Albert Sgaggero MSX Basic Collection (MSX part)

I may have spoiled the fun in my last post, but here I will go more into detail about the MSX stuff of Albert Sgaggero (BCO). When I started to collect his MSX listings, it was clear you could catalog them in the following sequence: 

 

* kaleidoscopes

* Xmas demos

* games

* other demos

* tools

Most of the listings are not that long. The best parts are the Xmas demos, most of them are very colorful and original. The games are quite simple, the most finished one is 

Mr. MoneyEd. I didn't know you could create a whole game when you only have to press 'z' the whole time...

I mentioned the kaleidoscopes earlier, Albert Sgaggero made also a SCREEN 2 and SCREEN 3 variation, with some random notes playing, in a very clever way I never have seen before. 

From the other demos, I like the rectangles of ASCII characters in SCREEN 1 very much, cause until now I didn't know it was possible. And it's not slow either.

There were not many tools, but I like the simple sprite editor, although a self-generated sprite loader is missing. Now I can make a sprite, but I must figure out how to display it.

When I was finished collecting I put them on a 720 Kb MSX disk-image.

Enough programs so I started to create a menu program with a little color animation in it

and submenus.  It took more time than expected, cause not all listings worked as expected

and submenu's given me headaches.

In 1 listing Mr. MoneyEd (again) I got an "Out of data" error. First I blamed the creator to publish a listing with errors and try to fix them, by adding more data lines and change the intro-screen. When I looked at the video of the game on YouTube and checked the listing on the website http://fourseasons.altervista.org it was exactly the same listing! So where came the errors from? BCP used the é and the í to create money signs and walls, but when converting these characters from PC (website) to MSX (BlueMSX), MSX created from the é 2 very different graphics sign, same happened with í. I tried to find the é and í on my (emulated) MSX keyboard and changed the listing until it worked again.

All is fine now, so you can download the MSX disk with BCO stuff.

Mediafire / Pcloud

 

Albert Sgaggero MSX Basic Collection ( WWW part)

Remember a post I made for a nice MSX Xmas demo completely written in MSX-BASIC,  with music? 

That was Albert Sgaggero. Recently,  he uploaded a kaleidoscope SCREEN 1  version 2.0 

I was always interested in automatically generated graphics on my MSX,  so I went to the website fourseasons.altervista.org to see if there was more MSX Basic stuff. I'm glad  I did. 

There was a small selection of MSX listings, but also some Amiga, PC and Vic 20 stuff.  

#Fourseasons was a group which published mostly puzzle games. But also a nice 1vs1 pinball game I wish someone would remake it on MSX 2. It is simple, just play against the CPU, but it could be a great game on MSX 2.

Now you can play it in your browser, cause it is a flash game. 

I don't know if Albert Sgaggero, alias BCO, still like to be creative on MSX or Amiga or PC. 

The latest videos on YouTube are all MSX, so maybe. 

I don't have anything against people that liked more than 1 computer system.

When (many years ago) the MSX world tried to proof MSX was better than CBM 64 

and MSX-2 was better than Amiga 500, I knew better.

Maybe I will mention the subject in a post about MSX Highlights or MSX Failures.

For now, check the MSX stuff and play the PC flash game, a good waste of time.

Paul says "donk" (10 minutes) - TnC vs Swede Mason

After seeing maybe 3 times "Paul McCartney Rabbithole" of Swede Mason, I knew I had to make a very long "Donk" version of it. So I started cutting the beginning, the "donk" part and the very ending. That was not too difficult, so I had the beginning ready in no-time. 

The "donk" part, that must be looped was very hard and when I let my son hear the pre-recorded "donk" video of 10 minutes, he told me the idea was good, the loop was not. Yeah, "the "donk" loop was the most important part of the video, so I had to go back again, started cutting and pasting the "donk" part in my video editor. 

