Hi, I’m Eduardo from Spain

First of all 2 warnings. 1- My english is rather poor, so excuse me if you don’t understand something. And 2- I’m not an MSX zealot. I’m an MSX lover. But I own every “big” console (and some clones) since the 8bit era. I simply LOVE videogames and the world that surround them.

I sadly disagree with you in one of your statements in “Emulators for the Sony PSP: An Overview of the Best” article. Almost at the bottom you said:

“And there’s even an MSX emulator. The MSX system is a little bit of Arcade and a little bit of really basic stuff. NES has most if not all of MSX’s offerings in better resolution, so this is not really a big draw.”

Hmmm. There were 4 generations of MSX. But just 2 of them will be considered in this e-mail because they are the 2 tahat share games with NES. That are MSX and MSX2.

MSX2 is a clearly superior machine than NES so we can center the focus in a “basic” MSX (first generation) machine and a NES.

MSX run at 3.58 MHz, NES at 1.79MHz (NTSC)
MSX had 8 KB of main memory (minimum, normally 32KB), NES had 2 KB
MSX had a Graphic DSP at 6.5 MHz (not sure of this freq), NES had one at 5.37 (NTSC)
MSX had a General Instruments AY-3-8910 (PSG) chip sound *, NES none

* Some MSX cartridges had their own (still better) sound chip.

Both had the advantage of streaming the data from a cart (although non-japanese games were distributed on tape in the case of MSX)

I know you didn’t enter to discuss that creepy technical info but I’m trying you to notice that MSX (first generation) was sooooo much powerful than NES. That’s the reason why it requires more resources to emulate an MSX system than a NES (the sound was the main problem until recently)

But you did an statement indeed: “NES has most if not all of MSX’s offerings in better resolution”

And that is true but the diference is not that big. (we have to remember that PSP, for example , just display 272 pixels vertically)

MSX had a res of 256 x 192 , NES had 256×240 pixels but just 256×224 in a NTSC TV
MSX had 16 colours, NES had 25

So Our beloved MSX is not that far away in terms of resolution and far, far better in terms of CPU (+mem) and sound. This fact derived in “cleaner” look games in MSX.

The games that shared both platforms were for example: Gradius or Salamander (Life Force)

But lifespan of a console is longer than a computer one. So, NES keep the same specs as the MSX quickly evolved in the known MSX2.

CPU: 3.58 MHz
RAM: 64KB (min, commonly 128KB outside japan)
Graphic chip: Yamaha V9938 at 21MHz (128KB VRAM)
Sound chip: General Instruments AY-3-8910 (PSG)

The resolutions were: 512 x 212 (16 colours out of 512) and 256 x 212 (256 colours)
Notice that 256 colours means (you can see a picture reasonabily)

What is important to compare MSX2 with NES ????
Because the most revered and famous games… were MSX2 only games. For example: Vampire Killer (Castlevania) and… METAL GEAR.

There are also countless of games that NES couldn’t have handled and that exist in MSX2 form only.
And the most important thing: The real SOLID SNAKE (METAL GEAR 2) was a MSX2 only game. The ugly NES version is a completely diferent game. Hideo Kojima WAS NOT involved in its production.

So, it’s not indeed true that you have almost all the MSX games with a NES. The fact is that you have almost all KONAMI games from NES with a MSX and hundreds more.

I peacefully (I warned I’m not a zealot) advice you to try comparing graphics in “Vampire Killer” (NES) and “Castlevania” (NES) or “Metal Gear” for both. Then try to play SOLID SNAKE.

…. No comparission possible, even without entering in the “sound” matter ^_^

NES was Mario, was real fun, was KONAMI games, was … ¡Final Fantasy! and a lot more. The precursor of my alltime favourite SNES. The first true videogame console everybody wanted to have.

But, please, don’t discourage the use of MSX emus because, IMHO, I think the games looked better and sound better (fact) on MSX than on NES. And there are dozens of gems in the MSX world that you can not encounter in other platforms.

Thanks for your articles.
Greetings from Spain

Eduardo.

MitchellO wrote:

The uoSnes9x is definately a great emulator. I have been using it for a about 1.5 weeks and its great. I especially love how you can save your place in the game.

The RIN gameboy colour emu is really good too.

mitchellO

seeing that you are such a retro fan
have you tried the new neogeocd emulator
it’s like have a umd game on your memory stick!

The RIN gameboy colour emu is really good too.

hands on summary on psp emulators – my personal preference

3/10 Gameboy Advance VBA for PSP – still slow but somewhat playable, even very large roms – so still quite fun as gba roms are pretty good – some sound but needs a rom selector/file manager

4/10 Neo Geo Pocket – NGPSP – currently you need to config frameskip to 4 to be even playable – without sound, but can configure screen size and overclock – somewhat simple fun

4.5/10 Wonderswan – Cygne /Oswan PSP/Pswan. of the 3 psp emulators, cygne is the most capable, able to run larger roms with full screen, but without sound

5/10 Amiga PSP UAE – quite amazing with sound and playable speed – i had a ball with Galaga Deluxe; Impact has to be slowed down – however, it is impossible to play some games until number or fn input are added. Lots of good, hi-res and wonderful games

6/10 GameGear/SMS PSP – good emulator with sound and good speed – would be better if it could run in full screen

