ausretrogamer

Melbourne’s Pinball Paradise

December 12, 2016 By ausretrogamer

So why is Melbourne the most liveable city? Well, one good reason is that we have our very own dedicated pinball and whisky bar, aptly named, Pinball Paradise. Perhaps when Guns N’ Roses sang about Paradise City, they meant this place!

Set in the north-west part of Melbourne’s Central Business District and across the road from the Queen Victoria Market, Pinball Paradise is a pinball wizard’s dream come true – fifteen pinball machines covering multiple eras and a bar stocked with alcohol to quench your hard earned thirst. There is definitely no better place to meet with friends, have a drink and get flippin’!

The lowdown:
What: Pinball Paradise
Where: 1st Floor, 213 Franklin Street, Melbourne, Australia
Opening Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 4:00pm to LATE
Pinball Competitions: monthly Melbourne Silverball League

Our only problem, what to play first?

We started with some old school pinball

And then we ended up on Jersey Jack Pinball’s Wizard Of Oz, 75th Anniversary Edition

Check out Martin Robbins’ ‘Grand Opening’ vid to get a feel of Pinball Paradise, oh and its secret entry!

source: Melbourne Silverball League

Dialed In: Meeting Jersey Jack Pinball’s Jack Guarnieri

December 9, 2016 By ausretrogamer

If you weren’t aware, there is more than one player in the pinball manufacturing business. Jersey Jack Pinball started in January 2011 and immediately took the pinball scene by storm, creating and releasing innovative, fun and quality pinball machines. This trailblazing pinball company was founded by Jack Guarnieri, an amusement veteran of some forty years and a visionary that understands that pinball must break new ground in features and technology to keep players interested and to attract new ones to this wonderful game we call pinball.

In their short history, Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP) has introduced a number of pinball innovations; the high quality backboard LCD-HD screen, RGB-LED playfield lighting, rich audio, QR codes with social media integration and exquisite playfield toys to name just a few. Keeping this ground breaking momentum isn’t easy, but JJP understands that it is crucial to their continuing success.

JJP definitely took a leap of faith with their latest machine, Dialed In – it is refreshing to see a pinball company take a risk and be at the bleeding edge of pinball design and technology! Pinball designer extraordinaire, Pat Lawlor jumped on board and has integrated a number of mind-blowing features, like Bluetooth connectivity enabling additional player capabilities through a smartphone and a camera that emblazons player selfies on the backboard LCD screen. You would think that Dialed In’s original concept may not attract players to it, but we reckon Pat Lawlor and Jersey Jack Pinball have absolutely nailed it! With the game being meticulously developed over a number of years, it shows that no stone has been left unturned for an engrossing and engaging experience. With only the software left to be completed by the legendary Ted Estes, we can’t wait to see the final result!

Dialed In undercover! Waiting for the Australian unveiling

The unveiling of Dialed In! The anticipation was unbearable!

This past weekend, Mr Pinball and Bayside Pinball Club hosted the Jersey Jack Pinball event, with JJP founder and CEO, Jack Guarnieri as the guest of honour. Jack’s Australian unveiling of Dialed In drew a capacity crowd at the Sandbelt Hotel in south-east Melbourne. Eager onlookers could not wait to get their first glimpse of the machine and have a play. Once the machine was available for play, it was like moths to a flame – the queue to play the machine became longer by the second! We were glad that we waited for our turn, as playing Dialed In was a mesmerising experience that left us wanting to play it over and over again. The playfield was inviting, the ‘feel’ of the flippers felt right, the flow of the silverball was precise and that rich thumping audio was just so visceral! Dialed In is already a winner from our brief experience!

Meeting Jersey Jack Pinball’s Jack Guarnieri was both an honour and a humbling experience

The crowd is abuzz awaiting Jack’s inaugural Australian keynote speech!

The other highlight of the event was meeting Jack. Greeted by a warm hug, we knew that Jack was the kind of person we could immediately call our friend. Jack’s eagerness to get to know people, his intellect and humour made him very endearing. He made himself available for people to approach him, even going without food all day to ensure that he got to meet as many folks as possible. Jack’s keynote speech at the unveiling of Dialed In and the Q&A session were great insights into the man and the JJP company, from his fascinating beginnings in Manhattan and the Jersey Shore, to pinball operations, manufacturing and distribution. We hope that Jack returns to Australia in the not too distant future!

