The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Check out these awesome (and very funny) Mark Hamill autographs on a selection of Star Wars collectible cards! We sense a serious disturbance in the Force đ
You can see the rest of Mark Hamill’s autographs on the CityOfWalls imgur page!
Right, who pinged Luke on his pager?
CAUTION: DO NOT PRESS!
Um, this looks suss
Voted as most likely to become a Jedi
Warning: Smoking causes health problems
Let’s go visit dad!
source:Â City Of Walls on imgur
Jensen Karp‘s Patti Lapel sells awesome retro pins among other weird things (check out the Ian Ziering/Led Zepplin mashup T-shirt for example). The latest pins include a N64 GoldenEye cart and a NES Game Genie.
And there’s plenty more – you’d better buy some more jackets because you’re going to start running out of lapel space!
Source: Patti Lapel
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ms. ausretrogamer
Co-founder, editor and writer at ausretrogamer – The Australian Retro Gamer E-Zine. Lover of science fiction, fashion, books, movies and TV. Player of games, old and new.
Follow Ms. ausretrogamer on Twitter
Finally, the great Atari 16-bit computer gets its time to shine on the PRESS PLAY ON TAPEÂ podcast! With Maximum Power Upâs podcaster, Paul Monaghan as the special guest, Daz is outnumbered and admits defeat in the 16-bit computer battle. The cast looks back fondly at the ST and its many great games, from exclusives like Oids, to awesome arcade conversions like R-Type and the ultimate adventure RPG, Dungeon Master.
Rainbow Arts was chosen as the publisher of choice, with The Great Giana Sisters and Turrican getting lots of love from the lads. This month also saw a record number of responses for the audience question, which goes to show that there is plenty of love for Atariâs Sixteen/Thirty-two computer! So grab your Amiga mates and STart me up!
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE podcasts are available on iTunes and Podbean
We absolutely love DIY console mods, especially cool ones like this Atari Flashback 2 stuffed into an Atari VCS/2600 cartridge!
We are fans of old systems being shrunk down to a portable size (Ed: we all remember the portable Atari 2600, yeh?), but this creation by lovablechevy tickles our nostalgic fancy due to its pocket friendly size and use of an Atari 2600 cartridge – which are so damn cool. Before you get upset, the game on the cartridge was long dead before it was used and converted as a pocket gaming unit.
Lovablechevy states that her creation was conceived almost a decade ago with it only coming to fruition now! We say that it’s better late than never! As mentioned right off the bat, the Pocket Atari has an Atari Flashback 2 stuffed inside of a standard Atari 2600 cart with a 2.5″ screen plus an audio amp, transplanted Wii Remote D-pad and buttons, a Super Joy III controller board and 2 x 3.7v li-ion 700 mAh batteries for power (giving you 3.5 hours of carefree and very loud gaming)!
This is definitely the smallest portable Atari 2600 which fits great in your pocket without weighing you down (Ed: it’s a measly 4.6 ounces in weight!). Now, let’s play some River Raid on it *winks*
Doing The Math: The Pocket Atari plan
Cramming a lot of video gaming smarts in confined spaces!
Looking good!
Anyone for tennis?
source: lovablechevy
Do you have a big job interview or a wedding coming up? Well, Oppo Suits has you covered (literally) with this brilliant Pac-Man suit.
Source: Oppo Suits
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ms. ausretrogamer
Co-founder, editor and writer at ausretrogamer – The Australian Retro Gamer E-Zine. Lover of science fiction, fashion, books, movies and TV. Player of games, old and new.
Follow Ms. ausretrogamer on Twitter
Ben Heck and co. from Element 14’s The Ben Heck Show made this amazing 670 percent scaled-up Game Boy (aptly named ‘The Game Man’) in just 4 days! It runs off an actual Game Boy connected to a VGA monitor and is awesome, see exactly how they made it in the video below.