By accident, I cut off a lot of the start of the "donk" part and forgot to cut just before the "one note". I copied the part 3 times and listened with headphones. No bad, not bad at all. I save the new "donk" loop, created a new project from scratch, copy the beginning, copy-pasted the "donk" loop enough times for 10 minutes and copy the ending in it. I listen to the whole thing for maybe 3 minutes and the ending and I was sure this was much better than the first attempt.

But the ending was also a kind of struggle, first I wanted no more than only the last sentence "I wanna sue this guy" with the original logo of Swede Mason, an extra title by myself and the word "sue" replace by "donk". That was not so easy cause the "donk" was not so loud as the spoken voice of Paul. I had to crack the sound up to get a harder "donk" to put into the sentence. 

And that's not all, cause it's a kind of rap, the sentences and subtitles are soo fast it was not possible to cut just the last sentence. So I start the ending with the drum clash, the 2 sentences about "the meaning" and the last sentence with the "donk" in it.

I don't know if Swede Mason would like it, my editing skills are zero compared to his skills in the original video. I only hope it would get banned and maybe even get a couple of likes.

It was just an idea, like so many others I have, now it's published I can go on with other ideas I still have. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, enjoy your 10 minutes stay at  Paul says "donk"

 

 

112 MSX Basic games presents : 112-60 edition

I write already at MIDGET-G.GAM about my inpatients to release the next edition of this disk. With still 59 to go, its a lot of work, I really want to finish the whole series. 

When I play a game for some time I always get fresh ideas about what could be better and what should be untouched. Some ideas work out great and some I had to forget. 
Now we take a quick look at the next countdown of games, from 78 til 60.

78 MINDBUST.GAM
77 PATIENCE.GAM
76 PARAS.GAM
75 KESHISAR.GAM
74 BALBAL.GAM
73 CATCH.GAM
72 BREAKMAN.GAM
71 MRTOPHAT.GAM
70 ADD221.GAM
69 HAL.GAM
68 ICECREAM.GAM
67 SWATFLY.GAM
66 BULLS.GAM
65 SNACKBAR.GAM
64 BTTLSHIP.GAM
63 SUPERHEL.GAM
62 GRAVYARD.GAM
61 SQUARES.GAM
60 MIDGET-G.GAM 

A very diverse collection of games, with a good balance between action, sport and mind games. And I count 3 Pacman clones, BREAKMAN, MRTOPHAT and GRAVYARD. 
There are some listings from former Dutch magazines, like ICECREAM, HAL, SNACKBAR, GRAVYARD, and MIDGET-G. 
Finding a good name for these mostly Dutch games was not always easy, cause translation gave me such strange results,  I had to think hard for a better one. 
But I think I succeed most of the time.

When I started this series, I had no clue, when its gonna end, now I don't mind. 
When I need a break from my other projects, I play some MSX Basic games and try to translate and improve them. 

Some things will stay the same, adding a manual, controls for cursor keys and joysticks,  save high scores. However every game is made in a different way, so I had to dig deep into the listing to change it. And I still like it as long as I don't have to do it every day. 


I may have some surprises in store for the next series 59 til 40, I don't have them all ready by now, I hope some very soon.

BTW: I changed some colors in the menu and the cursor doesn't blink anymore. Hope you like it.

Download this collection 112-60 at Mediafire/Pcloud

Last notes: I still didn't beat my high score in PATIENCE game, I think I made the game too difficult. 

