112 MSX Basic Games presents: Clown Diver (85)

I played a lot of MSX Basic games and some games were so well made, I wanted to included them here in the 112 list. But I felt this 112 list should include MSX Basic games that have more original gameplay.
That means, I wont include any Pacman/Froggy/Space Invaders/Snakey style games. Sadly I re-discover 3 very nice Pacman clones, which could not be included.

Well, if I cant find enough MSX Basic games I maybe reconsider. There were clones and there were clones that had a slightly different gameplay that made them unique.

And CLOWN DIVER is unique. Let a clown jump into a basket is really original game idea.

The original title was PIPO DUIKER, very Dutch, so I translated it into CLOWN DIVER.
I like the idea, the animated sprites and the good gameplay, this time MSX Basic is fast enough to let it work. Well... all you have to do is press the firebutton at the right time.

Mediafire / Pcloud are waiting for you.

I hope I can find a good MSX Basic racing game, but most games I saw so far were too slow or too ugly. I guess MSX Basic was too slow for any racing game.

112 MSX Basic Games presents : HORROR.GAM (84)

While I was looking for more Basic games that were good enough for the 112 list, I realised it was almost Halloween and everybody does something Halloween related.

So on my list to be included in the 112, I found this game, MOUNTAIN of HORROR, a listing from the Dutch MCM Magazine and S. Gommans won a price with it.
Perfect for Halloween.


It pretend to be more than 1 game, with a nice long intro, but that was not true.
Game 2 etc were never made, which is kinda sad, cause game 1 is very difficult to succeed and if you fail, don't blame the programmer,  the game itself runs fast enough.

The game itself is very simple, run from left to right, without being hit by aggresive bats. I have to admit I wasnt able to get to the other side once. Can you do better ?

I forgot to mention I added more controls and the intro so it was a lot shorter and more interactive for the gamer. Strangely the short description was in Dutch, but all other texts were already in English, so not much to translate.

Get it on Media Fire or Pcloud as long as its available...

TnC House Classics presents : 2 Times from Ann Lee

Another mellow track from long ago. There were a lot of songs in that period (1999), made by the same receipe, like 2 Times. 

Easy to sing-a-long, sang by a beautiful young female singer and a slow housebeat. So I easily could suggest King of my castle, or Saturday night, or Feel what you want to feel and many others. 

I choose 2 Times, because I hear the fun the female singer had during the recording of the song.  Some songs are perfectly sang, but was there a computer to help out ? And I don't like Barbies singing, like in the group Aqua. 

Do I need to explain more ?

Then I leave you with some remixes: Italo , Vavva   , Ecstasy G  and Sunloverz 

 

 

MSX Google: week 34, 1996

I'm not very good at counting or remember dates. So here is week 34 after releasing week 35.

This time I was looking for a comfortable way to play MSX-games on a big Smart TV and my Philips NMS8280 computer.
As you may know the joystick connectors and the keyboard connector are on the backside of this computer, which is not very handy if the computer is stored in a tv furniture next to an old X-Box.

So I needed extension cables for both the joysticks and keyboard.
Well, the joystick connectors on MSX are, lucky for us, very common used in all sorts of micro-computers. If you look for Sega extension cables and you have a MSX joystick at hand, it should be easy to find those.  But until now I could not find any keyboard extension cable or the right components to make it yourself.

This is a blind spot on the MSX-market, those MSX companies who sell games should sell also extension cables for any MSX.

Well, I ordered my joystick extension cables (here) and search for some MSX-games cheats.

I found a new fresh website called cheatmsx.com, with a forum, great search options and more. Check it out.

Then I search for some kind of MSX gameloader that works with joystick so you dont need the keyboard to start a game.  And here I found 2 versions, both only for MSX-DOS 2 (which I sold many years ago, without a harddisk I didnt see any improvements with MSX-DOS 1). But there is also an improved MIF-package V2.2 !!!

 I bought on a MSX-fair a MIF v1.0 package, cause I was amazed how nice the (converted) pictures looked on SCREEN 7 or SCREEN 8 when converted with MIF.

MIF decompressing is a bit slow on a standard MSX-2 and the v1.0 PC conversion tool was not very userfrendly, it could only convert pictures in the same resolution as the MSX-2 (with some interlacing).
I havent tried the new MIF package, the screenshots looked very promising.

MSX Google week 35, 2016

From the moment I discover the MSX Emulator BlueMSX, I always searching for new ways to playing MSX games or MSX games related content.

