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PUMA x SEGA RS-0 SONIC

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UPDATE: Please note that these sneakers are now sold out!

Just in case you’ve just arrived back to this planet, Puma has collaborated with Sega to bring us some very cool Sonic The Hedgehog inspired shoes, sneakers, runners or whatever the hell you wanna call them.

We couldn’t resist so we went online and bought the Puma x Sega RS-0 Sonic sneakers. It was a tough choice but we decided to go with Sega’s blue blur shoes instead of the Eggman (Ed: getting both pairs would have been the right answer!).

What do you guys think of these Sonic inspired shoes? Do you like both pairs or do you prefer one over the other? Join in the conversation on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Review – Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

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Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles opens up like a mix of Sea of Thieves and Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild; both excelled in creating a beautiful world with a sense of wonder and adventure, which is also Yonder’s greatest strength.

After creating a character with some very basic options (although you can customise him or her throughout the game with a wealth of cosmetic options such as clothes, hair dyes and other accessories to keep things interesting) you are thrown onto the island of Gemea where the game is set and free to explore the open world at your leisure. The game world is beautifully realised; whist it doesn’t surpass Breath of the Wild (but to be fair not many have), it does an admirable job in creating a large, interesting and vibrant world with lush forests, sunny beaches and snowy mountains. Graphically, it is one of the best on the Switch.

How it looks is where the similarities end between Yonder and the aforementioned games. With no enemies to kill or levels to grind, Yonder presents itself as a slow-paced exploration game filled with rather mundane tasks. The game’s myriad of largely lifeless NPCs dish out most of the side quests, usually involving collecting various resources around the world such as fodder, wood, stones, seeds etc using a set of contextual tools introduced early on in the game. For example, using sickles to cut grass, axe to chop trees, pickaxe to mine ore and so on. There is also the ability to run your own farm by building simple structures and rearing the exotic animals found in the game to store and generate resources.

The main story quest is painstakingly simple and the only real sense of progression comes from unlocking previously inaccessible areas of the map by dispersing the ‘murk’ (a mysterious dark shroud covering certain areas) by finding enough pet fairy ‘sprites’. There is no real sense of urgency to this though, as the Murk is not at all dangerous and there is no time limit or any order in which part of the map needs to be uncovered first.

I must confess that I usually like my games with a mature and engaging storyline, deep combat mechanics and RPG-like progression systems. However, I recently played through Yonder during a month long overseas holiday and found it to be the perfect companion game for such an occasion. It is something I could pick up and enjoy for a few minutes to half an hour at a time without the stress of levelling up or acquiring better gear to take on bigger bosses. Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is all about discovering its world at your own pace and having the most relaxed time doing so, and like what my 3-year-old daughter said when she watched me play, “it’s beautiful”.

 

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House
House plays pretty much anything and everything but has almost time for nothing. A devout beat’em up fan, House enjoys a round of captain commando every now and then and can never forget spending hours in dark arcades playing warriors of fate after school. Oh yeah, his favourite console of all time is the original Famicom!

 

 

 

Retro Gamer 182: Sega Mega Drive Overload

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If you are a Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis) fan, then issue 182 of Retro Gamer is your mag to indulge in some 16-bit nostalgia.

From all the inside information on how Sega’s magnum opus came to be, to its developers that made it sing and become a classic console.

The regular features are back, from the Classic Moments, Minority Report to Hardware Heaven and The Uncoverted to name just a few, this issue of RG is jam packed to satisfy your retro gaming lust!

This issue is also accompanied with an Essential Mega Drive games guide and stickers, so if you are a fan of Sega’s 16-bit game changer, then there is no excuse to miss this issue – go grab it now!

 

Highest-Grossing Arcade Machines of All Time

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Let’s reflect and gloat for one second – it was great to be alive during the Golden Age of Arcade video games and experience arcade joints first-hand; from the clean franchised ones to the decrepit dark and scary independent ones – we loved them all.

