The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Thank you to our awesome friend Goose (on Twitter), for letting us know about these lovely little Nintendo console infographics.
We knew we had to share them with the rest of you! Now we just need to convince Entartika to create some for the SNES, N64 and GameCube.
image source: Fun Little Infographics on imgur
If you haven’t been able to afford the astronomical prices for the PC-Engine GT (TurboExpress in the States) or the PC-Engine LT, then this DIY kit may be what you were looking for to morph your trusty PC-Engine into a mobile gaming powerhouse!
Sporting a 4 inch LCD and a custom 3D printed case (in varying colours), this awesome kit by Team Mercurius transforms the trusty original PC-Engine (and CoreGrafx & CoreGrafx II) console into one beast of a mobile gaming system. The unit operates via a USB power supply or you could hack and include a mobile battery for some true retro gaming on the go.
あけましておめでとうございます。
メルクリウスの次回出荷は1月中旬を予定しております。
今暫くお待ち下さい。#PCEメルクリ pic.twitter.com/46y9bdRU7s
— 「液晶操作機器搭載裏蓋壱號」（メルクリウス） (@mercurius2018) January 1, 2019
The whole kit will cost you under AU$200, however, the retailer (Ken Chan) does not sell internationally, so you will need a friend based in Japan or a proxy service to buy and ship it for you (when it is available).
image source: Akiba PC Hotline & Mercurius
[Story via Akiba PC Hotline!]
The story of Atari has been told many times, from books like Atari Inc: Business Is Fun to umpteen documentaries, but none tell the full and complete story as well as Easy to Learn, Hard To Master: The Fate Of Atari.
Narrated by revered Commodore Engineer, Bil Heard, this documentary delves deep into the Atari history like no other film before it. From Atari’s humble beginnings as Syzygy and the breakthrough of Pong, to the Atari VCS/2600 home console, its subsequent sale to Time Warner and downward spiral to oblivion in the early 80s.
The story is weaved perfectly with many points of view, including former Atari Inc. President, Ray Kassar, who had never told his side of the story prior to this documentary. This is quite important, as stories about Atari had always been told from their former engineers (like Al Alcorn) and co-founder, Nolan Bushnell, so it was refreshing to get management perspective from Ray and Manny Gerard. This is even more poignant as Ray Kassar passed away in December 2017 – making his story even more important when it comes to Atari’s history. Another poignant interview was with old foe, Ralph Baer (Died on December 6 2014), himself a great inventor and the grandfather of video games and the concept of home gaming consoles.
Other notable interviewees include Joe Decuir, Howard Warshaw, Ed Rotberg, Dannis Kable, Dave Rolfe, Eugene Jarvis, Steve Russell, former Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa and former Atarian and Activision co-founder, David Crane, to name just a few. If you don’t know the story of Atari or you would like the definitive history on Atari, then we highly recommend Easy To Learn, Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari.
Title: Easy To Learn, Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari
Director: Tomaso Walliser & Davide E. Agosta
Production: Junk Food Films
‘Tis the season to be jolly, Fa-la-la-
No matter where you are on this beautiful blue marble of ours, and no matter if you celebrate Christmas or not, on behalf of the Ausretrogamer and Pinball Press team, we wish you all a safe and awesome Christmas / Festive Season! All the very best to you all for 2019!
Thank you to all of you that come and visit our site – you all rock!
Oh yeah, if you have all been good, we hope Santa can drag himself away from playing pinball and deliver your presents!
image source: boredpanda
When our friends at Pinball Press covered handcrafted and unique pinball products on Etsy, we have a lot of you asking us to do the same for retro gaming. So your wish is our command!
Here is a selection of pretty cool retro gaming items on Etsy to suit any budget and any occasion – let’s go shopping!
Sega Seal Of Quality
Streets Of Rage 3D Shadow Box Art – framed
Hylian Shield Wooden Pin – Zelda
Awesome Nostalgia Retro Gaming T-Shirt
Game Over – enamel pin
Street Fighter – Ryu: 3D Shadow Box Art (framed)
80’s Retro Gaming Cartridge Throw Pillow Case
Altered Beast T-SHIRT / Beast Mode Gym / Retro Gaming / Unisex
Video Game Controller Poster
Oregon Trail Mug
Pokemon 3D Shadow Box Art (Framed)
NES Controller Patch
Retro NES Controller Card – A Card For Any Occasion (Birthday, Christmas, Gift)
Pixelated Heart Deco Coin Necklace
Custom Commodore 64 Printed Converse Sneakers
Geeks Line Publishing’s Anthology book series have so far been nothing short of brilliant. Their new GameCube Anthology is no exception, with excellent content and overall quality that will draw you in.