This week I search for MSX related Andriod app and found a nice MSX Ringtones app with some famous MSX-1 and MSX-2 games. It promised some FM-Pac music, but mostly it's PSG and some SCC tunes.

The saddest part however is...there are not a lot of games to choose from, I think maybe
8 or 10 MSX-1 and maybe 8 MSX-2 ringtones. My Acer has standard more than this app !


Check out: the app or go to the Play Store on your mobile phone.

In the past I found all kind of websites where you can download roms, cassettes and disks for free for any old computersystem, like MSX.

It's a nice way to play unknown MSX games for the first times, but I also knew there should be a better way.
I found a couple of websites where you could play old MS-DOS games in your browser and a MSX Emulator written in Java, that crashed with a lot of MSX-games, without any reason.

Then I visited The Filehunter website and I could not believe my eyes, almost every fav MSX-game was ready to play by clicking on the picture in my browser. Aleste, Beamrider,
Hyper Rally, Super Laydock and many many more. THIS IS AWESOME ! And it's called WebMSX.

This is worth the waiting, I havent check if it works with Andriod browser, but what a fun playing MSX games
and you need only a browser. No longer rippen the MSX Roms from your old computer
and put them in a map for the emulator to find (or not)...

MSX Google: week 33, 2016

While I was compiled The Most Ultimate Paranoid Demo (2016 version) and lot of ideas got wasted, due lack of time and programming skills, I got the brilliant idea to add sprites to the demo-parts.

I searched for a good sprite editor and find a great online sprite designer, called TinySprite, from the author of the famous MSX Screen Conversor online, Rafael Jannone.

TinySprite let you easily create sprites, it can also export in a lot of formats or create

a whole MSX-Basic listing for you.

After I designed all the sprites I wanted to use in the Paranoid Demo, I checked Google for more MSX sprites.

To my suprise I found 2 websites totally dedicated to sprites from ANY computersystem
(even MSX...).

Check out these 2 sites: The Spriters Resource
and Sprite Database

If you ever want to create a MSX-game or animation,
you really have to take a look.
But I dont know how you can convert a PNG picture into sprite-data on a MSX computer.... 

MSX demo : The Most Ultimate Paranoid Demo (2016 version)

Well at first I didn't want to create a 2016 version of the Turbo Basic / KUN compiler Paranoid Demo for MSX-1,
when I started collecting stuff for ToolZ and DemoZ part 3. 

But when I saw the clumcy loader for the demo parts
and watched all the demo parts, I started to think how to improve some parts, cause some parts were finished
and some parts seemed to miss something. 

For example: part 1 ( worktitle FINAL.TRB ) was finished,
but part 2 ( LIJNLET.TRB ) seemed to be only partly. 

I started to collect new ideas and found out the old 1990 version had 2 almost identical parts ( SINUSLET.TRB and SINUSLKR.TRB ) with 1 difference, the characterset. 

So when I created a some kind of playlist for the demo-parts, I got not enough parts.

I had to create some new ones to get the playlist I really wanted.

What are the main changes between the 1990 and the 2016 version ?

01) Using the same characterset for all scrollers

02) Creating new scroller texts for each scroller (except the 1st one).

03) Designed new sprites and sprites animation

04) After pressing a key, new part is automaticly loaded

05) Adding a new scroller and another demo part

06) Some sound effects added to demo parts.

I am still not completly happy with the demo as it is now.
It has no music only some sounds, the scroller parts looked be bit the same and the demo parts are quite simple.

However I like the designed sprites and the way I made
a parody on some demo's of famous MSX groups from
the (Dutch) demoscene, like Sigma, FAC and BCF.

Still wanna see this crap ? Gavitex / Mediafire

NB: You have to press a key to continue to the next demo part, but be a little patient...

TnC Collected Works: The Turbo Basic Demo Disk side A and B

On a big computer fair in the Netherlands I bought from Sparrowsoft a disk with 2 A4 manual. It was called KUN compiler that could speed up MSX Basic programs a lot.
Of course it was not true, it could only speed up some Basic commands and only on a MSX-2 or higher.
Well, that was not true, but the KUN compiler worked on MSX-2 screens a lot faster.

When I started to use it I had to rewrite the programs to get no errors and collected my findings in 1 textdocument while creating Turbo Basic versions of all kinds of small graphical Basic demo's.
 
