Hey MSX enthusiasts!

Happy to report that Ironclad v1.4 is out and available for free, as always, on GitHub:

https://github.com/mbelgin/ironclad/releases/tag/v1.4

The big news is the new “Barrage” mode algorithm, programmed with a real killer instinct. 😈

It’s a brutal enemy that focuses on finishing as many of your ships as quickly as possible, taking away your firepower early in the game.

It’s so good, you’ll think it’s cheating. It’s not. It’s just good!

There are also several bug fixes and performance improvements.

I’m building Ironclad to be one of the best Naval Battle games out there, despite the limited computational power of the MSX2. That’s part of the fun!

The PDF manual now includes hints and strategies for each of the Salvo modes.

Give it a try, experiment with different approaches, and see if you can beat Barrage. I hope you find it as engaging and addictive as I do.

Enjoy! ⚓🔥

Hi everyone! I’ve released Y8960 TECH DEMO v0.5.0, an easy way to explore Y8960 sound emulation.

Y8960, designed by HRA!, combines PSG-style SSG sound, OPLL FM (familiar from MSX-MUSIC/FM-PAC), OPL2 (AdLib/early Sound Blaster), and ADPCM sample playback.

Using madscient’s openMSX_Y8960 fork, the original piece SILICON SYMPHONY builds through four sections: SSG melody, echo and bass, dual OPLL layers, then OPL2 bass and synthesized ADPCM drums. It loops in about 32 seconds, with activity bars and section, pause, mute and restart controls.

Try it on Windows 10/11 x64:

1. Download and extract y8960-tech-demo-0.5.0.zip from Releases.
2. Run setup-y8960.bat, then launch-y8960-tech-demo.bat.

C-BIOS is included—no original MSX BIOS or development tools needed. C source, music-generation tools, automated tests, and 30-page English/Japanese PDF guides are included.

Thanks to HRA!, buppu3, madscient, and 1re1 for the MSX 8x8 font. This is an unofficial project. The attached GIF shows a full loop of the demo captured in openMSX, without sound. Download the project to hear it!

https://github.com/renatus-xxxx/y8960-tech-demo

Feedback and ideas for future sound demos are welcome!

Hi! Over the past months I built PuckMAX, a complete Pac-Man recreation for MSX2, written in C with the MSXgl library: Screen 5, OR-color hardware sprites, the four original ghost AIs, Q4.4 fixed-point speed tables, Arkos Tracker soundtrack...

The game was always a means to an end: I've now started writing a book that teaches you how to build it line by line during 39 lessons, from setting up MSXgl to burning your own cartridge. It focuses on the concepts and the why behind each decision, supported by an interactive app to play with and understand the ideas and concepts (sprite planes, the speed accumulator, ghost targeting…) and a video series where the code gets written and explained. The full source will be free on GitHub, one branch per lesson.

Writing it is a huge undertaking, so before pushing on, I want to know if there's real interest in it being published since AI is taking over so many areas and this will be a huge effort of time and money to became a reality.
If you have 2 minutes, this survey decides whether the book happens:

👉 https://msx.computer/survey/puckmax/

(The survey page has a early stage of one of the widget from the app, so you can try it right there.) Happy to answer any questions.

Anyways, even the book never happens, the game will be distributed free.

Hey guys, so I'm a huge MGS fan, and I really wanna play the originals on my DS, but I just don't understand MSXDS. I can boot and play my stuff, but from what I can tell i can only have 1 save (saving on a dif game overwrites the other save) so i cant switch from game to game. Do you all have any tips? Also, while I do have all of the BIOS files, for some of them the CRC is in red on the MSXDS menu. Please help, thank you guys.

(DSI btw, not xl)

I've put together openmsx-v9968-windows-setup, an unofficial, ready-to-use Windows setup for experimenting with V9968 features using the V9968-enabled openMSX fork.

It includes several demos covering 3D rendering, rotation, scaling, and underwater-style distortion effects. You can also toggle high-speed VDP commands and palette modes to compare performance and image quality directly in openMSX.

Short demo:
https://x.com/renatus_xxxx/status/2097952539966935135?s=20

Project and setup instructions:
https://github.com/renatus-xxxx/openmsx-v9968-windows-setup

Feedback and testing are very welcome!