7/10 MAME (Arcade) – Mame 0.71/PSPMame 0.96/XMame PSP – xmame has been overtaken by mame 0.71 -which is great for games like cutie Q and Gee Bee that requires really slow speed to be payable. -pspmame 0.96 (namco) plays the most games mame emulators has sound, full screen and are playable but needs more keys assigned and more roms playable

8/10 Genesis (Megadrive) – Dgen PSP – Generator/PSP – Megadrive for PSP -PSP Genesis – my favorite of the lot is Dgen as it has sound -and can be tweaked to overclock at 333 mhz – none has full screen feature yet. pity

8.5/10 Nes – InfoNes/Famicontest/Nes for PSP/Nesterj PSP – my favorite is Nesterj which is practically perfect- in every way. full speed with sound and full screen. some good basic retro games

9/10 Snes – Snes9x PSP/Snes9x Optimised/UO Snes9x PSP – uo has done wonders with the snex9x – it is now running with full screen, speed and sound

9.5/10 PC Engine – Hue for PSP/PCEP/XPCE for PSP – my choice is PCEP which runs in full screen and speed – with sound. yet to encounter any rom that will not run – better games than snes

10/10 Gameboy/Gameboy Colour Rin/Rin Unnoficial – full fledge emulator; better than the original -awesome with great sounds, full screen and speed

20/10 Neo Geo CD – NEOGEO CD/NeoCDPSP – neogeo cd does a good job but is quickly overtaken by the awesome neocdpsp which has taken the psp emulator world by storm – the first version is running the likes of rally chase, art of fighting, pulstar, world heroes etc full screen with sound and full speed. incredible!

Images are allowed in all forums. You just need to use the Advanced editor instead of the quick reply. You should see a manage attachments button in the Additional Options box below the editor. The images that you upload will not show up when you do a preview. They will after you post the message. Here’s an example…

http://img55.echo.cx/img55/2324/snesframecpu3wf.jpg

Hey Julie/Judie, any chance of getting pics enabled on this forum, so we can post thumbnails to pictures, instead of boring links?

http://img55.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pspmame26gp.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pspmame6zn.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pspmame36sq.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pspmame15pq.jpg

Yes, I know the filenames have MAME not snes. Silly me!!

This one works really well, with sound too. You have to make sure you select 333Mhz (as you can see in red in on of the pictures), otherwise it will be a bit slow, and the framerate (which you can display) will drop.

I also found something on my Coded Arms UMD (well, I saw it the first time I put it in ). It has the update to firmware v1.5. This is good new to people who want to play games like that, but using the Network Update would take you to the latest 1.52, which has not been cracked for homebrew. It is an option on the menu. I had v1.5, so I didn’t have to do it, but good for those who want games that need v1.5+.

http://img222.echo.cx/img222/7928/codedarmsumd3vb.jpg

I am sooooo glad I got 512Mb MS Duo instead of 256Mb. If I had, I wouldn’t have had enough room for these goodies + a movie!!!

Photo taken from my psp running ghost pilots with the neogeocd emulator

Mr YoyoFR has released the second NeoGeo CD emulator for the PSP
- one that runs full screen, full speed and with sound and music
not every game is up to speed
but it is pretty amazing

get it from
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=7570

— what you need —
first, you will need to go to google to get the bios
then when you zip the files from your cd, look for the iso file
use winrar or isobuster to extract the files from the iso file
you can place it under any folder xxx.zip
and even zip up these files to save space

most of the other files are not necessary
and adds up space

enjoy

I just got Coded Arms too, and its great!!!

vaxick wrote:

From the review “In my opinion, Genesis, Sega’s answer to Nintendo’s SNES is again (like the SMS/GG saga), a case of too little, too late.”

Not trying to sound rude, bu huh? :unsure: What are you talking about? How is the Genesis the answer to the SNES? The Sega Genesis came out in 1988 and the SNES didn’t see the day of light until 1990. :dry:

thanks for the headsup, vaxick
what i meant was like the game gear,
sega’s genesis doesnt measure up to the competition

sorry for the awkward way i presented it
and of course it is just my personal opinion

also, this is is a good time for me to say that i got
the neogeocd emulator running
and though it has not been updated for a while
and runs without sound,
my fav league bowling is very playable

I am using this pack: http://files.pspupdates.com/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,38,636

Its called KXSploit Homebrew Pack V3.0 (PSP V1.5). It has a heap of emus packed together, ready to be put on a MS Duo and run on a v1.5 PSP.

MitchellO wrote:

Never mind. Found a hack that fixes the problem.

http://files.psphacker.com/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,38,506

Has some emulators that work fine on my v1.5 Jap PSP. Doom, GBC, Blackjack! Heaps of stuff.

Last I heard, they are still working on trying to crack the 1.5′s

I hate the fact that I own a US version 1.5 PSP and still gotta wait before we can use all this great software.

Not trying to sound rude, bu huh? :unsure: What are you talking about? How is the Genesis the answer to the SNES? The Sega Genesis came out in 1988 and the SNES didn’t see the day of light until 1990. :dry:

Some pics of the very good Gameboy Colour Emulator RIN v1.25.

My PSP is sooooo much better than it was, with all these games to play! I just bought Coded Arms off ebay too!

http://files.psphacker.com/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,38,506

Has some emulators that work fine on my v1.5 Jap PSP. Doom, GBC, Blackjack! Heaps of stuff.