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Archives for May 2018

Ted Dabney: The Passing of Atari’s Silent Co-Founder

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Last week news broke that Atari’s Co-Founder, Ted Dabney had passed at age 81. We wouldn’t usually post this type of news on here as it has already been covered enough by the bigger online media outlets. However, we didn’t want Ted’s passing to go unnoticed by our readers, as Ted’s importance to the video gaming industry is equal to his contemporaries, like Nolan Bushnell.

Ted Dabney co-founded the tiny electronics company called Syzygy Engineering in 1971 (renamed Atari in 1972) with his more famous business partner Nolan Bushnell. Ted and Nolan had previously partnered to program Computer Space, the first coin-operated video game ever brought to market. Computer Space was produced at the Northern California trivia game maker Nutting Associates, named after its owner Bill Nutting.

image source: RePlay Magazine

At Atari, Ted played his part, along with designer Al Alcorn (and Bushnell, of course) in the design and production of Pong, the first “hit” TV game which ushered in the age of video gaming. If you have read Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg’s Atari Inc: Business is Fun, you’d know the background to Ted leaving Atari (Ed: It wasn’t pretty nor fair to Ted). But Ted being Ted, he never harboured any ill will towards Atari and went on to work at electronics firms outside the coin-op business. Ted preferred a simple life to the limelight that Atari should have afforded him.

According to the Huffington Post, Ted died of the esophageal cancer he’d been fighting. He and wife Carolyn had spent part of his remaining years operating a grocery store up in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains.

May his legacy live on! Rest In Peace Ted Dabney.

 

Kill Bill Pinball: It’s Pinnovating!

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Where would we be without clever and innovative people? We’d probably still be rubbing sticks together to create fire!

Thank-goodness for extremely clever peeps (Ed: We are looking at you Dennis Van de Pas)! The team behind the homebrew made The Matrix pinball machine and Demolition Man On Steriods, Pinnovating has done it again with their third project based on another cult movie classic, Kill Bill!

Just like they re-programmed Johnny Mnemonic into The Matrix, Pinnovating took Bally’s World Cup Soccer 94 and turned it into Kill Bill – The Whole Bloody Affair. This may sound easy, but after 4 years and 3,000+ hours of toil, the changes don’t seem simple anymore. A lot of work (and love) went into changing the playfield layout, the handcrafted artwork, sound effects and of course, the visuals running on a 27″ HD screen supported by a classic DMD (Dot-Matrix-Display). Let’s not forget the programming, as without it, you’d have a hefty paperweight. The enormous programming task was accomplished by using the P-ROC hardware system. We wonder what they will make next???

For those in the UK, you can get your hands bloodied on this machine at UKPinfest in August. We just wish this beautiful machine would make it down here in Australia.


source: Pinnovating on Facebook

image source: Pinnovating on Facebook

 

 

Refashioned Vintage Pinball Machines

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Whoa, hipsters rejoice! Actually, we really really like how these vintage pinball machines have avoided going to the scrapheap and been refashioned as ultra cool furniture and home decor!

Some purists may thinks these old pinball machines should have been restored to their former glory, which we agree with, but if they were beyond repair, then why not give them a new lease of life as cool furniture – we need some of these for our Fun Factory!

Check out Michael Maxwell’s Silverball – Maxwell Furniture Company, the makers behind these darn cool refashioned pinball machine coffee tables, side tables, bars, consoles and wall mirrors – we love’em!

source: If It’s Hip, It’s Here

 

Thrill Of The Chase: Retro Games Hunting In Brisbane

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The Thrill Of The Chase feels great doesn’t it? That buzz you get never gets old!

A little while ago, we went retro games and vintage hunting in Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, aka: BrisVegas! So what did we find? Well, we found the Woolloongabba Antique Centre & Cafe before it moved and became the Camp Hill Antique Centre.

Luckily Ms Ausretrogamer was on the case (she found this place!), as she dug up and found a heap of gems I would have missed. Rather banging on about it all, we’ll let the photos do the talking. Enjoy!

If you intend on using any of the photos within this feature, please credit them back to this article – thank you.

 

Getting Our Nostalgic Fix on the PS4 with Sega Mega Drive Classics

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Let’s get this out of the way, if you are still enjoying the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on previous systems, then stop reading this review (even though you will be missing out!). If on the other hand you are yearning to play some classic 16-bit Sega games on your PS4, then read on. Oh yeah, Sega Mega Drive Classics is also available on Xbox One, but we don’t have a XBone, so there you go.

