Here are three *very* rare MSX shmups from developer M-Kai.

[Adigun A. Polack]

Long before Japanese game developer M-Kai created the Wonderswan original vertical shmup entitled Judgement Silversword in 2001, he previously created three VERY rare MSX games that apparently a lot of you may have never even heard of before:

• • Kyokugen (1997)
  YouTube videos: 3-minute mode; 5-minute mode
  
  • Anaconda (1998) — part of M-Kai’s short-lived diskmag “Sanriku King #0”
  YouTube video footage of this game is right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6e2m_H4oRk

...including as well his BEST game in 1999 which could rather well be the ultimate holy grail of all MSX shmups, Pleasure Hearts!!! !

Speaking of Pleasure Hearts, I have a four-part superplay of this game on YouTube in rich, crystal-clear 1280x720 HD-quality form that I am sure you do not want to miss!! Do have a look at it right here:

• Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cITedbFqpU&fmt=22
  Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En7qA8QaIRc&fmt=22
  Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76fdpTcpToQ&fmt=22
  Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AInqKt7mDY&fmt=22

And, according to the original author of these three (3) games that I am talking about here, he has so generously released them for download on the internet for use with an MSX emulator (like blueMSX and openMSX to name a couple now), and you may access them through this link here:

• http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValle ... /index.htm

As for the download link to the game Kyokugen (kg.zip) that is featured there, it somehow does not work on the original page, but you can *still* download the game right here (link updated 02/09/2009!) to fix that. And remember, these three games are designed for MSX2, MSX2+, and MSXturboR computer systems... and these are also such RARE valuable gems indeed, with the best one I believe being Pleasure Hearts, that is no doubt for sure!!

See you in a bit here, and I am so glad to be able to find you some excellent MSX shmup rarities in this thread!!! =b !!

[Fenrir]

Very nice, it feels very arcadey even though it looks like it pushes the hardware a bit too much causing some life-threatening flickering.
A prodrome to Progear? Meh it's a bit of a longshot, even though the first boss resembles the Cav-Cap masterpiece. But it's similar to Progear as the triangular net things in the 2nd stage resemble Lemmings (no shit), the beginning of stage 1 seems ripped from Gradius and the huge score resembles Giga Wing

I really liked the bg interaction in the 2nd stage. Those are the finest 'touches' that abunded in the '80s - early '90s games and that nowadays are a bit forgotten. The MSX is really a wonderful machine

[Turrican]

Awesome find, congrats! I wonder how many other hidden gems await us in those disk magazines...

[sven666]

pleasure hearts looks great! was this ever a proper release?

[spadgy]

Awesome stuff - so nice to find loads of information on something I'd never heard a word about. Nice work Adigun A. Polack - thanks for your efforts.

Pleasure Hearts looks wonderful. I've been thirsting for an MSX a great deal of late.

Might even look into one of those one-chip machines, as I have so little room at home for new formats...

[Zeether]

Really high scores in Pleasure Hearts, also I love the 2nd boss. It's like horizontal Zanac.

[t0yrobo]

Pretty sweet find. It looks like part of the difficulty in Pleasure hearts will be from how much the system is being pushed. The alternate link for Kyokugen doesn't work for me though, was anyone else able to grab it?

[Fudoh]

unfortunately not, but maybe the thread starter would be so kind to upload the zip somewhere...

[robthebanks]

Wow. Rad.

Are there other good shmups for the MSX?

[Adigun A. Polack]

When I first jotted down the link to the MSX game Kyokugen, it was working at the time... but after I opened this thread up, the game link was not working (for some odd reason). But, I have now created an alternate download link to the game right here that promises to work for you, and it is right in here.

Hope that helps you out, and I will update it in my opening post. Thank you for pointing out that error there, t0yrobo and Fudoh.

And sven666, you said:

pleasure hearts looks great! was this ever a proper release?

...and to that, I must definitely say yes. In fact, take a look at these original front, side, and back cartridge scans from the game Pleasure Hearts, as those were the original artworks for the cartridge box designs from when the game was first originally released in Japan in 1999. Also, if anybody in this forumboard were to present the scans for us to take a look at directly in this thread on one of your posts, it would be *greatly* appreciated indeed. !

And to the rest of you, I quite thank you for your excellent feedback and support... you all are damn awesome, you know that!? d==b

[Mortificator]

Cool games. Playing is for Pleasure.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

1999? That's not very old for an 8-bit style game. They must have supported the MSX for a long time. Anyways, I'll have to check out Pleasure Hearts sometime.

[gradius1]

Holy crap, man. Thank you so very much!!!!!!!

I was sooo desperately looking for Kyokugen and Pleasure Hearts.... I thought I would never ever get a chance to play these gems.

Awesome!!! You're the man!

And I never heard of Anaconda. Looks great. I will go now and give it a try.

[ZOM]

Heh, awesome flickering there...
Pleasure Hearts looks quite interesting, worth a try. 2nd Boss really DOES look like a horizontal Zanac base. o_o

Thanks!