The GameCube Anthology, just like its predecessors, comprehensively details everything that is to know about Nintendo console. Chronicling it’s early days, this tome pulls no punches when it comes to detailing the stiff competition from Sony and its foundation for its successor, the Nintendo Wii.
Accompanying the great written content is the equally impressive photography – the breadth of photos cover the full gamut, from detailed hardware shots to exhaustive photos of GameCube games.
As mentioned, the depth of information and facts covered does true justice to Nintendo’s excellent GameCube system. This book is truly hard to fault. One of our fave sections in the book is the coverage of unreleased titles – which rounds off what is a must have book for any GameCube fan or gaming historians.
This book is an easy recommendation – go and get it right now!
Title: GameCube Anthology
Publisher: Geeks Line Publishing
Available from: Amazon
Disclosure: GameCube Anthology (Classic Edition) was kindly provided by Geeks Line Publishing for this review.
Do you like pinball? Do you have a special someone in your life that is into pinball?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, then we have some really unique and cool handmade and vintage pinball related gifts (to suit any budget!) so you are all sorted for Christmas (or any other occasion)!
Oh yeah, just click on the link or photo to take you straight to the product item.
Attack From Mars Shadowbox Art
Same Player Shoots Again Enamel – Pinball Pin
3″ Vintage Reproduction Williams Electronics Manufacturing Corp. Pinball Company
Guns & Roses Data East Pinball LED Backbox Display light box
Gottlieb Haunted House Pinball Shadowbox Art
Vintage 70s Pinball Wizard t-shirt
Pinball Flipper Pendant Necklace in Brushed Pewter
The Machine: Bride of Pinbot Williams Pinball BackBox LED Display light box
Mini Virtual Pinball Machine
The Walking Dead Pinball – Pile of Skulls: Pinball Flipper Bat MOD
25 Cent Pinball Arcade Video Game LED Night Light
Pinball Flipper Keychain
Pinball Pop Bumper Button / Keychain
Pinball Addict Necklace – for her (or him)
Pinball Obsession Greeting Card
Pinball Addict 3″ Embroidered Patch
INDIANA JONES The Pinball Adventure – keychain (gold)
Midnight Pinballing (Giclée Fine Art Print)
Shaky Pinball LCD Handheld Game
Tiger Electronic Vintage Handheld Pinball LCD Video Game – 1987
Miniature Football Theme Pinball Machine Clock
Night Shift – Pinball Oil Painting
Twilight Zone Pinball pin
The Addams Family Pinball LED Illuminated BackBox 3D Art Shadow Box – deluxe limited edition signed numbered
Solenoids & Asteroids – limited edition Pinball themed silkscreen print
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pinball Press
Pinball Press is the coolest PR & Social Media engine that drives awareness to your pinball related products, events, news, podcasts and streams!
Follow Pinball Press on Twitter and Facebook
We are huge fans of Fro’s (aka Fernando Reza) video games related propaganda posters!
His latest series are inspired by World War II video game propaganda prints. This latest set contains a whopping 26 prints! There are six new Mario and Zelda prints each, as as well as Metroid, Galaga, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, Metal Gear Solid, Joust, Frogger and many more great prints – check them all out here.
Duck Hunt – For Vital War Needs
Space Invader – Stop the Invasion
Mario – Superior Firepower
Galaga – Protect
Zelda – Victory
Tetris – Build for Victory
Zelda – Hope for the Future
Mario – Building for Victory
Pac-Man – Protect Our Pellets
Duck Hunt – Keep’em Firing
source: Fro Design Company
Woohoo, the iconic retro collection Sega Mega Drive Classics has landed on the Nintendo Switch™ and boy, it is a ripper! We thought the PS4 version was awesome (which it is!), but you can’t take your PS4 on the train with you to play these classic Mega Drive games.
Sega Mega Drive Classics on the Nintendo Switch is the largest collection of retro classic games in one pack. There are 50+ classic Sega 16-bit games to satisfy almost every genre under the sun, from arcade action, adventure, pinball (sort of), shooters, beat ‘em ups, fighters, puzzlers, hack’n slashers, tactical RPGs to everyone’s favourite, platformers – and there are lots of platformers (which isn’t a bad thing)!