TnC Internet Adventures: Swede Mason

The first post in this series had to be about YouTuber Swede Mason. As I was searching for De Eskimo song of Andre van Duin YT showed me Trump vs Tthe Talking Heads. Being a fan of 80s music and a good musical joke I clicked on it and ... This was video editing at it best, Swede Mason cut just words from speeches of the president Donald Trump and let him speak the whole intro, just like in the original song. But that was not all, he let Trump swinging and dancing all over the screen all in perfect sync with the music. I felt completely numb and all my ideas about my next video seemed to be useless and not worthy to spend time on it. This Swede Mason does his magic not once, but in every video, he made so far, from 2010 til now. Some videos are a bit boring, but if you can let the cast of Game of Thrones rap Ice Ice Baby of Vanilla Ice in perfect sync with the video and audio, you are a real magician. Some other highlights are Masterchef Synesthesia ( with several remixes made by DJs) and Paul McCartney playing rapping and singing ("Donk Donk") a techno song, while the whole video is pieces of interviews and other documentaries. Swede Mason meant to be also a big fan of Arnold Swartsenagger, beware..and the Coke video clip, made from clips of a lot of movies, is really something to remember.

And if you like the songs in the YT vids...
Try this: Swede Mason Mini Mega Mix (Fairly Sweary)

My Music Memories: De Eskimo of Andre van Duin

Now the winter is coming to the Netherlands and lots of people tried to skate on every ditch, that's been frozen, I remembered this Dutch song of a very known (and old) Dutch comedian, Andre van Duin. Why cause I don't like the weather when the temperature goes below zero. 
I always have cold feet and hands, not able to do much when I am outside. 
But sometimes I have to and this song shows exactly the state I am in.

It's, of course, a Dutch song, with Dutch lyrics so I used Google translate and the translation made the song funnier than the Dutch version.
Here are the lyrics:

Try to sing along with the English lyrics, while listening to the Dutch version!
Big fun!

Note: Andre van Duin released another Eskimo song, it was a parody on "Mexico" of the Zangeres Zonder Naam (who sang a Dutch translation of "Le chanteur de Mexico"). 
He made a lot of parodies of songs an although he was also a composer of lots of other songs he released, I still remembered his parody's the best.

TnC Internet Adventures: An Introduction

A new series of posts. In this series want to post about all the things I have found on the net, but don't want to spend a whole post on just 1 subject. Most of them will be not MSX related ( see MSX Google posts ), but these posts will have a lot to do with any music 
I found. These may include some of older stuff from ZooiTroep, most recently discovered.

The internet is big and all the search engines in the world (there are more than just Google and Bing) can find it all. So by using different kind of searches I have found some stuff that seems to be forgotten. In every post, I will try to describe how I find it and will tell something about it why I like it. I guess YouTube will be in the series very often, cause everybody is free to post everything. If it's not get banned of course...

At this point, I don't know if every post will contain more than one discovery. It depends how much I can write about the subject, I guess.

So stay tuned for this new series of posts.  TnC Internet Aventures is starting NOW !!!

 

112 MSX Basic games presents : MIDGET-G.GAM (60)

Finally, the 60th game. I am more than half way the my list. Still 59 to go. 
I really wanted to release the next episode of the 112 MSX Basic games disk edition 
112 til 60, cause it's a kinda milestone and although I like the serie very much, 
it is sometimes very hard to improve the game with the ideas I have. 

My programming skills are limited and from time to time I stepped over the border 
and had to take steps back to be able to save and release the game. 

This means, some ideas would not be realised and some would become simpler than 
the original idea. 

For example: for SQUARES.GAM I wanted a 2 player mode, but it was too hard to manage and for GRAVYARD.GAM I wanted to update the scores with the difficulty level, however it was very fuzzy how the score worked ( and when you go to the next level ) so now you wont get extra points when playing on higher difficulty.  

Let's talk about MIDGET-G.GAM, a midgetgolf game in true MSX Basic. 

Again a listing from the MSX-Gids magazine, also a very good one. 

The Pro's  are: good soundeffects, great layout with scores, fast generated holes.  

The Con's are: just 7 holes, no highscore, hole 7 is nearly impossible, no manual. 

I added a highscore, a manual and a retry function, but I didnt know what to do with hole 7, so I leave it this way. Maybe you find the noise of the ball collision annoying, I prefer it above no sound at all. I have seen more golf games in MSX Basic, but this was the best I could find, even if it had only 7 holes, instead of the normal 18. Well, hole 7 will keep you occupied for quite some time, so I think the (unknown) creator had made a good choice to make no more holes than 7. 