[Super Laydock]

OMG!

They DO exist after all.

Heared about Anaconda and P Hearts but never saw any evidence.
Never heared about Kyokugen ever even.

Big thanks to Adigun A. Polack for sharing!


I REALLY want Anaconda now... $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[kozo]

1999? That's not very old for an 8-bit style game. They must have supported the MSX for a long time. Anyways, I'll have to check out Pleasure Hearts sometime.

Consider these games doujin. I believe that's the case - there was TONS of doujin stuff on the MSX, PC88, PC98, so on.

That said, yeah '99 is late for the MSX (and good him for doing so!). But then again, there's a couple Genesis RPGs coming out soon too, so anything goes! And that's fine by me, for the record.

[Fenrir]

I've seen Anaconda now. Very unimpressive I'd have to say. It looks like something straight out of SEUCK.
Boring graphics, repetitive patterns... or...?

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

1999? That's not very old for an 8-bit style game. They must have supported the MSX for a long time. Anyways, I'll have to check out Pleasure Hearts sometime.

Consider these games doujin. I believe that's the case - there was TONS of doujin stuff on the MSX, PC88, PC98, so on.

That said, yeah '99 is late for the MSX (and good him for doing so!). But then again, there's a couple Genesis RPGs coming out soon too, so anything goes! And that's fine by me, for the record.

Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. It would be nice to see newly developed games for the old systems in game shops. I thought Mega Man 9 was great.

I’m really unfamiliar with the MSX and the other old computers. I’m sure they have some good games on them.

I tried out Pleasure Hearts. It’s a breeze until the last boss.

[Super Laydock]

Are there other good shmups for the MSX?

Oh god yes!

without boring you with too much childhood memories:

google or whatever the following games followed by MSX in the search string and you'll see some of the best (IMHO of course) games ever:

Salamander, Nemesis 2, Aleste, Aleste 2, Super Laydock, Space Manbow.

Cream of the crop!
And much more gems out there so it seems!

[fumanchu]

sorry i have no othe tabs or link to post. .. Thanks

make money online

you can get all the shmups and i think there is an rpg as well here.

Code: Select all

http://www.mediafire.com/?meemdynlntm

[caincan]

?!

did someone tried or got answers how to copy Kyokugen to real floppies dics ?

the size is exact 720kb,

and when formatted with msdos, i can only get "real" 713k on the floppy !!

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey there, thanks for bumping this thread, since I also have a 2+ (do any of the games really require a Turbo to run well?) I might even try these out on the real thing, if I like them enough.

To answer your question...did you try using Disk-Manager by Rudolf Lechleitner? It has been updated this year, even!

Okay, perhaps that won't fix the problem...yeah, I've also noticed too many game rips have useless "hacktros" or added garbage (mostly done in the days before readmes or perhaps to confuse people who would strip out the readmes and claim releases as their own...sheesh, pirate culture). Perhaps, if you're lucky, the extra data is merely a header which can be edited out by a tool like XVI32, hopefully.

[caincan]

some games are smoother on msx2+ and turboR (it exists too a 7mhz upgrade for certain machines..)

hoho, mucho thanks. i guess it could work ! didnt remind the basics of msx floppy duplication. (i have a panasonic A1 WSX , but it's mainly dead alive since i tried upgrading it , i made a bunch of floppies in the past with this tool ! (only remembering it because of his clear interface).

but recently i bought another msx2 (sony w/ 256kb ram in standard : good for megaroms rips ), and as i'm in Paris long away from home, i need doing again some floppies... i'll try this next tuesday and tell if it's ok. (i dont have a floppy drive on this laptop here )

[Ed Oscuro]

I just read Mr. Lechleitner's caution about reading original disks on Windows and other systems - I don't think I've done that before but it's a useful caution!

Best of luck and I'm glad to be helpful.

[ROBOTRON]

WOW.

Feels COMPILE to me.

[caincan]

with Diskmanager, there's no way to detect Kyokugen disks ?!?! . i tried with another tool to see the structure folder (as msx games have..) but too there's nothing of msdos, bas, rom, ...

there's something weird with this game, was it only a game for emulator ?!

[e_tank]

with Diskmanager, there's no way to detect Kyokugen disks ?!?! . i tried with another tool to see the structure folder (as msx games have..) but too there's nothing of msdos, bas, rom, ...

unlike all the other games the kyokugen disks don't appear to have a valid fat filesystem on them. try doing a raw write of the disk image to a floppy. in a linux/unix-like os you would just use dd (dd if=disk.img of=/dev/fd0), in windows you can try using program called RawWrite.

[caincan]

that would be good... if the program doesnt check the size of floppy first ! the other programs refuse from the start because of that

will try tomorrow again , it seems that it's ok IF the game is installed on harddrive or some Sd/mmc support for a msx2 .

[caincan]

Rawrite did it ok . cool ! wow.. even in my msx2 it's smooth it seems !