Now, should we connect our Sega Mega Drive console and compare the games side by side? Actually, if you are lucky enough to have a working Mega Drive console connected to your TV with all the titles that are in this Classics pack, then you know what, you should stop reading too!

Ok, we are glad we got that off our chest! Wow, two paragraphs in and we still haven’t started telling you about the games and the other bells and whistles in this nostalgia inducing package.

Sega Mega Drive Classics on the PS4 is the largest collection of retro classic games in one pack. There are over 50 classic Sega 16-bit games, ok we counted them all, there are actually 53 games (and that’s not counting the games that have region specific variants) to satisfy almost every genre under the sun, from arcade action, adventure, pinball (sort of), shooters, beat ‘em ups, fighters, puzzlers, hack’n slashers, tactical RPGs to everyone’s favourite, platformers – and there are lots of platformers!

These old favourites aren’t just dumped from their cartridges and thrown in this package, no sirree, they have had a raft of very cool modern features injected into them including mirror mode, rewind (for when you slip up), controller customisation, online multiplayer and achievements, optional emulation enhancement filters like pixel scaling and save states to save your game at any time, meaning players – both old and new, should find revisiting these retro games an absolute Sonic 3D Blast (Ed: Oh dear, that was terrible!).

Upon loading Sega Mega Drive Classics we were totally impressed by the opening title sequence, which we will leave as a surprise, but we can tell ya this much, it’s pretty darn awesome – either that or we are too easy to please. Anyway, once you stop drooling from the title sequence (unless you hit X!) you are greeted by the new-look menu system, developed by d3t, from which you can access the 53 Sega Mega Drive games and other options. The menu resembles the bedroom of an early nineties Sega fan, which is a great throwback, with dynamic time-of-day conditions, retro SEGA paraphernalia, a shelf full of the aforementioned 53 Mega Drive games, and of course, a CRT TV with the sexy Mega Drive console underneath it.

When selecting a game to play, its corresponding cart is removed from its case and then inserted into the Mega Drive console – pure nostalgic nirvana. On top of the already mentioned modern conveniences and features jammed into this package, the most important thing we can tell you is that the emulation of the games is spot-on. The word ’emulation’ may trigger negative connotations, but we are here to tell ya that this is as close as you will get to playing Mega Drive games without forking out for the console on eBay and then fishing around for the game cartridges.

We touched on this earlier, but we’ll elaborate – each game has additional options, some more than others, like region specific versions (L3), modifications (Y) and extras (R1) like target milestones that earn you specific trophies.

As we aren’t much of adventure or RPG fans, we stuck to Sega’s arcade conversions, platformers, beat’me ups and puzzle games. After playing a lot of Sonic, Ristar, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Gunstar Heroes, Columns, the Wonder Boy and Shinobi games, we can say that we definitely felt like we were back in the early 90s – good times!

Before we go on, here is the full list of games included in this package:

  • Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
  • Alien Soldier
  • Alien Storm
  • Altered Beast
  • Beyond Oasis
  • Bio-Hazard Battle
  • Bonanza Bros.
  • Columns
  • Columns III: Revenge of Columns
  • Comix Zone
  • Crack Down
  • Decap Attack
  • Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
  • Dynamite Headdy
  • ESWAT: City Under Siege
  • Fatal Labyrinth
  • Flicky
  • Gain Ground
  • Galaxy Force II
  • Golden Axe
  • Golden Axe II
  • Golden Axe III
  • Gunstar Heroes
  • Kid Chameleon
  • Landstalker
  • Light Crusader
  • Phantasy Star II
  • Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
  • Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium
  • Ristar
  • Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
  • Shining in the Darkness
  • Shining Force
  • Shining Force II
  • Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2
  • Sonic 3D Blast
  • Sonic Spinball
  • Space Harrier II
  • Streets of Rage
  • Streets of Rage 2
  • Streets of Rage 3
  • Super Thunder Blade
  • Sword of Vermilion
  • The Revenge of Shinobi
  • ToeJam & Earl
  • ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
  • Vectorman
  • VectorMan 2
  • Virtua Fighter 2
  • Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair
  • Wonder Boy in Monster World

The problem with a pack like this is that players will concentrate on all the games Sega left out of the mix. Granted, Sega probably could put the entire Mega Drive catalogue on one Blu-ray and flog it for $90.00, but then we would find something else to complain about – you just can’t please everyone. The games that are included are solid, bar a few questionable titles, however, just because we don’t like adventure and RPG titles, it doesn’t mean they should be excluded. Same goes the other way, if you loathe platformers, beat’em ups and puzzlers, it doesn’t mean these genres should be thrown out for more RPGs. Actually, if there was a driving game like Super Monaco GP or a motorcycle-racing-bashing one like Road Rash, then we could say that most, if not all, genres are well represented. Come to think of it, a few more shoot’em ups, like Truxton and Thunder Force would have rounded out this already pretty awesome package. Ah, we can speculate all we want, but we have to give it to Sega, they have tried to cater for the majority and we reckon they have done an admirable job.