 

The highscore is 2000 and it will be easy to improve that 

( if you manage to get the ball in hole 7, har har ). 

Just a tip, if you had chosen too many strength, then shoot the ball in the oposite direction, the results will suprise you. 

I know there are too many golf games made for MSX 

(by Konami, HAL, Pack-In-Video, etc ), but this game 

doesnt try to copy them.

It's a simple midgetgolf game, with a good playability. 

Hint: Watch where the dot is, and you know what to do.

Goto Mediafire / Pcloud

112 MSX Basic Games presents : SQUARES.GAM (61)

Now, this is a simple game where you play against MSX. There is a field full of squares and 1 of them is red. 
You win, if you get on the red square first or if you cant go to another square. All squares will disappear if you click on them. You can move vertically and MSX plays horizontally. MSX will always go first.
The play screen is very small but random generated, so every game won't take long to finish and is still challenging. 

Finding a good name for this game was difficult, the Dutch title "Vlaktiek" cannot be translated, cause it's a kind of Dutch word joke. I don't know how to make jokes in English. After hard thinking I choose for "GOTORED4", but I didn't like it and changed it back to simple "SQUARES.GAM". 
It described the game very well. 

Of course, I made a sort of manual and ... and...

 

After I wrote this above, I started with applying those changes. 

Soon I found out it was extremely difficult to change the game to a 2 player game. It was not clear which tests were for determining the best turn and which one for moving the sprite. So I throw away that idea of the 2 player game. 

Next was the sprite size, after playing the game more than 10 times, I was convinced the size and shape were good enough and change only the color of the sprite and the name of the player. 

However I got a great idea to create a sort of tournament where you must play 5 rounds against MSX, of course, you can choose to play only 1 round, but you miss the fun of beating the MSX at least 3 times to win the tournament.

Are you willing to challenge MSX? 

Goto Mediafire / Pcloud.

Sorry, there was no sound or music in the whole game. I was not sure to create or borrow some from other games. Repeated sounds can be annoying (see GRAVYARD.GAM) and 

I choose for no sound at all.

.

112 MSX Basic Games : GRAVYARD.GAM (62)

The Dutch title was "Het Verlaten Kerkhof" and was published by the MSX Gids magazine, the creator was not mentioned in the listing. I translated the title into "The Lost Graveyard", cause it seemed to me the best translation. 

At first, I had not much too do than translate a few words and change some colors. 
I was convinced the game was self-explaining and everybody would notice its just a different kind of Pacman, collect "grass" and "gravestones"  and get chased by 3 ghosts. 

But there was more to do, there were 5 different yards, 

lamps to remove more grass. I only found these out,

when I looked closely at the listing. 

So I had to add a manual and the controls, cause the whole game checked only the cursor keys. I add the level number to the play screen so you can see which level you are playing. 

Then, there was the difficulty level. The 3 ghosts are chasing you with the same speed as you can move, it seems impossible to clear a level with the 3 lives you get. 

First I change the gravestones into some kind of powerups, they reset the ghosts to the start positions. It was not enough. 

I added some kind difficulty you can choose, easy with 1 ghost, normal with 2 ghosts and hard with 3 ghosts. It might work for the best so you will be able to see more levels. 

Then I changed a little more, the play screen is created slowly with some sound effects, after you lose a life the play screen will be created again and again. 

It annoyed me so much I remove the recreation of the play screen, the level will be complete when you can escape to the right.

Hope you have fun with, I think, the 3rd Pacman clone in my 112 MSX Basic games list. 
And I am proud to present it to you. Get it on Mediafire or Pcloud, or wait till game 60 is released. Then I will upload the 112 MSX Basic games disk 112 till 60.