As you know an 720 Kb disk can only held 112 files,
so soon I had more and the disk was still not full.
I decided to use FLIP.COM a nice program which allows you to use both FAT tables, to store almost 224 filed. Looking at all demo's I had to admit there are some different versions
of the same demo.

I am still proud of the tricks and tips I collect during my own adventures with Turbo Basic.

Yes it is confusing story, I bought the KUN compiler on disk, but later I found out it was original sold on cartridge, so maybe I bought legally an illegale copy from Sparrowsoft.

And all programs made for the KUN compiler (like the examples I got on my KUN disk) had the extension .TRB, which was short for Turbo Basic a more common name for the KUN compiler.
Even more confusing some MSX-ers called Turbo Basic compiler XBASIC.


I am not sure how many products in the Dutch MSX scene were made with a little help of Turbo Basic, cause programming in assembler was much cooler than (Turbo) Basic so less MSX-ers mentioned they used it.

Have fun with the simple GFX demo's. Why this post in MSX Failures and MSX Highlights ?

It's a kind of failure cause there are so many commands
it cannot speed up, it's a kind of highlight, cause when it can speed up you get amazing results and is MSX-2 Basic not so slow anymore.


Side A (with English menu and English Tips): Gavitex  / Mediafire
Side B (with Dutch menu and Dutch Tricks): Gavitex / Mediafire

NB 1: Please note: both side A and B have totally different
         programs !!!
NB 2: Cause Side A had 112 files there was no room to
         auto-start it, you have to run MENU-A.BAS in MSX-DOS
        (see screenshot).
NB 3: Of course I didnt create all these demo's in the menu's
         and listings I tried to preserve the original creator
         or publisher.

 

TnC Collected Works: TnC ToolZ & DemoZ part C

I was already working on it since June this year, but the remake of The Paranoid Demo kept me occupied for far too long.
In my vacation I had more time and feel the need again to post as much as possible and tried to modify my old Basic programs to make them much enjoyable for non-Dutchies.




So here is part C of Toolz and DemoZ with lots of STP tools
(SCREEN 6 pictures for Dynamic Publisher, in Dutch we call them Stempels, in English it's called clip-art) and some simple demo programs.








You also find an old Philips Designer Demo I made and the unfinished KUN compiler / Turbo Basic demo for MSX -1 called "The Most Ultimate Paranoid Demo from the year 1990. I ran out of ideas and was not really happy about the scroller parts. So when I collected the parts of the demo I got some new ideas like creating 1 long demo by running the next part by the previous one. But for this disk I published the unfinished 1990 version. Maybe later I release my updated version of The Paranoid demo of 2016.

Also I included a Mondriaan Generator for MSX-1, you know that famous Dutch painter that made some Cubism paintings. I had a lot of fun creating it and create some textfiles about it in both Dutch and English (sortof). This is version 1.9





This is the last disk full of tools, I have still some demo's left.
These will be published together with lots of music and music tools on the ZoundZ and DemoZ part 1. I think I have some stuff for at least 2 disks ( I hope so).

Gavitex / Mediafire

112 MSX Basic games presents : UNTIL-0.GAM (87)

When I made this post, I was sure I would publish MIRRORS.GAM first, but after my changes the game got worse and I had to start over again, maybe next year...

After the ascii graphics of MIRRORS.GAM here is another game that doesnt use the MSX-1 videochip very good.
This time the author of this game is TnC, myself.

I had a great idea and tried to program it in MSX Basic.
That was no problem, the graphics were.
No clue how to VPOKE nice screen layouts, so I used the
only VPOKE command I know (re-used from the MSX-1 LOUP demo).

If someone can help me out with some SCREEN 1 graphics
( ex Konami employees ) , please let me know...

Let's talk about UNTIL-0.GAM oftwel Until Zero.

The gameplay is simpel, press fire before the timer goes below 0, the closer to 0, the more points.

Each round the timer will be set on a high value to increase the difficulty.
And the game was made for max. 3 players !
Not 4, I hate those games where 2 players had to use the keyboard together,
so it's 2 joystick players and 1 cursorkeys player.

While you all waiting for the timer to go zero, randomly will appear several logo's of the "Until Zero game" to make the waiting less boring.

I actual got the idea from a Wii party game where you have to count to 10 and press a button at the right time. Who is original anymore ?


Please leave any comment after you played my very first full game I ever made, 15 years after I stopped using my NMS8245...