Oh yeah, we loved the games too, from coin dropping in Galaga, Bomb Jack, Pac-Man, Tron, Double Dragon, DragonNinja to Sega’s beasts like Space Harrier, Super Hang-On, OutRun, After Burner and Thunder Blade – we spent up big and loved every single second of it.


The 1990s started with us hammering coins into Atari’s Pit-Fighter, Capcom’s Final Fight and Street Fighter II. However, it was Sega’s Daytona USA that emptied our piggy bank of coins – we just could not get enough of it.

source: The Arcade Flyer Archive

Looking at the top 10 highest grossing arcade games (below), we can tell you that we played them all during their heyday and understand why the dot munching Pac-Man is perched right up top – the game was a breath of fresh air (for its time), as it wasn’t a derivative of the then plethora of space shoot’em ups. Pac-Man was truly a revolutionary title which had universal appeal, both male and female gamers loved chasing Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde.

source: A-1 Arcade Gaming

So what of Atari’s Pong then? Well, the 1972 game did very well for Atari, they sold somewhere between 8,500 to 19,000 units (1972 to 1973) grossing them around $11Million US dollars – not bad for 1973!

The revenues generated were quite staggering, reaffirming the Golden Age of Arcade video games period as the most prosperous of them all, with Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam flying the flag for the 1990s.

Source: Wikipedia, USGamer and Goliath

Oz Comic-Con Melbourne 2018 Highlights

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If you missed out on attending Oz Comic-Con 2018 in Melbourne, we have you covered!

With our trusty cameras in tow (thanks Alan Ly!), we snapped quite a few photos (over 60 photos actually) to make you feel like you were there, from awesome cosplay, comic book creators, artists, vendors with tempting gear, to a Star Wars X-Wing waiting for you to enter its cockpit and some Doom shenanigans at Bethesda’s booth.

Scroll through and enjoy what was a pretty epic Oz Comic-Con 2018!

If you made it this far, please consider supporting us by shouting us a coffee so we can keep bringing you heaps more awesome content! Thank you.

 

E3 News: My Arcade To Launch Two Classic BANDAI NAMCO Mini Players

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If Nintendo can do it with their ‘Minis’, then so can My Arcade and BANDAI NAMCO!

Day two of E3 got us excited with the announcement that My Arcade and BANDAI NAMCO have joined forces and to create two new gaming devices filled with Classic NAMCO games. The new machines further expand the line of products borne out of the partnership, which already includes a set of Micro Player Arcades featuring classic titles such as PAC-MAN™, GALAGA™, and DIG DUG™.

The NAMCO Museum Mini Player will be packed with 20 classic titles and features a large vertical-oriented screen for authentic arcade gameplay. It also features dual front facing speakers for optimal sound, a detachable joystick, and back-lit marquee and coin trap. All of the titles included on the device are the original arcade versions of the games, unless there was no original arcade version available. The Namco Museum Mini Player™ is slated to release in the Holiday 2018 season (between now and end of August).

The PAC-MAN Pocket Player is a brand new 16-bit handheld console designed by My Arcade that is compact, portable, ergonomically designed, and boasts a full colour screen. The Pocket Player™ will include three classic PAC-MAN titles, including original arcade favourite PAC-MAN, along with PAC-PANIC™ and PAC-MANIA™. The Pocket Player will be available starting July 2018 at retailers such as Walmart and Amazon.

We finally got to get excited about something at E3 2018! We can’t wait to get our hands on these units!

source: My Arcade®

 

2018 Reset64 4KB Craptastic Game Competition Preview

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Development for the 2018 Reset64 4kb ‘Craptastic’ game comp is in full swing. Deadline is fast approaching (June 30th) so we thought we’d give you all a quick look at what some of the devs are up to for the comp.

Best of luck to all the competitors and we can’t wait to try your craptastic creations!