Video source: The Ben Heck Show on YouTube
Source: Element 14’s The Ben Heck Show via Technabob
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ms. ausretrogamer
Co-founder, editor and writer at ausretrogamer – The Australian Retro Gamer E-Zine. Lover of science fiction, fashion, books, movies and TV. Player of games, old and new.
Follow Ms. ausretrogamer on Twitter
The Atari STacy! What the? If Atari were good at one thing, it was naming their computer range, hence the STacy being a play on their Atari ST range and a cool woman’s name.
Who didnât want a portable ST back in 1989 that weighed almost 7kg! Well, if we had arms like Arnie Schwarzenegger and a matching bank balance (The Atari STacy was not cheap â it retailed for a cool $3,000AUD!), we probably would have forked-out our hard earned cash for one. It definitely would have been a wise investment, as there were less than 35,000 units sold, making this portable Atari computer a very rare commodity.
The STacy came in four models, with the STacy 4 (4MB RAM version) being the top of the line. For those technically minded, here are the all-important Atari STacy specifications:
Open me up, Stacy!
You turn me on Stacy!
Lovely keyboard you have there Stacy
A lovely rear-end
Power up!
Insert joysticks and floppies on this side!
image source: eBay
For those of you that donât remember, once upon a time Atari was the king of video games, not just in the home with their Atari VCS/2600, but also in the amusement parlours. Atari was so diversified, they even got into making pinball machines!
To get an understanding of just how huge the Sunnyvale company was, at the 1978 Amusement and Music Operators Association (AMOA) trade show, Atari had a massive exhibit titled Starworld ’78, showcasing their latest wares to wow the industry (and scare the pants off their competitors)!
The âStarworldâ theme was chosen by Atari to preview their new games, which they cleverly dubbed as the âStarsâ of the 1978 AMOA show. Previewed pinball machines included Space Riders, the colossal  Hercules and the double playfield extravaganza of Middle Earth. In the video gaming stakes, their new 2-player space duel game, Orbit and the 3-games-in-one version of Breakout (very smartly titled) Super Breakout were gaining a lot of attention. Also taking centre stage at Starworld â78 were: Sprint 2, Sit Down Night Driver, Starship, Smokey Joe, Fire Truck, UFO and the unique dual monitor submarine strategy game, Subs. If that wasnât enough, Atari also had their service technicians on hand to demonstrate the latest test equipment to show off to operators.
And what is a trade show without prizes? Atari was promoting their âStarworld Sweepstakesâ, a first at the AMOA trade show. Prizes included a Super Breakout machine, a Sony Betamax video tape recorder, a colour TV, a set of leather luggage and a Sony 5â Swivel-vision TV. There were also minor prizes awarded by Atari in their sweepstakes, including Seiko pocket digital alarms and Seiko desk clocks! Whoa, if only we had attended the 1978 AMOA trade show!
source: The Arcade Flyer Archive
It may be April 1st, but this ainât no joke! Our good friends at The Gaming Warehouse made us aware that the elusive and extremely rare Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulator (MACS) Basic Rifle (M16 Rifle) was for sale on Amazon at a cool price of $3,000!
Many would be asking themselves, what the hell is this? In a nutshell, it is an M16 Rifle designed (for the U.S. Army Infantry School) to simulate Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM) by using inexpensive off-the-shelf products, in this case, a lightgun, software and a Super Nintendo.
The Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulator (MACS) was developed to overcome the training problems that resulted from insufficient facilities and too few instructors. While interest was primarily focused on its use as a rifle marksmanship trainer, MACSÂ was designed so that the basic hardware could be used to provide training on a variety of weapons systems.
The MACS product was patented in 1986 by the US Army Research Institute Fort Benning Field Unit, which conducted research on training and training technology with particular emphasis on individual and small team skills in the Infantry arena.
Now, enough of this talk, we want to keep drooling over this M16 lightgun â who can spare us $3K? đ
Connect me to that SNES!
Looks like this M16 lightgun has seen some action
RTFM’ing like a boss!
Aha, all MACS bits required!
Whack in the cart, and away we go!
sources: Amazon, DTICÂ and Video Game Museum