Gavitex / Mediafire

 

112 MSX Basic Games presents : CAVERN.GAM (92)

And I forgot to post this one too...


Courbois Software made some simple, yet very enjoyable MSX Basic games, like this one.

It's called Cavern Rescue.

You have to save the people by moving them (one by one)  through the rising water in the cavern, while trying to avoid the rocks falling from above.

And don't hit the ceiling or you lose one life.

I like the wellmade playscreen of the game and changed only the language and added more controls. Strange enough it's easier to play with faster water speed than slow, cause with slow speed you get more rocks falling down.

Games like this, make me go on in this series of 112 games.
So go to Gavitex and Mediafire !

112 MSX Basic Games presents : JACKJUMP.GAM (91)

Sorry I forgot to publish this post earlier...

Another jumping game, another Jack. I had already a "Jumpin Jack" in this serie, but instead you have to climb up, like the old Donkey Kong, you have to go to the right,
simple isn't it ?

Well, I made it to the 2nd level before I run out of lives, so it's not a easy as it looks.

Timing is the key to get to the next level. This is another Courbois Software game
and I haven't change much, only translating.

It looks ok, it plays ok, you can play it with keyboard or joystick, it has a Game Over screen, nothing to complain
about, except...

The game was called "Jumpin Jack" originally, so I had to think of a better name.

Because our hero has a big hat, I decided the game should be named Jack something.
Again I could not think of any better name than "Jack Jumper". Sorry about that, but I'm sure both "Jack" games are worth playing.

Gavitex en Mediafire are there play to be...

MSX demo: MSX 1 MEGA DEMO

I was just browsing on YouTube and found a MSX 1 demo from YouTube channel I never heard of. The title was not very original and it seems the creators made only 1 MSX demo.

Pity, cause this demo is very promising, some parts look like they had typed over some basic listings (the 3D designs), the best parts are the pictures with a little animation.

Impressive what they could do with only 15 colors with colorspill.

One of the creators was a big fan of Madonna as you can see in the demo. 

There is also a nonsense story, like in Konami Nemesis II (?) with nice screenwipes.

The best part was the picture of a colibri with birds singing sounds, no samples, just pure PSG. There is not much sound or music in this demo, but I have seen a lot of MSX-1 demo's with horrible PSG music so I dont miss it that much...Like other MSX-1 demo's there is a sample part, so silent I had to boost my speakers to the max to hear some (I think) Madonna song.

Here is the link.

Please give this demo more likes, it deserves it.

William Tell Overture & Iron Maiden (MSX part)

I had listening to a lot of 2 CELLOS covers already, when I heard their The Trooper Overture and I realised I had some related MSX stuff about William Tell Overture
and Iron Maiden...

In my early years behind a PC I found an GW-Basic book with some Basic programs in it.
At that time PCs had one 1 channel PSG sound, so it was easy to convert to MSX-Basic.

Here is my version of the final of William Tell Overture, the title is still a bit Dutchy...
Gavitex / Mediafire

 I converted some text-oriented games too, but I found all of them very boring and wont put just 1 of them on my 112 MSX-Basic games disk.





To my suprise I found not 1 but 2 Iron Maiden demo's in my collection.

First one was from USE CRACKINGS, bundled with TSF Pleasure Demo I en II. For your pleasure I removed the last 2 demos, cause it was kinda hardcore and good examples how you should not digitize with your NMS8280 computer. It's just a couple of digi's and a nice use of Wordstore+ (digitized speech) in the beginning.

Gavitex / Mediafire


Second one was from Unicorn Corporation called Wasted Years, again digi's but smaller ones so more digi's to show and you can listen to 1 nice original MSX-Music/FM-Pac song.
Well, in the intro you hear another, the intro of "The number of the beast", well known by hard rock fans.


Gavitex / Mediafire

William Tell Overture & Iron Maiden (YouTube part)

A couple of months ago I was searching for a better remix of Thunderstruck of AC/DC, 
one of the few favs of the band and found The Dueling Fiddlers .
It's nice to hear an instrumental version of Thunderstruck, but both fiddlers didnt impress me a bit. There was no energy no power, just technical correct.

Then I clicked on the 2 CELLOS version  and I was completly speechless, of course the joke of shoking a classical public with rock is very old, but the way the 2 CELLOS perform is just out of this world. So much power, so much energy and some jokes to make it perfect.