Many thanks to Wayne Gillard from Mr Pinball and Lucas Bardin from Bayside Pinball Club for putting on such a great event!

Jack introduces Pat Lawlor’s original concept game, Dialed In! And it’s a beauty!

The crowd gathers to take a closer look!

Always drawing a crowd – Martin Robbins gets dialled in!

Check out Marto’s selfies on the backboard!

Finally, it was our turn to play!

We were mesmerised by the playfield

The Hobbit – Black Arrow edition made its Australian debut at the event too!

Australian IFPA Co-Director, Luke Marburg is taken by The Hobbit

Getting ready for Jack’s fireside (Q&A) chat

Even with technical problems, Jack managed to power through and keep the crowd entertained!

Grant Levy shows off his Battle Pinny homebrew pinball machine

Always available for a chat

Jack and his magic TEXTA!

Last call of duty – autographs!

Bayside Pinball Club were raffling off this Judge Dredd beauty

There were other pinball machines to be played!

Stacey Borg (aka: DRC) and Martin Robbins go head-to-head

Pinball was the winner on this day!

We’ll definitely keep flippin & tweetin’

RETRO.HK 2016: Hong Kong’s Retro Gaming Fair

December 8, 2016 By ausretrogamer

RETRO.HK, the Hong Kong event for retro video games, will hold its 2016 fair at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design – Jockey Club Innovation Tower. The free public event will open its doors on December 10th (Saturday) and 11th (Sunday) at the podium floor of the Innovation Tower, from 10am to 6pm.

“Following the very enthusiastic response to last year’s event in Central, we hope RETRO.HK 2016 will be even more playful and fruitful.” said Dixon Wu, founder and lead organizer. “This year there will be a lot more classic video games for visitors to play and try. We will exhibit close to a hundred video consoles from the 70’s up to the 90’s – three times more than last year, the majority coming from the private collection of Mr. Tik-Man Ma, owner of Perfect Denki. I believe some of the exhibits have never been in public, and I’m very excited about that; die-hard fans should definitely not miss it!”

RETRO.HK 2015 – check out all those beauties!

Even the Nintendo PlayStation made it RETRO.HK 2015!
via eastasiasoft

Tournaments of the Classics – RetroCup 2016

The RetroCup 2016 will also be held at the event. There will be 2 rounds of competition for classic versions of “Street Fighter” and “The King of Fighters”, selected by fans with an accumulated 2,500 likes and votes on the official RETRO.HK facebook page. Two other key highlights will be a speed run for the first level of “Super Mario Bros.” on the Nintendo Famicom, and a battle royal on the 10-player version of “Bomberman” for the Sega Saturn. All competitions will have commentaries and live broadcast by GameCC! There will heaps heaps of prizes for the champions!

Mysterious 2D-Fighting Game – 1st appearance in Hong Kong

Former developers of classic SNK Neo Geo game franchises such as “The King of Fighters”, “Art of Fighting” and “The Last Blade” have gotten together to form a new development team, giving birth to a brand-new 2D-fighting game for a beloved classic console – the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo. Hong Kong gamers can get their first hands-on experience exclusively at RETRO.HK 2016! Also developed by former team members of “The King of Fighters” game series, is another stylish 2D-fighting game “Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm (八咫鴉)”. These two titles, together with other games developed by local Hong Kong developers, will all be available for visitors to try and play!

This year’s RETRO.HK will have the following areas:
– Free Play Zone: Play classic titles against your friends and other fellow gamers.
– RetroCup 2016: Win amazing prizes competing in popular classics from the 90’s.
– Exhibition Area: Look back at more than 40 years of video game history.
– Individual Exhibitors: Local gamers show off their products and collections.
– Local Game Showcase: A display of Hong Kong developed games & student work.

The Exhibition Area will remain open until December 18th (Sun) after the main weekend event!

source: RETRO.HK via Andrew Davidson

Atari ST Gaming: The AtariCrypt Magazine

December 7, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Atari ST fans rejoice! We finally have an exclusive magazine we can all drool over (and tease our Amiga friends with)!

