#Japanese locale emulator best software

īefore the success of Nintendo's Family Computer, MSX was the platform for which major Japanese game studios such as Konami and Hudson Soft produced video games. He felt 'MSX' was fit because it means 'the next of Microsoft', and it also contains first letters of Matsushita ( Panasonic) and Sony. According to his book in 2020, he considered the name of the new standard should consist of three letters like VHS.

#Japanese locale emulator best software

Nishi said that the team's original definition was 'Machines with Software eXchangeability', although in 1985 he said it was named after the MX missile. Others believed that it stood for 'Matsushita-Sony'. In 2001, Kazuhiko Nishi recalled that many assumed that it was derived from 'Microsoft Extended', referring to the built-in Microsoft Extended BASIC ( MSX BASIC). The meaning of the acronym MSX remains a matter of debate.

The very first commercial MSX for the public was a Mitsubishi ML-8000, released on October 21, 1983, thus marking its official 'release date'. Despite Microsoft's involvement, few MSX-based machines were released in the United States. Eventually, 9 million MSX units were sold worldwide, including 7 million in Japan alone.

MSX systems were popular in Japan and several other countries. Microsoft and Nishi conceived the project as an attempt to create unified standards among various home computing system manufacturers of the period, in the same fashion as the VHS standard for home video tape machines. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-president at Microsoft and director at ASCII Corporation. MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983.