My Music Memories : Everybody want to rules the world - Tears for Fears

Never being a big fan of Tears for Fears, "Shout" (from the same album "Songs from the Big Chair") was also a big hit, somehow its too poppy for a song called "Shout".
Check out "Twist and Shout" of The Beatles and you know what I mean. 
I listened recently to "Shout" and I still think it's too smooth, but what a great guitar solo! 
Even better than the one in "Everybody Wants To Rule The World".  
 
And that is the song I want to post about. I already posted a long time ago about the Mojo Jojo version from Cartoon Network and proves it doesn't matter how bad you sing it, the music will make it sound like you are a real popstar. 
The steady beat, spacey synths, and a funky guitar make the song unforgettable. 
I don't mind about other hits, like "Sowing The Seeds Of Love" or the duet with Oleta Adams, called  "Woman in Chains"
For me, there is only one song that counts, "Everybody Wants To Rule The World". 

I did a quick search for any remix and this one from Lorde in combi with Assassin's Creed the movie (not the game)  is the most impressive remix and movie of the song.
Even the trailers were boring and confusing, better watch all Cinema Trailers of the games.
And even a special Trump remix (don't worry,  he won't sing)
More DJs tried to improve the original, some fail, some are just outstanding.
Not only DJs want to mix this song, some other (unknown) artists covered the song very nicely, like Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Relient K  and Aron Wright or even acapella.

Ow, I forget the 8-bit versions, also a very important category in music on YouTube, some even with vocals! I also find a remix, with a video you will remember forever, take a look here.
I could not resist adding more good remixes,  cause I like music in a lot of genres.

112 MSX Basic games presents : SUPERHEL.GAM (63)

Another game from MSX gids magazine and another game with an helicopter.
My guess because heli's are much slower than airplanes, its easier to program in MSX Basic, high speed shooters with airplanes are nearly impossible without the help of a little machinecode. 
 


But this game tries and manage to create a really challanging action game with an heli.
It has some music, own characterset for the texts, good instructions, 7 different levels, nice intro screen and you could save/load your name and hi score! 
Just because I wanted 112 Basic games on a disk with a menu and not 111 games, I had to remove it and change the game a little so it has now the default hi score of 500 and as long as you play it, you can beat that easy. Yes, this game is not so easy, you must find out how every level works. 

Mr. Jansen made more very big MSX Basic games, like platformers and other shooters, those were just a little to slow to be playable for me. This one is good enough, if your reflexes are fast. It may be just a MSX Basic version of an commercial MSX game, I still think it original enough to be included in my 112 MSX Basic Games. Agreed?

Btw most texts were in English, except the manual. A bit weird,  but hey, more Dutch MSX programmers made the same fault. Or was it on purpose, I guess I never gonna know.

I assumed it was an easy game to translate, but in the end I created a training mode and better hi-score input routine. So it took me a lot of testing. However the game is worth it.


Mediafire / Pcloud

BTW The screenshot shows my highest score, but due to a bug I was not able to fill in the hi score. This is my only proof.

112 MSX Basic games presents : BTTLSHIP.GAM (64)

This game was published in a Dutch MSX magazine called  MSX Gids. I was not a subscriber and only bought it when the listings interested me. I remember this magazine as the one that had the most listings, more than any other  magazine in the Netherlands. 

In Dutch the game is called Zeeslag, which is translated as Seawar, but the game principe 
is more common known as Battleship so I translated that way. 
I didnt want to change much in the intro screen, it's a lot of work drawing the long title "Battleship" instead of "ZEESLAG". 

What I did change was the manual,speed up the music, change the controls so you can use your joystick or cursors instead pressing some keys to go on. Ad Houwenaars did a terrific job, programming it. It's easy to read the listing and change it, its divided in labeled routines, not very common in MSX Basic games. Most of the time the listings are compressed to speed up the game. Well, Battleship is no action game, there is no timelimit or fast reponses needed. The purpose of the game is find all hidden ships in a square, by firing shots. If you hit something the game will let you know by showing the right colour. 