The ST Army Of Two, Steve Gregory & Darren Doyle (aka: Ataricrypt) have joined forces to bring us a very special Christmas gift for 2016: the ‘AtariCrypt Collection Volume One’ magazine – packed with 70 pages of awesomely curated Atari ST content!

This “FREE” digital magazine can be downloaded from the AtariCrypt site. Although the mag is free, there is the (voluntary) option to reward Steve and Darren for their hard work in bringing us this brill mag!

source: AtariCrypt

Retro Gaming Christmas Gifts Under $50

December 6, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Are you on a tight budget this Christmas? If so, we have put together a list of retro gaming gifts that won’t break the bank. No matter your gaming allegiance, we have something for everyone!

Get your Christmas gift ideas pad out and start taking notes!

Hit up Kmart (Australia) for some cool retro gaming inspired t-shirts for under $15!

If you want to play your Sega Saturn NTSC games on your PAL machine, then you need this – Action Replay 4M Auto Plus

One for the Atari Fans – the beautiful Art Of Atari book

We can’t leave out the Nintendo book fans – Good Nintentions 1985 | Color Edition: The Definitive Unauthorized Guide to Nintendo’s NES Launch (Volume 2)

One for the arcade junkies that love their history – Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Data East Arcade Classics

When it comes to attire, we got Sega Sonic fans covered – Sonic tank top (Kmart Australia)

Stuff the Christmas stocking with some Zelda gear – Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Link Action Figure

Get the family (or your friends) together for some friendly UNO Super Mario game

May the force be with you this Christmas – Tomica Star Wars Star Cars Darth Vader Truck

Not quite retro, but it is an awesome shoot’em up – SÖLDNER-X 2: Final Prototype

Wanna use your PS3, PS4 or Wii U controllers on your NES? Then you need this – 8Bitdo Retro Receiver for NES

If you prefer to use newer NES style controller, then you gotta grab – the 8Bitdo NES30 GamePad

Keep your 3DS XL safe from pocket monsters – Pokemon Monster Ball

NOTE: All items listed are under $50 and exclude shipping costs

Metal Slug: The Complete History

December 5, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Do you know how many games are in the Metal Slug series? Would you believe there are over 30 ‘Slug’ games? Yeah, we are in disbelief too.

Luckily for us all, Daniel Ibbertson from Slope’s Games Room has collated all the information and produced another great ‘Complete History’ video on one of our favourite SNK gaming franchises.

Which Metal Slug game is your fave? Tell us now on Twitter or Facebook.

source: Slope’s Games Room

Inside Lens: Game Preservation – The Quest

December 2, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Nostalgia can be very intoxicating, especially when it comes to video games. That affection we feel for the gaming period from our past can be lost if we do not take action to preserve it.

Preserving old video games has invaluable cultural and historical value, not just for our generation, but for generations to come. We want future generations to be able to look at, study, learn from and most importantly, play these old games.

In Japan, two video game enthusiasts, a French citizen (Joseph Redon) and a Japanese surgeon (Takuya Fukuda), are on a mission to save our old video games from extinction. They founded the Game Preservation Society, a non-profit organisation whose goal is to restore and archive video games from the past. Check out the NHK World – Inside Lens documentary – it pays tribute to their preservation work.

* The documentary is available to watch till December 12 2016, so get on over here and watch it! *

source: NHK World Japan – Inside Lens

Thank you to our friend, Lane Myer for bringing this to our attention.

2SER Radio Chat: The Nostalgic World Of Retro Gaming

November 29, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Our very own, Alex Boz, hits the airwaves in a LIVE interview with Nic Healey from radio station 2SER (107.3). Nic and Alex chat about PAX Aus, the love and allure of retro gaming, cutting out John Laws from the Commodore 64 Family Pack box and much, much more!

If you have a spare 6 minutes and 44 seconds, take a listen here!

The Retro Freak: It’s Freakin Awesome

November 25, 2016 By ausretrogamer

When we received the Retro Freak console from Play-Asia, we put our thinking cap on to try and find a way to review the unit objectively. Our thinking cap must’ve worked, as we came up with an ingenious idea – take the Retro Freak to the biggest gaming expo in the southern hemisphere, PAX Aus 2016!

