AUSRETROGAMER

The Pop-Culture E-Zine

You are here: Home / 2020 / Archives for July 2020

Archives for July 2020

From Bedrooms to Billions: The PlayStation Revolution

By

If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that the folks at From Bedrooms To Billions sure know how to create a compelling documentary.

Hot off the heels of their successful self titled From Bedrooms to Billions and The Amiga Years documentaries, the From Bedroom to Billions film makers have embarked on telling the definitive story of how PlayStation took gaming to the next level in The PlayStation Revolution documentary.

Take a gander at the below trailer and press release photos, as we are sure that your anticipation and excitement level will be turned up to the max! We honestly can’t wait to watch The PlayStation Revolution.

Available: September 7, 2020
TVoD Platforms: iTunes, Amazon, Sky Box Office and Vimeo
Physical platforms: DVD and Blu-ray

Roll on September 7th!!!

image source: From Bedrooms to Billions

 

Retrofy Your Nintendo Switch Dock

By

The Nintendo Switch is still our go to contemporary gaming system, so when we see clever peeps injecting nostalgia with their Switch, we definitely take note!

One such clever peep, Imokruok has created two cool casemod docks for his Nintendo Switch, one based on the 8-bit NES and the other on the 16-bit SNES, albeit the North American version 😉

The best part is that Imokruok has documented these creations in step by step photos, so make sure you check out the full compliment of pics in the above Imgur links. Oh yeah, check out the video of the NES Switch dock builds process below:

NES Switch dock (build pics in comments) from r/NintendoSwitch

Donor SNES case – it all begins!

The completed SNES Switch dock – it’s a beauty

The NES case mod – it all has to start somewhere!

The finished product!
image source: Imgur

 

Analogue News: Could It Be The Release of the Analogue Pocket?

By

We told you all about the Analogue Pocket last October, however, with the current world health situation, it seems that their scheduled release plans in 2020 were impacted, till now?!

Analogue tweeted last night (Australian time) with a simple message, “Jul. 27, 2020 8am PST”. Could this date be the release of the Analogue Pocket? Chances are that it is, but we’ll know more in a few days.

Unfortunately for those of us in Australia, we’ll have to stay up late (1am AEST, Jul. 28, 2020) to check out what the news/announcement is. Make sure you all set your alarms.

Let the excitement (and speculation) begin!

Sega Mega Drive – Street Fighter 2 Remastered Edition

By

Nintendo may be grabbing a lot of attention with their Nintendo Direct announcement this week, but we reckon you need to know about this other awesome news too.

So what’s the awesome news? Well, remember when Street Fighter II hit the 16-bit consoles and we were all discussing which version was better? For the record, we preferred the SNES version, but the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis (Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition) game was no slouch either. The awesome news is, things have changed for the better on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis version, thanks to coder Gabriel Pyron.



Gabriel has been toiling for 4 years, reworking the Mega Drive / Genesis Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition game to bring it as close to arcade perfect as possible, aptly titled, Street Fighter II Remastered Edition. Gabriel has injected better/more colours, updated the graphics, animations and art, fixed some bugs and removed the pesky censorship elements to name just a few of his updates.

Head on over here to download Gabriel’s update and apply the patch to play the ultimate (and best) Street Fighter II game on the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis!

image source: Romhacking



Your Top 4 Favourite Classic Video Game Characters of All-Time

By

The good folks at Replay Magazine recently conducted a survey to find out who was our favourite video game character of all time.

Well, it was no surprise to see the usual suspects, however, we honestly thought Mario would be on top of the list. Oh yeah, how did Dirk the Dragon Slayer (Dragon’s Lair) make it in third spot and where was Sonic The Hedgehog?!

Upon reflection, the iconic yellow dot-muncher definitely deserves to be on top. We can’t wait for Replay’s next surveys, so stay tuned.

Top 4 Favourite Video Game Characters of all-time:

  1. Pac-Man (38% of vote)
  2. Mario (21%)
  3. Dirk the Dragon Slayer (13%)
  4. Donkey Kong (8%)

image source: Just Kidding

 

Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball – The Real Pinball Machine

By

We absolutely love DIY creations, and Pinsider Ryan McQuaid’s (aka:McSquid) homebrew Sonic The Hedgehog Spinball pinball machine is definitely no exception!

To make a virtual pinball game is one thing, but to make a real flipping pinball machine is something totally different – making pinball machines is HARD!

We have been following McSquid’s Sonic The Hedgehog pinball machine build for the last 7 months, and we must say, the progress has been fun and quite amazing to see it go from a digital creation to a physical beast. This kind of project ain’t for the faint-hearted!

So why a real Sonic The Hedgehog pinball machine? Well, according to Ryan, he had been lamenting for years that SEGA never made a Sonic the Hedgehog pinball machine. Despite SEGA manufacturing pinball machines in the 90s (remember that!) and placing Sonic animations in the DMDs of their pinball machines (as as well as in their manuals), they never pulled the trigger on creating a pinball machine based on their celebrated blue mascot.

With his Nintendo rival, Super Mario, having his own pinball machine, and coupled with Ryan being a huge Sonic video game fan, plus loving to go FAST, it was a match made in pinball heaven or should that be Green Zone heaven…..

First rule of designing a pinball machine – do it in the virtual world first, and iterate!