It could be made as a MSX-1 game,  but SCREEN 2 is not big enough to show all needed information, that is why mr. Houwenaars choose for the biggest MSX-2 screen, SCREEN 7. 
Now every info you need has a place on the screen, which made the game more playable and re-playable. So yes this is a MSX-2 ( and higher) game, with good reason. 
The biggest change I made, was let the player decide if he want to play or wait for the manual. Once you played the game, you know the rules and dont want to see the ever again. 

I inserted my highscore 241, it won't be easy to beat, cause you need a bit of luck too. 
The game is truely 1 player game,  you don't need to play again your MSX ( cause MSX won't play fair) or anyone else. Just get the highest score, thats all. And I like that. 

Mediafire / Pcloud

TnC House Classics presents : I Love You... Stop! - Red 5

In my opinion Red 5 had only 3 hits, `I Love You... Stop´, ´Da Beat Goes` and 'For This World' 

I choose for "I Love You... Stop", because of the female voice and the nice picked violin sounds, the trademark of Red 5 
(I assumed). But if you use the same trick 3 times...after that I heard nothing special from them. 

Red 5 made lots of other songs (see list below), but only the 3 tracks I mentioned earlier are special. Still, I like this song, easy to humm or whistle.

Some made a megamix of all their hits, but the ones I find on YT were just not worthy to link to. I found out Red 5 was just another alias of Thomas Kukula
 
Maybe you know him better as General Base, another alias.
The red shark was the trademark of all Red 5 releases.

• 1997: Red 5 - I Love You... Stop!
• 1998: Red 5 - Lift Me Up
• 1998: Red 5 - Deeper Love
• 1998: Red 5 - Da Beat Goes
• 1998: Red 5 - Fiesta Fiesta
• 1998: Red 5 - Gimme Luv
• 2000: DJ Red 5 - Que Pasa
• 2001: DJ Red 5 - Rhythm & Drums 2001 ft. DJs@Work
• 2003: DJ Red 5 - Da Beat Goes - Reanimated
• 2010: DJ Red 5 - Da Beat Goes - 2010

Fan of Madness ???

Hey you ! Dont watch that. Watch this. This is the heavy heavy monstersound. The nuttiest sound of all. ONE STEP BEYOND ! ( or something like that)

 Do you still ? remember it? No ? I'ts Madness you idiot. These guys made ska music populair with hits like One Step Beyond, Nightboat to Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Our house and plenty more. I was in a period that I bought only "Best of" CDs of artists I knew from a couple of hits, but never bought any album of them. 
So I bought the "Divine Madness" which turned out to be more a single collection than a really the best of with only hits (I now found out it was the CD of the DVD with all their videos).
 
I didnt mind cause I discovered a lot of great songs I never heard of and even some ballads that were made more famous by other artists. Like My Girl and It Must Be Love. You have to listen to the lyrics, most of them are a bit cynical and sad, even in the most happy sounding songs like Baggy Trousers.

Years later, I saw a come back concert of Madness, no new songs, just a couple of teenagers of 40 years and older trying to be young again. 
What a waste, it was easy money for Madness members. 
For me time to switch the channel. 

My Music Memories: Mossels - De Mosselman

Another example of my bad taste in Dutch music. When house was coming up in the early 90s, everybody tried to create a new house-genre to make some money. One of them was De Mosselman. His first single Mossels was an example of "you get a famous Dutch song, put a housebeat in it and sell it as GabberHouse music" .

 
For a while it worked and many Dutch children songs, like De Mosselman got a second life as a GabberHouse tune. Like always, the first songs in a new musicgenre are really good, before everybody was copying it. De Mosselman was one good example of this GabberHouse genre, I still think its funny and a great dance track. 

Warning: Not all Dutch people will dressed a dance like the people you see in the videoclip. Sorry! 

