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Archives for March 2021

Awesome Drone Video of Pinball Machines at the Pacific Pinball Museum Annex

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Drone Video of Pinball Machines at Pacific Pinball Museum AnnexAfter clicking through the amazing images of pinball machines (below), you’ll be blown away by the drone videos by live streaming producer, Eddie Codel, of the mass of pinball machines at the Pacific Pinball Museum (PPM) Annex!

Eddie’s bird’s-eye view videos are mind boggling, as they show the sheer volume of machines the PPM house and preserve for all of us to enjoy. With the current health situation around the world, we truly hope that the Pacific Pinball Museum reopens safely in the not too distant future.

 

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A post shared by Eddie Codel (@ekai)

 

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A post shared by Eddie Codel (@ekai)

 

June is Atari Month!

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Attention our fellow Atarians (fans of the old Atari),

The month of June is fast approaching and you all know what that means – it’s !

To celebrate 49 years of Atari, we are asking you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and get writing about your affinity for this iconic brand.

This is your opportunity to let your writing juices flow! To get you started, check out Matt Lacey’s Atari story from the last time we ran for Atari’s 42nd anniversary.

Once you are satisfied with your written masterpiece, just submit it to us here. The most entertaining submissions will be immortalised on ausretrogamer.com!

There is no word limit, so go for your life (just keep it clean)! Article submissions are opened from now till June 25 2021. That means you have (almost) 3 months for your submission, so get cracking you awesome Atarians!

 

 

NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol.1 – Nintendo Switch

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First impressions of games is always difficult. There is the initial excitement phase of playing something new and the more obvious one, you just need more time to play the new game to fully experience it’s features (and shortcomings) before you can be in any position to pen some sort of subjective review.

Well, lucky for us, our first impression of playing SNK’s NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 (NGPCS Vol.1) on the Switch is an overall positive one! To set the scene, we particularly played the two NeoGeo Pocket Color games, Metal Slug 1st Mission and Metal Slug 2nd Mission on both the real hardware and via the NGPCS Vol.1 on the Nintendo Switch.

Playing the Metal Slug games on the original hardware is great, especially using the clicky control stick on the NeoGeo Pocket Color handheld. However, playing it for any length of  time without the unit being backlit is a chore on your eyes. The same games on the Switch retain their original blasting charm, beefed up with a plethora of additional features, modes and ways to play and of course, the Switch screen is just so easy on the eyes. The Switch is suitable for these kinds of games, especially in handheld mode, but it’s flexibility in the way you play just makes this very compelling.

Our first impressions of the Metal Slug 1st and 2nd Missions on the NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 are very positive. You could go and look for a NeoGeo Pocket Color system and then hunt the the Metal Slug carts online, or you can save yourself the time and lots of $$ by grabbing this for your Switch!

image source: SNK Corporation

 

A Brief History of Women in Gaming: The 1980s

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It is awesome to see that The Strong (National Museum of Play) has a Women in Games Initiative and their International Center for the History of Electronic Games creating brilliant history exhibits, like A Brief History of Women in Gaming.

You can check out A Brief History of Women in Gaming: The 1980s on Google’s Arts and Culture forum, which showcases a plethora of amazing and talented women in the gaming industry, from the assembly line to the marketing department, this exhibit highlights how women have shaped the games industry through hard work, creative coding, artistic imagination, and business savvy. This exhibit tells this vital but underappreciated part of history!

source: Arts and Culture – Google

From Carol Shaw at Atari and then Activision, creating her best-selling game River Raid, Hope Neiman leading the Vectrex home game console manufacturer General Consumer Electronics’ marketing efforts in the early 1980s, to Gail Tilden creating and editing everyone’s seminal favourite magazine, Nintendo Power, this exhibit is brimming with amazing and talented women in gaming.

Check it out right now!

 

2021 World Video Game Hall of Fame Finalists

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We have featured The Strong’s ‘World Video Game Hall of Fame‘ finalists from previous years on here, so for 2021, we were quite chuffed to see a number of our favourite video games make the final 12 cut!