With his pinball restoration skills honed over a number of years, the idea of making his own pinball game was always in the back of Ryan’s mind, with the theme seeming to be quite obvious. Like all good homebrew creations, Ryan started writing down his ideas and allowing the design to evolve naturally. Teaching himself to use Visual Pinball (digital pinball platform), Ryan set out to design his dream theme pinball machine in the virtual world. With multiple iterations of his digital Sonic pinball machine, Ryan finally settled on his creation that was worth his time to build in the real world.

The iconic Sonic (360) Loop comes to life! Wow, what an amazing ramp!!

The donor cabinet in Sonic blue!

The video assets are coming along nicely too

With a donor pinball cabinet found, Ryan’s dream theme has taken one giant step to reality. With the current health crisis and restrictions in place, Ryan has powered through with the build of his Sonic pinball machine. From the video assets, sound and effects to a flipping whitewood playfield, Ryan is at a point where we can all see the fruits of his labour, and that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel to this amazing project! Just imagine how it will look once everything is completed, including some cool Sonic art on the cabinet, backglass and playfield!

Being a perfectionist, we know that Ryan will only make this creation even better, so we are hanging on his every update. So stay tuned as we bring you more work in progress updates on this amazing homebrew pinball creation! Go FAST or go home!

Looking, sounding and shooting good so far!


source: Ryan ‘McSquid’ McQuaid via Pinside 

 

LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System Set

By

Whoa, LEGO and Nintendo have given us a one two punch of sets – first with their LEGO Super Mario, and now, the awesome LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System set!

This awesome LEGO NES set will be available from August 1 and will retail for AU$349.99. You’ll now be able to assemble your own console and retro CRT TV, then turn the crank to make 8-bit Super Mario move across the screen! We are excited 🙂

source: LEGO

 

Portable Retro Emulation

By

What is it about the need to ‘hack’ handheld systems to play old school video games? Is it the challenge (to hack), is it the fact you are doing something shady or is it purely to just play your ‘backup’ video games from gaming generations gone by?

What ever the reason, there have been a plethora of options for retro gamers to either soft or hard mod their portable beasts to play classic games. In parallel, there have been dedicated emulation handheld systems to help with your hit of nostalgia, like the GP2X, Caanoo and the latest beast, the RK2020, to name just a few.

CycloDS – the softmod hack for the Nintendo DS

We have quite a few handheld systems that we use to play our favourite retro video games, some emulate better than the others, but our favourite right now is the PSP for playing Mega Drive and SNES games. We have the exciting new RK2020 retro handheld coming to our office, so stay tuned for our review on that little beast 🙂

WARNING: Hacking your systems is not without risk and can also void your warranty.

 

Digital Pinball Cabinet – Nintendo Switch

By

There is nothing like anticipating the arrival of a cool gadget. We originally ordered Far East Pinball’s Digital Pinball Cabinet for the Nintendo Switch back in April, but due to the current world health crisis, we knew that shipping it from Japan to Australia was going to impact its arrival. Well, we are quite chuffed to finally have this cool contraption in our hands!

As huge fans of pinball video games, we always felt that the experience could be better. Don’t get us wrong, playing pinball games on your fave console are darn awesome these days, even if you are playing them using a controller. But, to get the most immersive experience playing pinball video games, you need to have the screen vertically oriented, which the Switch does quite admirably. If you have the FlipGrip, you’ll understand how awesome it is to play these games in their proper TATE orientation.

Bumping Action!

Far East Pinball’s Digital Pinball Cabinet takes the experience of playing pinball video games that one huge step forward. The Digital Pinball Cabinet for the Nintendo Switch allows you to play pinball using proper arcade flipper buttons and best of all, allows nudging, shaking and slap saving via its built-in motion sensors, just like a real pinball machine – but be careful not to tilt! The device is really easy to use, you just slide the Switch into the cradle, plug in the connector cable into the Nintendo Switch’s Type-C port, slide on the (grey) lockdown bar and you are ready to flip! The cabinet also has cut-outs along the side to access the Switch’s headphone jack, vents, volume and power buttons.

The Digital Pinball Cabinet comes with 7 arcade quality buttons, three buttons on the right of the cabinet, two button on the left and two buttons on the front. The cabinet allows for two distinct button mapping configurations, but we encourage players to use the default mappings. It also provides the means to change the motion/nudging settings to be high/low sensitivity or turned off. Oh yeah, the only buttons that are not mapped are the plus (+), minus (-) and the screenshot button – a very minor niggle that actually doesn’t affect the use of this awesome piece of kit.

The overall built quality of the unit is good, but it could be better. There is a DIY look and feel to it with some rough edges on the 3D printed case and lock down bar, but we are being quite picky now and in all honesty, you get over this  quickly one you playing games on it. Speaking of games, we played Pinball FX3, Star Wars Pinball, The Pinball Arcade, and Stern Pinball Arcadewithout a hitch. Playing these games using the Digital Pinball Cabinet has given us a renewed love for playing pinball video games.

If you are into playing pinball video games on your Switch, then we very very highly recommend you consider Far East Pinball’s Digital Pinball Cabinet – it’s flippin awesome! 

NOTE: If you are interested in buying the Digital Pinball Cabinet for the Nintendo Switch, you will need a Japanese address, as Far East Pinball only ships within Japan. We used a mail-forwarding service to purchase our cabinet. The total cost for the cabinet and then mail-forward shipping was AU$180.45.