After the succes of Mossels he continues with another great cover Opzij Opzij Opzij of the Dutch composer Herman van Veen. He had his own website (demosselman.nl) with photo's,  gigs and even some short songs never relased like Kruimeldief. He even sang a duet with Vader Abraham, a Famous Dutch singer of "The little café by the harbour" and Sieneke with a Gabberhouse version of her Eurovision Song Contest. ( I agree with the comments of some people in the Netherlands it was much better than the original (brrr).

But after a couple of years GabberHouse was dead, the site was closed and 
De Mosselman  (alias of Sander Scheurwater) is working now in a kitchen shop.

If you want to sing along with De Mosselman,  I translated the lyrics in English.  
Give it a try and you be the star of any Karaoke evening.

"Say you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
Say you know the Musselman, he comes from Skeveningen
 
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
Yes, you know the Musselman, he comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
 
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
 
Yes, do you know de Mosselman
Yes, do you know de Mosselman
Yes, do you know de Mosselman
 
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen

Mussels Mussels
Mussel mussel mussel
Mussel mussel
Mussel mussel mussel mussel mussel...

Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
 
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen
Yes, you know the Musselman, the Musselman, the Musselman
... He comes from Skeveningen"

Amazing short MSX-1 demo: Wintergatan Marble Machine by Guillian & WYZ

I was just browsing for diskmagazines on MSX Games World (yes, they have them too). Then I found a collection of known and unknown MSX demos. Including this one.

 "Wintergatan Marble Machine". The screenshots made me curious about the demo, 
so I watch the YouTube video. It was unbelievable, moving pictures on SCREEN-2 while playing PSG music ? 

 I did not believe it, so I downloaded the Rom and played in BlueMSX. Yes, it really played on SCREEN 2. How was this possible ? I still don't know. But the composer WYZ (see logo below) has a lot of stuff made on Soundcloud using only (MSX) PSG and SCC soundchips.

Of course the pictures were "borrowed" from the original YouTube video
 but it is still amazing how only 2 people, WYZ and programmer Guillian made this short MSX-1 demo.
The original song is much longer, but I guess the Rom had its storage limits.
There is also a maybe even more impressive Minecraft cover completly made with redstone and noteblocks. Enjoy.

MSX Highlights : MSX Diskmagazines

In the Netherlands, we MSX-ers had several MSX magazines with reviews, listings, and software on tapes or disks. However, as the goes by, MSX magazines disappeared from the magazine stores and subscriptions were canceled after a while. 

But many MSX groups filled that gap and released countless magazines on disk. Of course, the idea was stolen from Compile with their Disc Stations, but when BCF released a couple of their own Disc Stations, with demos, games and lots of stuff to read, every MSX club made their own Magazine on disk, some had multiple. To name a few Dutch Disk Magazines:

- BCF Disc Station
- Dragon Disk
- Quasar
- Genic Clubguide
- Sunrise Magazine 

- Future Disk

- Golden Power Disk

- Paradise

- Near Dark
- ROM
- Track

- D.I.S.K.

- MCCA  Infodisk

It was a great way to be more famous in MSX land, get some money and release small programs that nobody would buy if they had to sell it separately. For me it was a great way to know about the newest MSX software, see some demos and play some minigames.  

A couple of personal notes about some disk magazines:
* I was a great fan of the Golden Power Disk (always a yellow disc), sadly the stopped all sudden. 
* I had a subscription on Sunrise Magazine ( there was also a Sunrise Picture disk but my budget was not high enough to have both. 
* Later when the Sunrise Magazine stopped I got a subscription on the Future Disk, which kept going when almost every other MSX disk magazine had stopped. 
* As EMP-Soft we send a disk full of music files and some demos to MCCA Infodisk, when they ask for MSX software to put on their Infodisk. I checked and they put some of them on Infodisk 6/7/8/9.

At MSX.ORG they kept a decent collection of Dutch disk magazines, but there was so much more. My own collection is not that big, I only bought most of those disks on MSX fairs. 
And not every magazine was worth to subscribe. On MSX fairs I always wanted more to buy than just disk magazines, like music demos, new games, and utilities or new hardware. 