Title: Rabid Robots 4K – Out of Control

Credits: Code & Sound Effects by Richard Bayliss, Graphics by Alf Yngve.

This is a score attack game, consisting of 8 levels. You are a schoolboy, who was playing outside his house with his dog. Suddenly out from nowhere comes a rampage of robots. Your quest is to protect yourself or your dog from incoming robots. For every robot shot with your water pistol, you will score points. If you or your dog makes contact with any of the robots. You’ll run away from the street and the game is over. The robots will be appearing from both sides of the screen. You can only fire left or right. Good luck.

Programmed using CBMPRGStudio by Arthur Jordison.

Title: Shinobiden Gaiden 

Author: @_fou_lu

Shinobiden Gaiden is a short survival adventure game where you are a ninja who must collect a few magical items from a maze-like map before you die or time runs out. You’re pursued by undead the whole time, and all you can do is throw shurikens to stun them. The idea was to practice C64 assembly coding (using a Mac) and enter a silly prologue game to a more serious title I intend to make into the 4kB competition. I only have about 600 bytes left after compression; luckily all that’s left besides filling in the map is game loop and game over logic.

Title: Orb

Author: Annina Games

The game is a demake of Duet, which is a game developed for android/iphone that fits well on the c64. The goal is to manoeuvre two balls in sync, avoiding blocks by rotating either clockwise or counter clockwise. The engine is 90% complete. At the moment the level design is the more difficult stage.

Title: Wave Hero

Author: Geir Straume

How far can you go on your personal watercraft, without hitting any rocks or reefs?
You start off slowly, but the speed automatically increases as you reach various distance milestones. The watercraft is controlled using the fire button only.

Title: G7000 Racer!

Credits: Code by Igmar Coenen, Charset by David Almer

Drive your car as long as possible without crashing into other cars. Try to get 10000+ points to finish the game. You can choose the level of difficulty (easy or hard). The longer you drive the harder it gets (up to three levels).

Interesting info: My first c64 machine language game coded ever. Inspired by the race game on the Philips Videopac G7000 game console. First game I played (besides Pong of course).

Title: Neptune’s Oil

Author: Oziphantom

You are an oil mining company harvesting oil from Neptune, however the Plutonians are not happy and want it for themselves, so they have sent multiple attack drones. Your job is to defend the pumps in this side scrolling blast’em up.

Title: Snake-a-Space

Author/Credits: Designed by Molly Fuller, Coded by Jamie Fuller

Get up on a poorly, planetary-protecting-snake and defend IT for a change!

A simple run-and-jump joystick-mashing bit of craptastic fun! All the ideas for this game came from the imagination of Molly Fuller, my 6 year old daughter, who also helped with some of the graphics and play testing.

Title: Freaky Fish

Credits: Programming by Chris Page, Graphics and Sound by Chris and Brent Page

Freaky Fish has the ability to blow bubbles and must protect himself and his friends over 30 levels from the redneck who is fishing from his boat with dynamite!

This is our first Commodore 64 project since the early 90’s. At the time of writing the game is almost code complete with 88 bytes free when compressed, but space is at a premium and every addition now has to be weighed and optimized. At one point the game looked great but it blew out to a bit over 5k without some “essentials” such as collision detection so we had to spend a few weeks rewriting, cutting features and paring the graphics down. Given the 4k limits, there are lots of sprites, sound effects, music and code that didn’t make the cut so there is the possibility of an enhanced version after the competition.

For development used Kick Assembler, Visual Studio Code, Exomizer 3, VChar64 and Spritepad and we have also used our home grown SFX Editor on the C64.

Title: Kalle Kloakk 4k (Megastyle)

Credits: Code by Docster, Graphics & Music by Rotteroy

The game is about an old man who get stuck in the bathroom on the shopping mall and his struggle to pick up toilet paper that he can stack under the window and climb up and escape. It’s a plattformer with a twist; first you have to set all plattforms, then you have to complete the level. Memory eating music made in Goattracker!

