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Pinball Expo 2022 – The Homebrew Pinball Machines

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If you are into pinball and were in Chicago this past weekend, you would’ve no doubt attended Pinball Expo!

Being one of the larger pinball events in the world, among the many things to see, do and play is the homebrew section. The homebrew machines are so good these days that it could lead to a pinball designer gig at one of the many pinball manufacturers in North America – just ask Ryan McQuaid (Sonic Spinball) and Mark Seiden (Metroid Pinball), both are now pinball designers at American Pinball and Jersey Jack Pinball respectively!

For Pinball Expo 2022 there were quite a few eye popping and amazing homebrew pinball machines designed and built by enthusiasts that we just had to share with you all. Licensing notwithstanding, do you see any you would like being mass produced? We love the look of Elf, Pokemon and League of Legends!

image source: Pinball Expo via Facebook



Flippin the Script on Autism – Fundraiser Auction!

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This is something close to our heart, so we thought we’d share the below press release with you all 🙂

PinShades is a proud sponsor of Flippin the Script on Autism

We are excited to announce LoserKids and TPN teaming up to help children with Autism! Flippin the Script will be a 12 hour charity stream. So mark your calendars for October 20th (Thursday – US time) at Pinball Expo in Chicago. The stream is directly going towards Learning Solutions. An Utah based organization that helps with early intervention Autism therapy for kids that are as young as 2 all the way to late teenage years. The organization helps kids with Autism by giving them a one on one teachers to help develop skills like: Speech, social, and positive reinforcement to name a few.

Stern, JJP, American, Multimorphic, CGC, Haggis, Lit Frames, Flip N Out, The Pinball Company, PinShades, and others are donating products that will be auctioned off during the stream. LoserKids, TPN, Poormen, and others with be hosting the stream and interviewing some of your favourite people from the pinball industry including Keith Elwin and Eric Meunier to name a few.

We hope you join or stream us on October 20th at Pinball Expo!



MOTU Origins Eternia Playset: The Call To Battle Continues

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Masters of the Universe Origins Eternia Playset: The Call To Battle Continues

Bah, who needs Kickstarter or IndieGoGo when you can setup and run your own successful crowdunding campaigns!

That is exactly what Mattel Creations have done (and are doing)! Their Masters of the Universe Origins Eternia Playset campaign has reached its funding target in record time, and it still has quite a few weeks yet to run (campaign ends on November 10th). The campaign is fast approaching 7,000 backers, meaning all the bonus tiers are in play to get unlocked!

Early Backers get a bonus King Grayskull figure

We bet these will be unlocked before this campaign ends!

If you are a MOTU collector and need this playset in your life, then be prepared to fork out USD$550.00 (plus shipping)! Considering the original Eternia Playset goes for thousands of dollars, perhaps this isn’t a bad deal after all 😉

If you become an Early Backer (by 11.59PM PT, October 19), you get the bonus King Grayskull figure (see above)! We really really want this playset and are betting that once it is sold out, the scalpers will hit the regular selling sites with ridiculous prices – so the moral of the story is, if you are 100% keen, back it now to save yourself some tears and regret aftewards.

This thing is HUGE!

image source: Mattel Creations



Make Your SSD Sound Like An Old Hard Drive

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Do you miss the old sounds that your hard drives used to make when reading or writing data to disk? Ah, the platers making such a great sound – actually, we do miss that aural extravaganza.

With the advent of solid state drives (SSD), there are no moving parts, so sadly, that means no clickety clackety sounds being emitted. Alas, now you can, thanks to the HDD Clicker! This circuit board makes your SSD (or CF and/or SD cards) sound exactly like your old hard drives!


source: root42



By The Power Of Grayskull: Passing the Sword!

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Celebrating its 40th year of existence, the Masters of the Universe has brought a lot of happiness to generations of peeps, including us Gen X’ers.

For those of us with young kids, we need to pass the baton (Power Sword) to the next generation to ensure MOTU lives on for years to come!


source: Masters Of The Universe via Facebook



Dead Flip: How To Stream Pinball

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Pinball streamer, ambassador and now Stern Pinball Designer, Jack Danger, host of Dead Flip has put pen to paper (or should that be fingers to keyboard?), and published an updated feature on “How To Stream Pinball“.

Jack has been a pioneer in the field of live pinball streaming since 2014. When Jack opens his box of pinball streaming tools, rigs and general setup, we take note. Jack has been a great (virtual) friend since we first conversed on Twitter almost 8 years ago. We don’t get much time to watch live streams on Twitch, but we always try and make an exception when we get the notification that Dead Flip is streaming live!

Jack’s video tutorials are a great reference for those wanting to stream pinball!

Dead Flip’s streams are always run like clockwork and are lots of fun to watch – with Jack’s engaging personality shining through our screens. Of course the rig setup also helps in showing off the pinball machine. For those live streams when the time zones don’t work, there is always Dead Flip’s YouTube channel to catch the action via video on demand (VOD).

With the plethora of current pinball streamers hitting Twitch (and other live streaming services), each of them owe a debt of gratitude to Dead Flip for paving the way. If you are interested in streaming pinball, then read Dead Flip’s How to Stream Pinball post right away!