After waffling on about this Sega Mega Drive Classics package on the PS4, the ultimate decision to buy or not buy is yours, but we’ll leave you with this little nugget – if you want to get your Sega 16-Bit gaming fix on your modern console, then you can’t go too wrong with Sega Mega Drive Classics.

Review System: PS4
Release Date: May 29 2018
Format: Xbox One & PS4 (sorry Nintendo Switch owners)
Price: $49.95

image source: Mega Drive Classics

Disclosure: Sega Mega Drive Classics [PS4] download code was kindly provided by Five Star Games for this review.

 

Behind The Scenes: Making of the Ausretrogamer Header Image

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After her awesome work on the Ausretrogamer Fun Factory, Ms Ausretrogamer’s turned her talents to creating the ausretrogamer social media header image you have all seen (and hopefully like) on Twitter and Facebook.

Check out the behind the scene of making this header image, as it it definitely wasn’t easy. The end result was all worth it!

KG’s Favourite PC Sports Games

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image source: staticflickr

By: KG – an experienced browser-based games developer with a big passion for writing. She is obsessed with driving games, yoga, and astrophysics.

We all love sports regardless of the fact that we actually play them in real life or we just enjoy them virtually on a computer! So, there’s absolutely no wonder why there are so many amazing PC sports games available nowadays.

But how do you choose one that managed to capture the excitement of a real-life sporting event without slacking off on quality when it comes to the player experience?

If you want to enjoy some good-old fashion sports games on your PC, take a look below. These are the games that shaped generations and created new names in the industry. These are the games worth playing when you want to feel like an athlete on your PC!

FIFA

The FIFA game series is one of the richest in the sports games niche as it releases a new version every year, starting with the 1990s. Right now, you can get the FIFA 2018 version for PC and you’ll also get a little surprise if you play any of the other series. This year, the game has a single player story mode, which is impressive for this game. You can also play online and enjoy hours of fun with the community (one of the strongest game communities in the world).

Overall, FIFA may be focused on football, but it’s a game with a lot of kick (Ed: pun not intended!) and adrenaline that will keep you glued to your PC for days!

Out Of The Park 2019

If football is not your thing, you can always try a nice baseball game, especially now that the OOTP19 is available! Just like with FIFA, there’s a lot of management involved and you have to create and lead your team to success. The action is enticing and there’s a lot to do to keep you busy and engaged.

NBA 2K11

image source: Amazon

Basketball is highly appreciated by the American public so you can understand why there are so many cool games available for download. However, the best of the best must be NBA 2K11 with Michael Jordan as the main character. So, if you ever dreamed of being Jordan himself, now is the time to see that dream becoming reality!

However, if you’re looking for something lighter, there are plenty of online basketball games you can try for free and that don’t require a gaming computer!

Rocket League

For those players who are just looking to have some fun time, Rocket League is the perfect game for a boring Sunday afternoon. After all, you’re playing football with cars – what could be more entertaining than this?

It may be a fantasy sport, but it is still one of the most popular games on Steam. The unique physics and the way the game is created will definitely keep you coming back for a dose of fun.

Fire Pro Wrestling World

image source: ytimg.com

While some may argue that wrestling is not a sport, it is definitely entertaining which is why we decided to include it anyway. Fire Pro Wrestling World is the closest you’ll ever get to Mortal Kombat in a game that features actual real wrestlers.

The cool thing here is that you own the rules and can actually create your own. Not to mention that there’s a lot of customisation involved from the ring to the way the wrestler looks and behaves.

In conclusion, there are plenty of sports games out there and you can choose between games that exist in real life and games that are nothing but a fantasy. After all, games do represent the virtual world so why wouldn’t you be allowed to fulfil your wilder dreams than just playing football?

Lessons A Huge AAA Success Like GTA 5 Can Teach Indie Developers

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Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar Games’ colossal juggernaut of a title, was developed on a budget of $265 million. The end product was a detailed open-world game with cutting edge graphics and AI programming of unparalleled complexity (for the time).

All that is just about as distant as you can get from indie game development.

Rockstar has decades of industry experience, GTA is one of the most popular mainstream AAA franchises around and the company spent more than half of its hundreds-of-millions budget on marketing. It also just cracked over 95 million copies sold.