So does the William Tell Overture and Iron Maiden in common ?
I thought nothing until but 2 CELLOS created a crossover YOU  MUST HEAR
They called it The Trooper Overture, a perfect crossover between classical music 
and classic hard rock.

Once you hear both, you may wonder, can they play ballads too ?
Yes, listen to their U2 or The Police versions.

And they made plenty of great 2 CELLOS covers of many classic (rock)hits.
Or instrumentals, if you dont wanna miss a song this playlist is a good start.

What are you waiting for ? Go check them out !

If you wanna hear more Iron Maiden and other hard rock favs of mine, check out these 2 tapes (and 2 sides) at mixcloud.

MSX Demo : Dance House Demo (sample demo)

I only post this, cause the samples you hear in the demo ar er mostly taken from the Italian Dance Classics CDs and recorded at a friend of mine long time ago ( I say thanks in the scrolltext). Let's start with the beginning...;-)

I created the demo, cause I had so much good samples looped and after creating the Metal Demo II ,I wanted to create a bigger, better demo with changing colourshifts, more hidden keys etc etc. 

Well, I failed. It had nice intro screen, more samples, more hidden keys an English scrolltext for all non-Dutchies but I couldn't find a picture of a dancefloor I could use and I hadn't a NMS8280 yet, so digitizing it was out of the question. 

I had to draw it myself and the result was more than terrible, it was poorly drawn. 

To make it worse I draw it in Videographics and had to converted it, because I could not get used to any other drawing programs I had on my NMS8245. 

On top of that, the automatic colorshifts got me headaches to code it and also by watching it in the end result. 

So my next demo with Music Module samples was a failure, but things got worse....

Then I made the KAOS II demo...

Do you really want to download this ?

(check out the KAOS II demo post)

MSX demo : KAOS II (sample demo)

Somehow I like to make programs with an 2 in the title.

I guess because when I release the first version , there is also room for improvements. 

Not this time. 

KAOS II was in fact an attempt to create an MSX version of 

a part of an Amiga 500 demo, called KAOS . 

It had simple fast moving animation in less colours and the music was a combination of maybe 4 samples, played in some kind of order. 

I got the idea to create an MSX version, when I manage the routine to create 13 different screens in SCREEN 0. 

And I had some nice samples, leftovers from the Dance House Demo, of course all sampled from Italian Dance Classics. What could go wrong ? 

After I finished  the demo 

I knew the answer already. 

I can't remember if I upload it to any MSX BBS ( the fastest way to get tons of MSX software for free, but you had to pay your phone bill).

Why was it so bad ? Take a look at the screenshots.

It was not easy to draw some stuff on a textscreen with only 40 columns and I ran out of idea's very soon. That's why... The only good part is the samples, but in general it's doesn't come close to what that Amiga 500 demo does easily. 

A couple months ago I tried to create better ASCII-art 

( that's what it is basicly ) in 40 columns for this demo, 

to give it a 2nd change. 

But no. Only 80 columns or more give you something 

you can recognize. 

So this KAOS II demo was my 2nd failure. 

After this I learned from my mistakes and in the next demo with Music Module samples all GFX were made by my MSX partner in EMP-SOFT, it was called "The Revolution Demo"...

And that is another story...

You can download my both failures ( KAOS II and Dance House Demo) on one disk at

Gavitex and Mediafire...

But I warned you !!!

Italo Dance Classics complation 1 2 3 4

I wanted to say something more about the Italo Dance Classics complation. 

I bought the CDs in 4 different shops to get the complete serie. Years later after I sold the CDs for 2 Euro a piece 
( I needed any money fast) I tried to locate them on the net. 

Well, there are countless Italo Dance Classics CDs made, so that kept me busy for some time. 
Finally I found the right serie of Arcade.
Check out the stylish artwork on the left.

When I had the 4 CD'S, I travelled at lot to get to the office. 
So I used my Sony walkman for the long journeys.
I created lots of tapes with the best songs of any CD, including the Italo Dance Classics serie. 

Lately I discovered the mp3 version of that tape with highlights of the serie. In my memory I had more songs for just 1 tape, but not enough for 2. I guess that 2nd tape was never made. .. I upload the tape so you can listen for yourself. If you like disco and synthesizer music, give it a try. 

When I searched for the songs on the net of all 4 CDs I noticed that every song had a least an 12" version or remixes from the same era. 
Now I have more then 1Gb with only remixes or 12" versions. Lots of them are just a waste of space, so no need to share it, just Google a track's name with the word remix and you know what I mean...