Anyway, most of these disks were made for MSX-2 computers, cause they were most common in the Netherlands,  so there was not much stuff made for MSX-2+ and Turbo-R. For this post, I will put my collection of some obscure Dutch disk magazines in 1 big zip file as a surprise package.

I hope you have fun with this collection even if most of the texts are all in Dutch. Mediafire / Pcloud 

For me, it was a real MSX Highlight, after nobody wanted to publish anything about MSX. The MSX scene itself stood up and created their own MSX magazines.

My Music Memories: Today of Junkie XL

I was preparing a video serie of my favorite vehicles in Midtown Madness 2, with a Top 5 of trucks, muscle cars, rally cars, planes ( really !!!) etc etc. Just wanna showcase them and do a quick race. Therefor I wanted some race music so I listened to OSTs of race games whom cars have been converted in MM2, like the Need For Speed, Driver, Flatout, Midnight Club series.Then I found this track. and the intro guitar riff kept on pounding in my head for almost a week. So now you will have it too. 

Bye bye. I will read your comments over a week or so... 

I dont know , I like the video clip about a hairdresser making very strange haircuts, 
mister Junkie XL himself. 

After this wonderfull track "Today" I googled for more of Junkie XL, a Dutchman like me. Sorry to say, most of it was boring or not my kind of music. That's a bit strange cause I was in the past a big fan of Nerve (Junkie XL was one part of the duo) and his remixes  & productions with KONG, which I also fan of. 

I guess when you get older your music taste changes a little. So there will no "Fan Of Junkie XL", his "little less conversation" remix of Elvis Presley is simple and still another great track ( with his alias JXL ).

I was just about to publish this post when I remembered I bought once a mega single-CD 
of Junkie XL, when Junkie XL was a Dutch band, with the rapper "Rude Boy" from Urban Dance Squad. It featured "Billy Club", "No Remorse" and 2 remixes of tracks of the album "Saturday Teenage Kick". It was so called "Big Beat" music, like The Prodigy made.
I liked it but not enough to buy the full album. I wish I did, cause 2 tracks "Def Beat" and 
"No Remorse" featured in the OST of racegames I still like to listen to.

Fan of The Blues Brothers ???

I have told already some things about the movies "The Blues Brothers" and "Blues Brothers 2000" when I post about "Sollicitere" of Janse Bagge Bend. 
If you read it you know what the movies are all about and the good music in it. When I found out The Blues Brothers were a real band I bought their album "Briefcase full of blues". 


It wasn't what I expected after seeing the movie, I am still not a big fan of Rhythm & Blues. So it was a bit of a waste of money. I better had bought the soundtrack of the movie. Looking at the wiki page of the soundtrack, lots of good stuff was left behind. They had better decide to publish 2 versions, the standard and the extended version with 2 CDs. 

I still liked the music of the first movie and the crazy story so when "Blues Brothers 2000" came out, I got to the cinema to watch it.
Like I said in an earlier post, better watch the songs from the movie and forget all about the story. After that, I was still a fan of The Blues Brothers, the 1st movie but not the band ( the picture, you see above, was hanging many years on my wall).

The 1st movie was such a great success, so they (Titus) made not 1 but 2 Blues Brothers video games. 
It was simple platformers with good music of the movie, remade for FM soundcards, like the early Soundblasters.
When I search for pictures or even videos, I found a nice website where you can play them in your browsers!

Check them out, here and there.  

Of course, there was also a Blues Brother 2000 game, this time only for Ninento 64 game console, you can try it here and there. On my computer, it was to slow to play. Better download an N64 emulator (like Project 64) and try your luck at some from the archive (like Rom Hustler) on the net.

I quit this post with some nice YouTube links with Blues Brothers (& Friends) music.
Hope they won't be banned soon.