MSX

The MSX is an 8-bit home computer designed by ASCII and Microsoft to be a computer standard, similar to the 3DO. As a result, there are multiple manufacturers for the computer such as Sony, Panasonic and Philips. It has very similar hardware to the Colecovision and SG-1000, both graphical and sound wise. It was Japan's massively successful gaming platform before Nintendo's Famicom came along and dominated the console market, while the MSX continued to have steady competition with other home computers such as the NEC PC-8801. Outside of Japan, it was only successful in the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan and the Middle East due to tough competition of the computer market elsewhere. Even then in South Korea and Taiwan, MSX games were ported to the SG-1000 and the Master System while Spain received and developed ZX Spectrum ports.

The MSX2 was later developed with improved graphical capabilities and saw massive success with Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

Ripping Tools

Tile Layer Pro

The MSX and MSX2's graphics are very simple and are usually easy to find within a basic tile editor.

YYCHR

YYCHR is a good alternative if you want a more sleeker looking program, it has all the same functionalities as well.

Suggested Emulators

Emulicious

Emulicious supports both the MSX and MSX2. It contains a sprite viewer, tile viewer and a background viewer as well as save states and pausing. The emulator loads cartridges by default using the C-BIOS, however disk images require an additional BIOS and tapes (used in some games e.g. Out Run MSX1) are not supported.

BlueMSX

BlueMSX has features such as save stating and internal pausing, however it is quite difficult to run MSX2 disk games due to the lack of clear instructions online.

OpenMSX

OpenMSX supports a large amount of MSX and MSX 2 models and accessories including the Palcom Laserdisc player. The emulator can be hard to set up.

Meisei

This emulator has an internal sprite and tile viewer while playing the game, as well as internal pausing however only supports the MSX.