MSX, the computer standard that made history

But not entirely.

The archives of the enthusiasts of the past and of the glories that have inspired the technology of everyday life, of our days, are still intact and it is precisely in one of these virtual boxes that we find the MSX.

Chi di voi è un old-school gamer like me, upon hearing this acronym will surely have associated the “Machines with Software eXchangeability” with the very first brilliant chapter of Metal Gear Solid: well yes, Hideo Kojima developed in 1987 the title that would change the world of video games forever in the years to come precisely with MSX, but let’s not get ahead of the juiciest revelations and proceed in order, what do you say?

First of all, we are not talking about a precursor computer or a console, but rather about a computing standard, as it is called in jargon, developed for home computers in the Eighties by the innovator and visionary Kazuhiko Nishi, with names such as Philips and Sony involved.

Il contesto storico was already defined in this regard and allowed no exceptions: the major industry companies produced exclusively closed systems that did not allow compatibility with other software and included hardware: as a result, the advent of a new standard outside capitalist market logic that guaranteed, among other things, broad freedom with the possibility of assembling computers made by different manufacturers but still compatible with each other, well… It was a revolution, and revolutions of this kind always find stubborn opponents, as we well know.

Al di là delle specifiche tecniche in sé, MSX means a computer with those characteristics and specifications established by the MSX standard, and therefore allowed multiple manufacturers to have their own version of a home computer, while remaining compatible with each other. The first MSX standard in the end was little better than a C64; let’s remember that we are talking about an 8-bit standard: the real step forward was version number 2 of the MSX standard, a powerful 32-bit machine comparable almost to the Amiga 500, a comparison that should make you understand the objective significance of MSX in the computer world, all due proportions considered if we take into account the stratospheric audio section of the Amiga and the cutting-edge graphics chipset.

Many competitors were obviously not very happy about the birth of a consortium that defined these specific technical standards; we cannot speak of a conflict comparable to the Console Wars that would break out in the following years, however the impact on numerous business decisions from 1983, when the MSX was launched, until the early Nineties reverberated throughout the industry, until the consortium ceased to be active and the MSX standard was almost entirely abandoned.

Why did I talk about the consortium?

The answer is simple: when the market is fragmented, as it was then, people band together; it is the first unwritten rule of marketing, and in those years when the Personal Computer was beginning to invade our homes, it was logical that sooner or later it would happen. In more recent times, 3DO also carried out a very similar operation, do you remember it? A console developed by several parties (Panasonic, Sanyo and others) with the same standard technical specifications. It ended badly, but they tried.

Ma our beloved sector is the video game one, so what did MSX leave us as a legacy? Besides the wonderful Metal Gear Solid from the early days, I cannot fail to mention City Connection, a splendid game of which you will remember the arcade cabinet with the legendary little red car and the sly cats, Contra in one of its earliest versions and the JRPG saga of Y’s, beloved by purist role-playing gamers and which was born right on MSX.