Bee Card (game cartridge)
A Bee Card is a ROM cartridge developed by Hudson Soft as a software distribution medium for MSX computers. Bee Cards are approximately the size of a credit card but thicker, and incompatible with the similar Electronic Software Astron AoftCard, having 32 rather than 38 contact pads. Compared to most game cartridges, the Bee Card is small and compact. Bee Cards were released in Japan and Europe but not North America because the MSX was unsuccessful. However, Atari Corporation adopted the Bee Card for the Atari Portfolio, a handheld PC released in 1989 in North America. Some Korg Synthesizers and workstations also used Bee Cards as external storage of user content like sound programs or song data. Even though these systems all use Bee Cards, they are incompatible.
Only a few MSX software titles were published on Bee Card: six in Japan and only two in Europe and Italy. To accept a Bee Card, the cartridge slot of the MSX had to be fitted with a removable adapter: the Hudson Soft BeePack. The first mass-produced Bee Cards, however, were EEPROM telephone cards manufactured by Mitsubishi Plastics; these were first sold in Japan in 1985. The trade names Bee Card and Bee Pack derive from Hudson Soft's corporate logo, which features a cartoon bee.
MSX software published on Bee Card
Hudson Soft and other software publishers distributed at least eleven MSX software titles on Bee Card:| Title | Catalog number | Publisher | Year |
| Baseball Craze | BC-M1, BC-M1E | Hudson Soft | 1985 |
| Star Force | BC-M2 | Tehkan | 1985 |
| Jet Set Willy | BC-M3 | Hudson Soft | 1985 |
| T-Plan | BC-M4 | Toshiba | 1984 |
| Pooyan | BC-M5 | Konami | 1985 |
| Buggy Jump | BC-M6 | Hudson Soft | 1986 |
| Bomber Man Special | BC-M7 | Hudson Soft / Japanese Softbank | 1986 |
| Star Soldier | BC-M8 | Hudson Soft | 1986 |
| Master Takahashi's Adventure Island | BC-M9 | Hudson Soft | 1986 |
| Videotel | 128-8 5509 | Micro Technology B.V. |