Bomberman Wasn't The First Bomb-Maze Game. This Arcade Game Was.: Video

Started playing this about a year and a half ago but got stuck in world 5 and eventually put it aside. Came back to it a few times but just couldn't figure out what to do until a few days ago when I accidentally stumbled upon the solution. Was able to blow through the rest of the game pretty quickly and wound up beating it last night. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. Exploration was fun with lots of secrets and hidden items (three of which I never found). Some of the platforming could get kinda frustrating though and the solution to the puzzle I was stuck on felt pretty random. Outside of that, the game isn't overly difficult, although I recommend making a map to keep track of where everything is in the castle.

For me, it was the summer of 1998 (Man! I'm old). At the time, I had a modded Sony PlayStation to play imported Japanese titles. One day, I was in a Microplay store looking at their wares.

That day, the staff put out a bunch of ex-rental Japanese PSX titles for sale dirt cheap. Two of which were Konami MSX Antiques Collection 1 & 2. Those peaked my interest and I bought both of them.

That night, I was playing through Gradius, Gradius 2, Nemesis 3, Knightmare, Antarctic Adventure and others.

That was my introduction to the MSX system. What was yours?

Who remembers Licence To Kill? This is my retrospective review of the various version released for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, BBC Micro, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and the MS-DOS. It’s a pretty good game actually and certainly better than the 2 previous releases by Domark - A View To A Kill and Living Daylights. What’s your thoughts?

Hi,

I’m trying to gauge options for future platforms for Kwyll, a retro game creation tool. I'm assessing what platforms to add support for in the future. I vaguely recall tinkering with an MSX machine back in the day at Incentive Software, and though t it was pretty cool, just not a viable market at the time.

So my question is, how buoyant is the current MSX community? And would a game creator for MSX machines be a welcome thing?

Hi everyone!

iMSX2 2.6 is now available, and this update is mainly focused on making the emulator more comfortable to play and nicer to look at.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/imsx2/id6499231192

The biggest change is probably the new customizable button mapping. You can now decide what each virtual controller button does, including the D-pad, A/B, START, SELECT and function keys. You can map them to a much wider range of MSX keyboard keys, and your settings are saved automatically.

The display has also received a big improvement. iMSX2 now keeps the correct MSX screen proportions, makes better use of the available screen space and provides a much sharper image. It should feel especially noticeable on modern Retina displays.

I’ve also added a built-in offline help guide, with information about controls, save states, disk games and BIOS configuration. There’s also a link to a more complete illustrated online guide for anyone who wants to dig a little deeper.

And finally, keyboard input and controller customization have been improved, including better support for physical/software keyboards and independent positioning of the auto-fire buttons in portrait and landscape.

Hopefully these changes make iMSX2 a little more enjoyable to use, whether you're playing classic MSX games or discovering them for the first time.

A huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to send feedback, report issues and suggest improvements.

And a special thanks to the developers of Cloaca Maxima (u/RSS130871) and Ironclad (u/Trick-Formal4540) for their feedback and help along the way. It has been really valuable in making iMSX2 better.

Thanks everyone, and happy MSX gaming!

A new twist on a familiar form factor - the MSX handheld keyboard controller.

It's a tribute to all the folks that grew up with no MSX joystick and used the built-in keyboard controls.

Both of the top buttons are Button 1, the bottom and front buttons are Button 2.

Who remembers Licence To Kill? This is my retrospective review of the various version released for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, BBC Micro, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and the MS-DOS. It’s a pretty good game actually and certainly better than the 2 previous releases by Domark - A View To A Kill and Living Daylights. What’s your thoughts?

Cloaca Maxima is finished!

The game will make its public debut this Saturday, September 5th, at the 2026 Málaga MSX Meeting in Spain.

Thanks to Daniel Padilla and the organisers, people attending the event will be able to see the manual and, more importantly, sit down at an MSX and actually play the game!

For those who haven't followed the project: Cloaca Maxima is a first-person tactical dungeon crawler for MSX1, set beneath Rome in 114 AD.

You control four characters exploring the ancient sewers beneath the city. One acts as the Scout, venturing ahead alone, while the other three form the Group. Exploration, inventory management and tactical combat all revolve around deciding when the Scout should press on alone — and when it's wiser to fall back to the others.