Title: Trump Towers (Megastyle)

Credits: Code by Docster, Sprites by Rotteroy, Graphics by FX

Control the president around in his tower, grab the pussy when you can to get extra points.
No screenshot to be shown yet, Docster just started working on the engine.

Title: Fire (Megastyle)

Credits: Code by Docster, Graphics by FX, Sprites by Rotteroy

Game and watch go C64 4k!

Title: WTF

Credits: Code, Graphics & Audio by Mika “Misfit” Keränen

Bouncing ball has own intelligence. The player only manages the scrolling and the desperate ball tries to keep itself in the middle of the screen.

The main logic and graphics are finished. Needs audio and more levels. I’m very pleased. This game is so frustrating that players will hate me.

Title: CONGA4096

Author: Paul Koller

Game will be an arena shooter with a twist. Game is practically finished. I am currently working on getting some music and sfx into the game. I’ve added a teaser screenshot, which doesn’t show too much, to keep the surprise high.

Title: Dustin’

Author: Graham Axten/Pond Software

Credits:  Code & Graphics by Graham Axten, Music and SFX by Vanja Utne

Dustin the robot has been tasked with cleaning the dust from the precious innards of the world’s best 8-bit computer! Guide him around and help him clean up the dust particles, but watch out for electrical pulses that move across the circuit, they will fry him!

Title: Fire Rescue

Author: Syed U Rizvi

Well to describe the game, I guess you could say the name sums it up but to be honest. It’s a simple rescue mission whereby the ambo guys with a stretcher have to save people jumping from a burning building! And then make sure they make it to the ambulance without falling. Simple eeh!

The progression? So far, so good! I would say the game is 60 percent complete and I am currently working on collision detection and score updating. The rest would be straight forward with setting character graphics on the screen (burning building and other graphic objects).

Title: Chef Quest

Author: Anthony Stiller/Pond Software

Credits: Code & Graphics by Anthony Stiller, Music & SFX by Vanja Utne

Oh no! Chef is out of ingredients so it’s time to venture into the restaurant’s dungeon to restock the larder with delicious monsters. Chef Quest is a tiny, action-oriented RPG and will almost certainly be ready by the deadline.

Title: Elevator Eric

Author: Derek

It’s not a game that’s going to shatter any records of quality, rather just a bit of fun that I knocked together over last day and a half whilst off work.  I haven’t really done much with the C64 for coming on 30 years now I guess it must be (and it shows! lol – I’m about as good or should I say bad now as I was back then!). The game concept is based on games such as Nifty Lifty and Wack Waiters.

Title: $100 Box

Author: Cout

This one is based on a mathematics game theory problem for 100 people, but the game simulates the problem with just one player. The computer selects a random number from 1 to 100 as your lucky number. You will need to guess which box from 00-99 where the lucky number is hidden. The game allows you to have up to 50 guesses, but it’s not easy to win as it sounds!

Title: I Found A Moon Rock In My Nose

Author: Cout

Title Reference: The title comes from a line from the character Ralph Wiggum which is seen on The Simpsons from the episode This Little Wiggy from Season 9, Episode 18.

About the Game:

The object of the game is to pick your nose to find ‘moon rocks’.
You can pick from either your your left or right nostril at anytime.
The more you pick the more points you score!
However, don’t pick too much or you will get a nosebleed!

Includes:

PETSCII Nose Graphics and SID Sound Effects!

About the Author:

Created from the developer of I Ate the Purple Berries from the 2016 Reset ‘Craptastic’ 4kb Game Comp and My Cat’s Breath Smells Like Cat Food which was developed back in 2003. Cout Games creates unique games from some of The Simpsons most popular quotations.

Title: Plunko

Author: Cout

This game is based off one of the pricing games from the US version of The Price Is Right. The player is given 10 flat discs which are released one at a time from the top of the board.  The game board consists of a number of pegs which bounce the disc randomly around. As the disc falls to the bottom, it is impossible to determine where the disc might end up. At the bottom of the board, the disc stop and lands in a money slot the player can win.