These old favourites aren’t just dumped from their cartridges and thrown in this package, no sirree, they have had a raft of cool modern features injected into them including mirror mode, rewind (for when you slip up), controller customisation, online multiplayer and achievements, optional emulation enhancement filters like pixel scaling and save states to save your game at any time, meaning players – both old and new, should find revisiting these retro games an absolute blast.
source: Five Star Games
Once we loaded Sega Mega Drive Classics we were totally impressed by the opening title sequence, which we will leave as a surprise (Ed: Unless you have already experienced it on the PS4/XBone), but we can tell you this much, it’s pretty darn awesome – either that or we are too easy to please. Anyway, once you stop drooling from the title sequence you are greeted by the menu system where you can access the 50+ Sega Mega Drive games and various other options. The menu resembles the bedroom of an early nineties Sega fan, which is a great throwback, with dynamic time-of-day conditions, retro SEGA paraphernalia, a shelf full of the aforementioned 50+ Mega Drive games, and of course, a CRT TV with the sexy Mega Drive console underneath it.
When selecting a game to play, its corresponding cart is removed from its case and then inserted into the Mega Drive console – pure nostalgia overload. On top of the already mentioned modern conveniences and features jammed into this package, the most important thing we can tell you is that the emulation of the games is spot-on. The word ’emulation’ may trigger negative connotations, but we are here to tell ya that this is as close as you will get to playing Mega Drive games without forking out for the console on eBay and then fishing around for the game cartridges.
A lot of you may already know this, but for the peeps that don’t know, we aren’t much of adventure or RPG fans, so we stuck to Sega’s arcade conversions, platformers, beat’me ups and puzzle games in this collection. After playing a lot of Sonic, Ristar, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Columns, Comix Zone and the Shinobi games, we can say that we definitely felt like we were back in the early 90s – good times!
Before we go on, here is the full list of games included in this package:
The problem with a pack like this is that players will concentrate on all the games there were left out. Granted, they probably could put the entire Mega Drive catalogue on the cute little Switch cards and flog it for $90.00+, but then we would find something else to complain about. The games that are included are solid, bar a few questionable titles, however, just because we don’t like adventure and RPG titles, it doesn’t mean they should be excluded. Same goes the other way, if you loathe platformers, beat’em ups and puzzlers, it doesn’t mean these genres should be thrown out for more RPGs. Actually, if there was a driving game like Super Monaco GP or a motorcycle-racing-bashing one like Road Rash, then we could say that most, if not all, genres are well represented. Come to think of it, a few more shoot’em ups, like Truxton and Thunder Force would have rounded out this already pretty awesome package. Ah, we can speculate all we want, but we have to give it to Sega, they have tried to cater for the majority and we reckon they have done an admirable job.
After waffling on about this Sega Mega Drive Classics package on the Switch, the ultimate decision to buy or not buy is yours, but we’ll leave you with this little nugget – if you want to get your Sega 16-Bit gaming fix on your modern console and also play it on the go, then you can’t go too wrong with Sega Mega Drive Classics.
Review System: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: December 6 2018
Format: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One & PS4
Price: $48.99 on Nintendo Switch (via OzGameShop)
Disclosure: Sega Mega Drive Classics [Nintendo Switch] download code was kindly provided by Five Star Games for this review.
The greatest ever Commodore 64 platformer (yes, it is!), Sam’s Journey has now been tweaked to play natively on THEC64 Mini!
When C64 games publisher and our very good friends at Protovision gave us the news that they are working with Knights of Bytes to bring us a THEC64 Mini version of Sam’s Journey, we must admit, there were lots of high-fives around the office.
If you don’t know anything about Sam’s Journey, well, all you need to know is that it is an absolutely sublime platformer and one of the best games released for the C64 in the past decade.
So what’s different about this version you may ask? Well, this version permits the THEC64 Mini user to read and start the game from a USB stick, making the previous workarounds totally obsolete. THEC64 Mini version also allows the user to jump by means of the additional buttons where you previously had to use the “joystick up” move. Oh yeah, this version of Sam’s Journey also takes advantage of better loading routines (taking advantage of the latest THEC64 Mini firmware).
If you have THEC64 Mini, then this special version of Sam’s Journey is a must! The download package is available via Protovision as well as on itch.io. If you already own Sam’s Journey, then you are in luck, as this special version is available free of charge to you!