By having the Retro Freak available to play at PAX Aus, it gave us the opportunity to observe attendees playing on the console and gauge their unfiltered and objective feedback. With thousands in attendance, we weren’t short of people having a go. There were youngsters and older players, families and couples all having a go. The overwhelming responses from players was, “What is this console?”, “Where can I get one?” and “How much is it?”.

Play your old school carts on the Retro Freak!

For those that are not aware, this awesome console from Cyber Gadget allows you to play your original game cartridges/cards from your Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, PC Engine, TurboGrafx-16, SuperGrafx, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. By supporting these legacy systems, the Retro Freak ensures that you only need the one console setup in your games room to play all of your favourite classic titles! Hooray, you can finally declutter!

Let’s put on scanlines!

We love the clean and easy-to-use interface

The Retro Freak pumps out its audio visuals via HDMI, supporting 720p upscaling, which makes your old school games look great on newer TVs – so no more needing that 20 year old CRT TV! Well, we would suggest that you still hold onto your CRT TV *winks*. The other cool features that will freak you out (in a good way) include; filters, backing up of games from cartridge onto the console (on MicroSD card), instant save states and cheat codes (for certain games).

For control, there is the pack-in SNES-style controller, which does the job well, or if you prefer, modern gamepads such as the DualShock 3 and DualShock 4 can also be used (via USB). The Retro Freak Premium pack ships with a controller adaptor that supports Famicom/NES, Super Famicom/SNES, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 controllers. If you prefer bluetooth control (perhaps you dislike wires!), you can procure the 8bitdo Retro Receiver, plug it into the controller adaptor and use any one of your PS3, PS4, WiiMote or Wii U controllers you may have lying around. Oh yeah, you can re-map controller buttons to suit your style! We love the flexibility that the Freak provides!

The pack-in controller does the job! At least the USB cable is 1.8M!

One side of the Controller Adaptor – connect your fave gamepads!

Other side of the Controller Adaptor reveals more classic controller ports!

So how does it compare to playing on the real hardware? We threw all kinds of games at the Freak, and it ran them without a hitch. We didn’t encounter any incompatibility issues, which ensured we didn’t rage quit and turn off the console. The transferring of original game cartridge data to MicroSD is as easy as breathing, thanks to the user friendly interface. One niggle we did have was with Cyber Gadget’s support page being in Japanese – it made it difficult to ascertain the firmware and application updates required to ensure the Retro Freak was up to date. Google did came to the rescue here by pointing us to a forum that had the instructions in English on how to upgrade the firmware.

The elephant in the room is the obvious comparison to the RetroN5. With quality issues hampering the RetroN5, we know which system we would prefer to use – if only the Retro Freak was as good looking as the RetroN5! If you want to be able to archive your original game carts and declutter by only having one console to play your classic games on, then you can’t go wrong with the Retro Freak!

If you are keen to check out the Retro Freak console, then head to Play-Asia now.

Play Operation Wolf straight from the PC-Engine HuCard, OR…

Backup the Operation Wolf HuCard to microSD! It’s the best of both worlds!

The Retro Freak makes it to PAX Aus!

Family gaming together!

The Retro Freak was a hit at PAX Aus 2016! The Sega Mega Drive version of Aladdin was quite popular.

Super Famicom F-Zero action aplenty!

Time to SUPER SMASH (some) TV!

Thanks to Play-Asia.com for supplying the Retro Freak used in this review.

Tomica Star Wars: Star Cars Darth Vader Carrier

November 24, 2016 By ausretrogamer

If you are a Star Wars fan and are struggling to find stuff to add to your Christmas wishlist, then you are in luck! Cross out whatever is number one on your current wishlist and add the awesome Tomica Star Wars Star Cars Darth Vader carrier truck!

As you can see from the product photos, this truck is one mean looking vehicle – you can finally be driving on the dark side of the force! If you want your truck to carry cargo, you may want to add the Tomica Star Wars vehicles to your list too.

Hit Amazon now and grab yourself some cool Star Wars gear for Xmas!

This is one truck than can lure us to the dark side of the force!