From all of us, thank you Jack!

Dead Flip (aka: Herman Munster) and Gary Stern (aka: Grandpa) streaming The Munsters pinball machine

images source: Dead Flip



Star Wars Halloween Pumpkins

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Now this is our kind of Halloween pumpkins! If you are a Star Wars fan, feast your peepers on these!!!

The FORCE is strong in these pumpkins (and turnips). Jack-o’-lantern would be proud 😉

image source: Star Wars always via Facebook



PAX Aus 2022 – It Was Awesome

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After a 3 year in-person hiatus, the biggest gaming event in Australia was back, bigger and better as ever!

It was so awesome to see crowds flocking to PAX Aus 2022, just like they had between 2013 and 2019. Don’t get us wrong, the virtual PAX Aus events were great to have, but nothing beats the in-person experience.

Masked up and stocked with hand sanitizers, Ms. Ausretrogamer and I were glad to be back, or just like the sign said, “Welcome Home”. PAX Aus definitely feels like home, with its inclusive and diversity rich setup, the event and spaces were safe for all to enjoy.

It’s great to be back at PAX Aus!

Greetings!

Whoa, that is a big map! This is where we will end up….

Even though Melbourne experienced a torrent of rain during the course of the weekend (just like it did in 2013!), it didn’t dampen spirits, with cosplayers doing their thing, cosplaying like a boss. In the Expo Hall, we noticed that the big guns were missing (PlayStation, Nintendo and Microsoft, to name a few), but once you immersed yourself in what was on show (especially in the impressive PAX Rising area), you hardly noticed that these AAA companies weren’t there.

DarkWeb Streamer_ was our pick for best in show!

For us, PAX Aus is all about the great panels, indie developers and of course, the Freeplay area, which is still going strong and getting bigger each time we come back! From the tabletop gaming to the merch and tournaments on offer, this area is the heart of PAX Aus. The Freeplay area is also home to our beloved Classic Gaming Area (CGA)! Unfortunately we had to step back in being part of the CGA for this year, but we were so proud to see the amazing teams from Weird and Retro, Press Play On Tape, Mr. Pinball, Reality Games, Bartronica and the Pinball community create another amazing space for folks to get a hit of some intoxicating nostalgia.


source: Alex Kidman

For those of you that couldn’t make it to PAX Aus this year, we thought we’d share some photos from the event (see above and below, including the above video of the Classic Gaming Area from the equally awesome, Alex Kidman) to hopefully bring the event home to your screens and make you feel like you were there too!

Expo Hall

Freeplay Hall – including the Classic Gaming Area

 



Construction Simulator – Review

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We’ll be upfront, we haven’t played a ‘sim’ video game in a long long time, especially one like this one!

Our expectations in playing Construction Simulator (CS) on our Xbox Series S was coming off a low base. We honestly didn’t know what to expect, and weren’t thinking about getting hooked on such a game. Well, we didn’t have to wonder for too long, as we found Construction Simulator such a breath of fresh air compared to the plethora of other genres we’ve been playing lately. We even managed to drain our controller, which left our construction crew and company perilously close to failure, that’s how darn good this game is – it makes you care and take responsibility for the success of your construction empire.

30 million Construction Sim fans can’t be wrong in loving this series, so better make that 30 million + 1 now. Aastragon Entertainment and Weltenbauer have ensured the player could build (pun fully intended!) a construction empire on a myriad of gaming systems, from the PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, to the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles. CS includes a co-op multiplayer for up to four players, the largest fleet of vehicles in the history of the series and numerous new and once again significantly expanded features in a completely revised, modern look. Coming in new to this series, we have to say, it’s been a pleasant surprise.

Will you become the next Multiplex or Lendlease? Or will you become a Grocon, where you start off all high and mighty, only to go down the building gurgler – your destiny is literally in your hands. Where else could we realise our childhood dreams of becoming a builder or using an excavator – thankfully, CS offers this in the comfort of our lounge room!

The extensive list of licensed vehicles, machines and equipment from the top manufacturing brands is quite impressive, as are the huge maps across Europe and the US with different and challenging campaigns featuring 90 jobs! It’s not just pure building, this is an all encompassing simulator, including maintaining your construction yard, refuelling and vehicle maintenance and renting construction gear from your dealer, just to name a few. We can’t really compare to real life as we aren’t in the industry, but the publisher assures us that the earthmoving systems and driving physics have all been revamped, making them very close to lifelike – which is great to know.

We’d go so far as to say that Construction Simulator is our fave ‘sim’ for 2022 so far! We have no doubt the 4-player co-op multiplayer mode would be even more fun than the solo campaigns, but nevetheless, this game is the complete package, no matter how you play it! Go and build and have some fun!



Disclaimer: Xbox Series X|S review code for Construction Simulator was provided by HomeRun PR.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie Teaser Trailer

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Just in case you have been living off the grid lately, check out the latest teaser trailer for The Super Mario Bros. movie! It’s a bit Game of Thrones-ish, which isn’t a bad thing.

Are you excited? We sure are! WAHOO!


source: GameSpot