There is nothing like getting that first hunt under your belt for the new year. For our first retro hunt of 2015, Ms. ausretrogamer and I set our sights on the Camberwell Sunday Market – an open-air (car boot) style market near the Camberwell Junction in Melbourne.
The crowd gathers on a perfect summer’s day in Melbourne
Upon arrival, we searched for a good coffee place to get our all important caffeine fix. Once we were well caffeinated we hit the market stalls to look for loot of the retro and vintage kind. There were E.T. and Alf board games straight from the 1980s, sequined handbags with Pac-Man ghosts, Masters Of The Universe action figures with twisted legs and of course, lots of vinyl!
Board games of 80s aliens!
A Pac-Man handbag? Now I have seen it all!
Mmmmmm, doughnuts!
Amongst the smell of hot dogs and delicious jam doughnuts, Ms. ausretrogamer finally caught the scent of some retro gaming items. We followed the scent to a nearby stall and found a PlayStation and Sega Master System console and gaming bundle. With the spurring of Ms. ausretrogamer to get the Master System bundle, I haggled on price and a deal was soon struck. Even though we have a few Master System consoles, it was the seven games that we were after in the deal. First blood had been struck for 2015. Till the next thrill of the chase…….
The prey has been found!
Can you hear me? These hipster speakers should help.
5c per bowl? Damn games were cheap back in the old days.
The Master System loot is finally home! Time to play!
It is always great to find video games based articles and programs published by major media outlets. This time around, our beloved Aunty (
Who could forget the Sega Powerline – the guys on the hotline were there to help you beat Robotnik with a ‘Super Dash Attack’ – they did warn kids to seek their parents permission to call, as the 70c per minute was highway robbery.
Oh yeah, there was also the Sega Club. The Club was created to entice you to become a member and get your hands on some tasty exclusive Sega gear! With an annual membership cost of $20, it was well worth sending in your credit card details.
As per usual, Ocean was peddling their latest videogame film tie-in, Lethal Weapon. Slated for all 8 and 16-bit computers and consoles, the Master System version mysteriously didn’t make it due to unknown reasons – perhaps a blessing!
Still on the Ocean bandwagon, their wares were still going strong in the early 90s. The Dream Team consisted of games that transcended popular culture, from The Simpsons and wrestling, to the T800 Arnie becoming a good guy. I won’t be back to play!
Being the festive season, Sega was eager to cash in on the Christmas rush and wrestle you away from the Game Boy and buy their newfangled handheld, the Game Gear – the ultimate escape kit. Who could resist a bit of Streets Of Rage on the go!
With grunge popularity at its peak and the video gaming industry pumping out awesome games to keep us entertained, it definitely smelled like a great Christmas in 1992/93.
Prior to super-slick marketing videos, there was cheesy (and endearing) promotional films, just like this rare 1972 footage telling you all about the ground breaking Magnavox Odyssey video game system – the electronic game of the future!
On a warm Sunday afternoon in December, just before Christmas, the 
The highlight of the meet is always the people. Playing games is secondary, especially when you have your behind handed to you in Hat Trick on the C64!
Dear Family,
Struggling to find the perfect video gaming present this Christmas? Perhaps you have about three quarters of a million dollars gathering dust and would like to procure the world’s largest video games collection? Well, if you do have some spare cash lying around or you have won the lottery, you could get instant Guinness World Record recognition by grabbing Michael Thomasson’s massive 11,000+ video gaming collection! You can view the games room full of goodies in an interactive panoramic view over 
source: 
The classic Segasa electro-mechanical pinball table, Baby Doll, has been saved from the scrap heap and morphed into the fully fledged 
source: 
During the pioneering days of video gaming and home computing, our industry may have been small when compared to Japan, the US and UK, but we were (and still are) proud of our gaming heritage – we will always be proud of 
As Australian gaming enthusiasts, we always paid attention to what was happening around the world, like we still do till this day. In the early 80s, when home computing took off in Australia, we were on a parallel with our gaming brethren in Europe and the United Kingdom, more so than Japan and the US.
With our nascent video gaming magazine industry barely keeping up with our veracious appetite for gaming information, we turned our attention to the British media to satisfy our craving. Our newsstands were filled with brilliantly written British magazines, from Crash and Zzap!64, to Zero, ST/Amiga Format and Computer & Video Games (to name a few!). These magazines were our only channel to what was going on in the home computing and gaming industry. The magazines introduced us to household British developers, bedroom coders, musicians, publishers and journalists, so it is satisfying to finally watch a film based on this history.