From FIFA International Soccer, Tron, Mattel Football, to Pole Position, StarCraft and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, we would say that most retro gamers would be quite satisfied with this year’s hall of fame inductees.

Oh yeah, gaming fans can vote for their favourite finalists from now until March 25 (US time) as part of the Player’s Choice ballot at World Video Game Hall of Fame.

image source: The Strong

 

Over 700 PS2 Prototypes And Unreleased Demos Unleashed by The Hidden Palace

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Whoa, this is mind blowing – last night, the video game preservation group, The Hidden Palace, released over 700 PlayStation 2 prototypes, early builds, E3, and press release demos in a massive (900GB) dump the group referred to as Project Deluge.

You can read more about this massive undertaking here.

 

Watching Tenet on the Game Boy Advance at 4fps

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Sometimes you have to ask why – why would someone jam a movie into a Game Boy Advance cart to watch it on an ill-fitting screen (for movie viewing)?

The answer is, because they can and are clever enough to achieve this feat! Our eyes are already in panic mode just at the thought of watching a movie on the Game Boy Advance screen at 4 frames per second, but we are so glad that Wulff Den took the initiative and time to create these darn cool and unique GBA movie cartridges.


source: Wulff Den

 

Visiting The Gamesmen Retro Game Museum

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We are reminiscing about the time we were invited by the Weird and Retro crew to join them in Sydney for the 2015 EB Expo – it was such an amazing experience!

Before the EB Expo shenanigans, we took time out to visit The Gamesmen in Penshurst (NSW), to check out their awesome (Retro) Game Museum.

The Gamesmen has been an Australian game store icon for almost 40 years and it is still going strong. Back in the day, we used to love receiving their catalogues which we would pore over each page, drooling at the latest gaming systems and games – we just wish we had kept those catalogues! Oh yeah, luckily for us (and all of you), The Gamesmen folks have made electronic copies of their old catalogues, so go here now and enjoy some intoxicating nostalgia.

Anyway……… This pilgrimage was a long time coming and fulfilled our wish to go and check out the museum in person. We definitely weren’t disappointed and we were glad to have ticked this off our bucket list. The sixty plus photos we took below from the game museum does not do it any justice – to see it in person was amazing. However, the next best thing to going there was to share what we saw, and as you will see below, your nostalgic senses will not be disappointed.

There was no one favourite section, but the glassed cabinets were like a time machine looking back at our childhood, daydreaming about owning and playing the systems and games on display. The video games system timeline mural was another highlight, reflecting how far gaming has come. The Gamesmen Retro Game Museum had truly encapsulated our past, leaving a delectable mark on our 8-bit brain.

Make sure you scroll through each image slowly, as you do not want to miss anything!

Approaching the Mecca of Australian Video Gaming!

images remain the copyright of ausretrogamer

PS: Special thank you to the Weird and Retro team for inviting us to be part of their WaRrior crew for the 2015 EB Expo and for a memorable road trip!

 

Pac-Man: The Complete History

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As Daniel Ibbertson (aka: Slope’s Game Room) so eloquently puts it, it’s time to drop a coin into one of the highest grossing video game franchises of all time – Pac-Man!

In this history documentary, Daniel discusses the inspiration and creation behind Namco’s flagship mascot, the troubled development between Namco and Midway when bringing him to western shores as well as the interesting backstory behind the controversial Atari 2600 port.


source: Slope’s Game Room

 

Pinball Isn’t As Random As It Seems

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To the casual observer, pinball seems random and chaotic, but if you watch carefully, there are skills involved that make pinball not as random as it seems.

Don’t be fooled by the flashing lights and seemingly random callouts, there are rules and set objectives (ie: modes) in pinball that reward the player that can control the flippers best. By aiming at specific targets at specific times, the player unlocks specific secrets of the machine and activates other objectives all while racking up a high score.

Watch closely, as you may learn that pinball is definitely not random once you know how to control the silverball.


source: Vox