This winters project is to try to convert an MSX 1 game to EP  

The graphics on MSX 1 is just a little bit nicer than on the Speccy.

I was thinking about giving this one a go:

https://www.indieretronews.com/2023/10/the-goblin-fabulous-zx-spectrum.html#more

Any advice on how a programming noob could attack this?

If MSX is not a good platform then maybe this:

https://www.indieretronews.com/2023/10/doom-on-zx-spectrum-128k-by-digital.html#more

Thank you in advance

It very much depends on what level of noob-ness you are talking about. But if I take it literally, I'd say first thing is learning how to program and learn it well. Then learn everything about the source and the destination hardware. This later is necessary even in case you are an experienced programmer.

As gflorez wrote it is much easier to work with Spectrum games. (On a side note, some of them doesn't even need work as geco's software emulator can run a lot of such games.) However, MSX software is not impossible to port to Enterprise but needs a lot of work. Like software sprite engine, rework of graphic assets, or even rearrangement of level design, and so on. Recently, a guy converted some iconic games to Commodore Plus/4 from the C64 like Impossible Mission or Raid Over Moscow which were previously considered not feasible because of the sprites. But with creativity, perseverance and a lot of work he managed to overcome all hurdles. That's what you'll need to do, too.

Although it is quite off topic here, go to https://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp and click through the years from 1980 to '89. You'll find an immense list of releases. Obviously, those are not all 8 bit systems but the enormity suggests that tabulating such a comparison would give you an unwieldy result bordering on unusability. And there's no guarantee that the list is complete.