☆Mirai★

A few weeks back I saw some friends talking about the original La Mulana vs the remake, and the topic of the original's aim to replicate/parody the look and feel of the MSX came up, of course. Mind you, I have not played either La Mulana, but it did get me thinking:
What the fuck IS an MSX?
I've of course heard of it, one of those weird, probably japan-only systems. I had scrolled past it on the list of systems to potentially, but likely never, emulate, but I never really looked into it. So I casually went to youtube to get a sense for what the MSX was about. I found a nice video about the technical limits and the way they shaped how the system (or rather, the computers that fit the standard) was perceived, which also served as a bit of a historical lesson on it and the various upgrades it went through. Some interesting games to be sure, but the system was clearly primitive, even as the video lists the homebrew games that pushed it to its limits-

WAIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT HOLY SHIT THAT LOOKS SICK

And as it turns out, it IS sick, so fucking cool, oh my god. If at any point this catches your fancy, just go play it, its super accessible IMO, and I go over ways to emulate it at the end.

Quick little addendum to this post, but lets get this out first:

If you enjoyed Pleasure Hearts or my ramblings, please support the developer by buying their other games on steam, they're on sale right now! Sale's almost over, I meant to post this way sooner 😭 Here's their developer page, you can grab this and this pack to get all 4.

Anyway, as I was saying, I just wanted to add a couple of things based on the two very nice comments I got.

@nichronomicon brought up this forum playthrough which eventually turned into the OP translating the game! Great piece of Pleasure Hearts history, and it really shows off all the weird and surprising details in this game.

@dog brought into my attention that M-Kai, of course, has developed a lot of shmups in the years since! Which is what I want to talk about. I haven't gotten to playing their 2.5D shmups, but the moment I heard they moved on from the MSX to develop homebrew games on the Wonderswan??? I HAD TO check that out, and fall down a rabbit hole.

Judgement Silversword is sick as hell and- you get the deal, but also the Wonderswan is SO COOL