Koi-Koi by KIN SOFT for MSX (1994) ♥

I read about an old doujin user-created Koi-Koi game 花札こいこい made by KIN SOFT in 1994. This is my document of the hunt I went on to be able to find and play it!

MSX・FAN

Firstly, the game came with MSX・FAN Issue 26 (1994/06) and by that I mean in the pages and on one of the two cover disks. So I had to find them in the existing archives. I found them on a Spanish website that I’ve since lost the link to. The game could be installed on a blank .dsk, which of course you have to generate and format. The resulting .dsk played just fine in OpenMSX but not fMSX. 🤔

dsk2rom

After some thought I figured out that using the Windows tool dsk2rom.exe I could convert the .dsk into a .rom file that would boot straight into the game when using fMSX.

dsk2rom.exe -6d blank.dsk boot.rom

Those command-line options:

• 6 = use 60Hz video (the Japanese standard)
• d = allow booting of other diskroms (was required for compatibility)

But there were still some errors in certain situations:

• without MSXDOS2 or TurboR: "Syntax error in 40"
• with fMSX in RetroArch: "Disk full in 40"

With some help from my MSX friends it became clear the game required:

• RAMDISK command (part of MSXDOS2)
• 256KB RAM

Note: I think I had to create a .dsk containing both MSXDOS2 and then install the game onto to that. The MSX Turbo R has MSXDOS2 built-in.

RetroArch

But fMSX in RetroArch doesn’t allow you to set RAM and VRAM and in fact its defaults for those were wrong for some types of MSX. I made some changes to fmsx-libretro core and whilst I was in there made several more improvements. I even updated the core to fMSX version 4.9 for all RetroArch users. I’m skipping over the huge effort that all these changes took, but it was fun hacking on libretro!

After all this I had a test build of the fmsx-libretro core for 3DS that I could use to play the game. 🎴

The Game

The game is really interesting because of the yaku (card combos) it contains, and the fact that it has a Special Card Shop where you can use points to buy Special cards for cheating in imaginative ways against the CPU.

• Peek at Deck: Check the next card in the deck
• Peek at Opponent: View the opponent’s hand
• Card Explosion: Destroy a card on the table + force the opponent to skip a turn
• Card Swap: Swap cards in your hand
• Landmine Card: Explodes if the opponent takes it
• Deck Collapse: Turn over two cards from the deck consecutively
• Time Reversal: Reset the game
• Lightning Card: Prioritise acquiring 20-point cards
• Electric Vortex Card: Makes it easier to take 20-point cards from the board
• Storm: Swap the cards you are about to take
• Bamboo Cutter Card: Probability effect allowing you to acquire any card
• Atomic Bomb Card: Significantly reduces the opponent’s available cards

Download

• A .zip of both the .dsk and .rom file: koikoi-kin-soft-1994.zip (247 KB)

If you are interested in Hanafuda video games or cards, why not join the Hanafuda Discord server?