Anyone with an inkling of what indie development looks like will know that these things are worlds apart.

And yet, in the underlying fabric of the game itself – not the product – are lessons that small teams working remotely and one-man devs can learn from, if only conceptually. Development of a title like GTA 5 is a unique beast in terms of project management, and unlike anything most AAA developers have to deal with let alone indies, so we’ll be focusing on just the game itself.

It’s also a tough example because, due to its high budget, there was very little the developers couldn’t allow themselves. Even so, interviews and other sources have revealed that over the course of the game’s development a number of features and mechanics were cut either due to time or monetary constraints.

This brings us to our first lesson, and one that can be applied to gaming universally – scope. You need to know the scope of what you want to do, what you can get done, and sync the two together. Game development can be arduous work even when the crunch hasn’t set in, and indie developers are certainly hit harder than AAA in this regard.

In the case of indie devs, when they’re working from a much smaller budget or are developing for free, the stress of getting your title out into the open can be confounded with making that title the best it can be. Feature-creep must be avoided, cut what needs to be cut and stay focused on your scope.

Too many indie developers give up their daily lives to create their first game, release it, then patch it profusely only to end up with health issues, broken relationships and a financially unsuccessful game because they lost sight of what could be feasibly achieved.

Big productions like GTA 5 have specific committees to keep an eye out for this, reining in the project if too many features are planned, pushing the limits of deadlines and budgets.

On the other hand, indie developers have more control over their work and need to be their own supervisors. If GTA 5 had stretched itself too thin because adding additional feature X and Y would be “cool”, it wouldn’t be the critically acclaimed success it is today.

Another thing GTA 5 gets right is the ratio of content to scale. AAA titles these days pride themselves on how expansive their maps are and how much sheer content there is – you’d think that more is universally better. Thing is, even though the settings of Los Santos and Blaine County are large, together, they’re hardly the largest open world in gaming.

Instead, Rockstar knew to limit the physical size of the map to the amount of content they’d produce. Thus, GTA 5 has a large amount of unique content distributed evenly and organically throughout the action-space. Things aren’t too cramped nor are they too far between.

Relating gameplay content with map size is very specific to open-world sandboxes, but the principle can be applied to any game. The pacing, amount and length of content needs to be in balance.

There is no golden ratio and that “balance” varies depending on the project. Maybe a sombre exploration game is well balanced when quiet moments are predominant, where an action-packed FPS is well balanced when you keep the adrenaline pumping.

Generally, as an indie developer, realistic goals are essential, and no-one should be gunning for a spectacle the scope and size of GTA 5 right off the bat. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from the game and how it implements basic game design principles, because these principles are universal and GTA 5 implements them masterfully.

image source: Rockstar Games

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Logan Smith
Logan has been obsessed with Rockstar Games ever since the Grand Theft Auto series went 3D with GTA III. He spends his time wandering Los Santos while eagerly waiting for Red Dead Redemption 2 to finally land.

 

 

 

Open Fodder: An Open Source Port Of Cannon Fodder

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Surely you all know (or at least) heard of Sensible Software’s brilliant military-themed action strategy shooter, Cannon Fodder. If you had an Amiga back in the day, we bet the house that you would’ve played Cannon Fodder.

Roll on to present day and we now have a nod to this awesome game with the brilliant open source port for modern operating systems (Windows / Linux / Unix), Open Fodder. This project (source code can be found on GitHub) is the brainchild of one Robert Crossfield (aka: segrax) and the mysteriously named, Dr Novice.

While Open Fodder is packaged with two demos, the full game requires the retail release available from GOG or the data extracted from the Amiga version using the WHDLoad installer.


source: Robert Crossfield

 

Results Are In For Your Dream Pinball Theme

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image source: David Manzano via Ozark Pinball Syndicate – Facebook

You all cast your vote and now it is time to reveal the results of what you all wanted your dream pinball theme to be.

We swear, we did not influence this result, but let’s just say we are very very happy to see Masters Of The Universe at the top of the dream theme heap! We were surprised with Pokemon, Die Hard (movie) and Predator (movie) getting votes for equal 3rd spot, but Harry Potter (2nd) and Rick and Morty (equal 3rd) were always going to poll well.

With all this talk of dream pinball themes, we wonder if the major pinball manufacturers and their licensing teams will take heed and surprises us in the not too distant future? We should hope so!

So, do you agree with this vote result? What theme would you have preferred to be number 1? Let us know via Twitter or Facebook – go on, have your say!