I put the game through 100,000 rounds and it is theoretically possible to get the top amount from anywhere the disc is dropped from on the board. However, you do have a greater chance of winning money from the middle, it is also twice as likely that you will get nothing as well. Statistics are available upon request.

Title: Role Role Role

Author: Cout

Roll Roll Roll is a dice game where you roll a single six sided dice where you can win money.

On the first roll, you have the option to keep your roll as cash or roll again. Similarly, on the second roll, you have the same two options again. On the third and final roll, you keep whatever you roll (whatever the outcome). There are 10 rounds to a game.

This is based on a mathematics problem with worked out from the averages of rolling three dice in the hope of scoring the most points. The aim of the game is to beat the average (3.5) or optimally (4.66 for 3 rolls).

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Unkle K / Reset C64
Father, husband, teacher and retro gaming/computer enthusiast! Editor of Reset… C64 magazine.

Follow Reset C64 on Twitter

 

 

Pinball For All!

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Pinball should be enjoyed by all. For those of us that love pinball we take it for granted that we can stand at a machine and flip using our arms and hands/fingers. For people with disabilities, like someone with one arm or losing the use of their hands or being in a wheelchair, playing the game they love can be somewhat challenging – but it doesn’t have to be!

Necessity is the mother of invention, especially when there are brilliant people out there that come up with awesome ideas to ensure that pinball can be played by all – without exclusion. From Dutch pinsider Sascha’s simple and yet genius Zaza Ability Device + 1 (ZAD+1) contraption for people with one arm, to the Spinal Cord Injury Association of Iowa’s Wheelchair Accessible Pinball, it seems that there are ingenious inventions out there for pinball to be loved and enjoyed by everyone, no matter their ability and/or mobility.

Pinball is an inclusive game, and now it is even more so by clever people creating ingenious inventions to ensure people with disabilities can enjoy playing the silverball game! Here are a few absolutely mind-blowingly brilliant pinball playing inventions for wizards with disabilities:

The Zaza Ability Device (ZAD+1) – simple but brilliant!

icanswim70’s – Big Ol Sunction Cup Band

Yonkiman’s Doohickey design

Ben Heck’s – Single Handed Pinball Mod  

U Can Do It’s Adaptive Pinball that can be played with feet, fists, one handed, wrists and elbows

Wheelchair Accessible Pinball

image source: Links within story / title image source: Cary Carmichael via Pinside

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Pinball Press
Pinball Press 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

 

 

 

2018 Brisbane Pinball Masters

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Calling all pinballers! Get your flipping fingers ready, as the 4th annual 4-day Brisbane Masters pinball extravaganza is almost upon us!

The 2018 Brisbane Masters will take place from July 19 till July 22 at Rydges Fortitude Valley. With 100 confirmed entrants, places are limited, so ensure you get in touch with the organisers, Jason Lambert and/or Jimmy Nails (via the Facebook event page) to secure your spot at this most prestigious pinball tournament.

Just in case you needed an incentive to compete, official Australian Stern Pinball distributor, Amusement Machine Distributors (AMD) is sponsoring the 2018 Brisbane Masters and have thrown $3,000 towards the event kitty!

For more information on the tournament, please check out the official Facebook Event page.

Photos from the 2017 Brisbane Masters (by Marco Rossignoli)

 

Documentary: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary

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In the beginning, Capcom created Street Fighter (1987). Then came the all conquering Street Fighter II in 1991, and the rest, as they say, is history!

In this three-part documentary, fans and players from around the world discuss what makes Street Fighter special. Each era of the series is explored before heading into the modern era!

Kick back and enjoy – Hadouken!

Part 1: In The Beginning

Part 2: The Community

Part 3: The Next Generation

source: Street Fighter on YouTube