterP

Paladin (683)

23-12-2005, 19:17

There are some nice games that MSXdev'05 brought us and I am curious what will appear next year.
I do not think the specs need to be altered that much... maby some bigger roms but that's it. It has
a certain fun factor to make and play games on MSX1. There is still more to get out of a MSX1 and
maby... someday... someone will show us.

By viejo_archivero

Paragon (1395)

26-12-2005, 09:23

GhostwriterP: 100% agree

By pitpan

Prophet (3155)

27-12-2005, 09:59

Some updated versions of the games have been included in MSXdev'05 status page: http://www.robsy.net/status05.htm

CAVERNS OF TITAN (ROM and instructions)
NAMAKE'S BRIDGEDROM (ROM)
VIKING (instructions)
SNOOPY TOWN (ROM)

Please note that these updated ROMs do not modify the game, they are minor fixes.

A "Christmas Special" GRIEL'S QUEST EXTENDED EDITION has been added too as a bonus to MSXdev'05 status page. In this new edition, 28 levels more have been included besides other minor changes in graphics and sound.

By Yukio

Paragon (1540)

23-09-2006, 00:05

Downloaded most games on September 21.
September 22 , played THE CURE and UNIVERSE: UNKNOWN.

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