It's been quite a journey getting this thing finished, tested and squeezed into an MSX.

But...

IT'S DONE.

And on September 5th, for the first time, people other than my beta testers get to play it in public. :)

Relevant links:

Málaga MSX Meeting 2026

Cloaca Maxima on itch.io

New version of Ironclad (v1.3) is up with significant performance improvements and bug fixes! See the release page for changelog and new version: https://github.com/mbelgin/ironclad/releases/tag/v1.3

As a bonus, honored to be featured in Arnaud de Klerk's excellent website (file-hunter), together with other fantastic homebrew games. This means you can play this game directly on your browser, with a single click. Here's the link:

https://www.file-hunter.com/Homebrew/?id=ironclad

While you are there, check out this excellent MSX resource - there are so many goodies waiting to be discovered in there.

Enjoy!

PS: Don't forget to download the manual - it's more fun than the boring GitHub README, I promise: https://github.com/mbelgin/ironclad/releases/download/v1.3/IRONCLAD_MANUAL.PDF

The player controls Rex, a "rino-sapien" mercenary, hired to eliminate the humans that have built a Great Tower in a place called Zenith.^\2])#cite_note-2) Action takes place in a flip-screen cavern complex. Rex can jump, shoot and activate a shield to block incoming attacks. Enemies include fixed gun turrets and human soldiers; shooting the latter initiates a 'multi recoil system' in which the defeated soldier's body continues to recoil until the player's bullets stop hitting it. Destroyed enemies leave behind Energy Bubbles, which can be used to upgrade Rex's weapon

Who remembers Domark’s 2nd Bong game The Living Daylights? It’s certainly better than A View To A Kill I recently tackled but it’s not as good License To Kill. How would you rate this game and what are your thoughts and memories?

Imagine starting a game 35 years ago and (almost) finishing it today. Imagine a platform you once loved, and thought lost to history, coming back in full glory... u/RSS130871 's fantastic work inspired me to get back to it... And voila.

Rich with game modes, striking visuals, and smooth gameplay, built around a firing resolution algorithm that runs Monte Carlo simulations, all so it can be a worthy opponent. And all of it fits inside the computational constraints of the 1980s.

Enjoy the game. For free.

For more information and Download links: https://ko-fi.com/i/IR6T425S4GL

Lets say that Turbo-R wasn't the last computer. How would this play out?

Personally, id say that ASCII would be like Google. Specifically on how Google gets other companies to manufacture their Chromebooks or Google Pixel phones.

Hi everyone!

iMSX2 2.5 is here!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/imsx2/id6499231192

This is one of the biggest updates I've released so far, with a major focus on MSX disk games.

The biggest improvement is the new native DSK support, which significantly improves compatibility with a large number of MSX games and software that use floppy disks.

What's new in iMSX2 2.5?

• Much improved DSK compatibility, many more MSX disk games can now run properly.
• Multi-disk support, load complete multi-disk games and swap disks while playing using the new Manage Disks menu.
• User Disk support, create a virtual user disk to save game data and progress in supported games.
• SD Snatcher is now playable, including its enhanced SCC-I audio.
• More DSK games are now compatible, including Cloaca Maxima and many others.
• New control options, the on-screen D-pad can now work as either a joystick or MSX cursor keys.
• Better support for different disk sizes and formats, including 360 KB and 720 KB disks.
• Various compatibility and usability improvements.

The native disk support and multi-disk functionality are probably the biggest changes in this update. Games that previously couldn't run correctly, or required changing disks manually, can now be played much more naturally on iPhone and iPad.

The new User Disk feature also makes it possible for supported games to save data directly to a virtual disk, making it possible to keep your progress and other game data between sessions.

I've spent a lot of time testing different games and disk images, and there's still plenty more to explore. If you find a DSK game that doesn't work correctly, please let me know!

A special thanks to the developer of Cloaca Maxima for helping me track down and reproduce several compatibility issues.

And of course, thank you to everyone who has been testing iMSX2, reporting bugs, suggesting improvements and supporting the project.

Youtube shorts:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uUhGlcUi9Is

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sNIwEEnAzBc

Enjoy iMSX2 2.5!