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Gravitic Mines Is Landing On The Atari Jaguar

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It is always great to see the Atari Jaguar homebrew and independent developer scene going from strength to strength. With a number of awesomely talented and prolific developers, like Reboot, we always get excited when a new Jag game is about to drop, like Gravitic Mines!

In development since 2019, Gravitic Mines is best described as a love letter to iconic games like Thrust, Lunar Lander and Gravitar, with an injection of contemporary flavour like Gravity Crash plus a lot more! This new and exclusive Atari Jaguar title was painstakingly developed by the Reboot team, with the full version containing 32 campaign missions, 8 training missions, 40 minutes of music, 8 boss encounters, online scores and achievements amongst a plethora of other cool features.


source: AtariAge

According to Reboot, the game is now complete and will be available to purchase in a few months via the AtariAge store – so keep an eye out for it! In the meantime, if you have a Skunk Board (Ed: yay, we do!) or RetroHQ’s Jaguar GameDrive, then you can download the Gravitic Mines demo from here. The Demo ROM is a short teaser, featuring a few levels of the game to whet your appetite.

To say we are excited for the final Gravitic Mines game would be the greatest understatement! Our Jaguar is hungry, so we can’t wait to give it a taste of Gravitic Mines!



Chibi Coin Collection Street Fighter Series – Ryu Silver Coin

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We love the NZ Mint gaming related silver coins, so their latest release, the Street Fighter – Ryu Chibi Coin is so cool (and cute)!

Made from 1oz of pure silver, this new Chibi® Coin features experienced martial artist Ryu – the main protagonist in the video game Street Fighter™. The coin has been shaped and coloured in the Chibi art style to resemble Ryu. He is shown in his most recognisable attire consisting of a tattered white karate gi, long red headband, red martial arts gloves and bare feet. The Ian Rank Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II can be found on the opposite side to confirm it as a legal tender coin.

The coin is protected inside a specially designed case, moulded to the coin’s shape. The outer box is Street Fighter-themed, incorporating images of Ryu as he appears in the game, and includes a large window so you can easily display this precious collectable.

A maximum of 2,000 coins will be produced. This is confirmed by the Certificate of Authenticity printed on the box, along with the coin’s unique serial number. Don’t miss out on this officially licensed coin for Street Fighter!

PS: We can also exclusively reveal that there will also be Ken silver coin in the very near future!


source: NZ Mint



The Future Is Here – Stern Pinball Launches Insider Connected Online Platform

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The world’s largest pinball manufacturer, Stern Pinball, have launched their new online platform, Insider Connected!

According to their press release, Insider Connected is a comprehensive technology initiative to connect the universe of Stern pinball machines. The platform is designed to enhance and extend player engagement with the games across both home and commercial environments. It also presents operators of pinball machines with a robust set of tools to drive location play, build player loyalty, analyze performance, make adjustments remotely and maintain the machines.

Registration for Insider Connected is free; players can either scan a QR code at the games or go to the Stern Pinball website where they will need to enter an email address and create a password. Once players register for Insider Connected, they are issued a unique QR Code that can be used to identify that player at any connected Stern pinball machine, anywhere in the world. When a player logs into the machine, they can track their progress, earn new game specific achievements, engage with the player community and participate in promotions and Challenge Quests.

Challenge Quests can be issued by operators to drive play at their locations and build player loyalty or by Stern Pinball to highlight a game title or engage the community. When players complete quests, they receive loyalty rewards.

Key launch features of the Insider Connected platform include:

  • Gameplay up to 4+ players – friends or foes
  • Game achievements and promotions
  • Stern authorized Quests and Operator authorized Quests
  • Loads on loads of free play, pay to play games, rewards and treasure chests


source: Stern Pinball

All Stern Spike® 2 LCD games produced after the September 2021 launch will ship with the Insider Connected system installed; this includes new runs of previously released titles. Any existing Stern LCD game can be added to Insider Connected by installing a simple, inexpensive retrofit kit available from Stern distributors, dealers and the Stern Store® – we have asked Stern to provide more details about this kit. We will update this post once we receive their response.

By the end of the year, all 17 Stern Spike 2 LCD system titles will be added to Insider Connected, which means we’ll be able to connect our Star Wars Comic Art Premium machine! At launch seven titles will be supported, with the remaining Spike 2 LCD machines added over the next year.  with full system with added features will be rolled out. Once again, we have reached out to Stern to confirm the seven titles that be supported at launch – we will keep you posted!

We have written about internet connected pinball machines in the past, so it is great to see Stern Pinball finally enter this new age of online pinball play and cool tools to interact with pinball machines. This is a game changer for sure, so we will keep an eye out on the evolving feature set and will report back on what more we can find out from Stern Pinball about their Insider Connected platform – so stay tuned!



PS: We have reached out to Stern Pinball with a number of questions relating to their Insider Connected platform, so look out for a future update!

The Amiga 500 Mini Is Coming in 2022

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It was bound to happen! After the success of TheC64 Mini, Retro Games Ltd has announced that they will be releasing an Amiga 500 Mini in early 2022.

Based on Commodore’s iconic 16-bit Amiga 500 (A500), the new The A500 Mini will be able to emulate the original A500/A600 chipset and the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the latter Amiga model, the Amiga 1200 – pretty darn cool indeed.


source: Retro Games Ltd

The Amiga 500 Mini will come with a 2-button mouse and 8-button game-pad, as well as USB inputs to plug in a standard keyboard and the ability to add your own games (with WHDLoad support). Speaking of games, The A500 Mini will be bundled with 25 games, with the following 12 titles being confirmed at this stage:

  • Alien Breed 3D
  • Another World
  • ATR: All Terrain Racing
  • Battle Chess
  • Cadaver
  • Kick Off 2
  • Pinball Dreams
  • Simon The Sorcerer
  • Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
  • The Chaos Engine
  • Worms: The Director’s Cut
  • Zool: Ninja Of The Nth Dimension

Other features include the ability to save and resume games, flick between 50Hz and 60Hz screen refreshes and various CRT filters and scaling options.

With a retail price of £119.99 / €129.99 / US$139.99, we won’t be expecting TheA500 Mini to be less than $200 Aussie dollars, which is quite a bit for a Mini, even for an iconic one like the Amiga!



The Force Is Strong in these Unofficial Nike Star Wars Runners

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According to our friends at Kotaku, Nike is releasing three pairs of runners (or sneakers for our US friends – Ed) in a line that’s an unlicensed tribute to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

The Boba Fett, Darth Vader and Rebel Pilot* (* not their model names) are quite impressive, even if they are known by other model names to avoid any potential licensing issues. In case you wanted to know, Adidas has the Star Wars license, so it is interesting that Nike is releasing a line of runners with Star Wars inspired themes and colourways – surely this is just a coincidence!

Nike has scheduled to release these runners November 2021, with the best part being that they will not be in limited quantity!

source: Kotaku



Slow Mole: 8-bit Platformer For The NES

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Slow MoleErik Rosenlund, take a bow! Erik has created and released, SLOW MOLE, an awesome speedrunning platformer for the NES!

Playable on both real hardware and other modern devices, Slow Mole challenges your speedrunner skills to the max with a unique checkpoint mechanic that will only award a checkpoint when the player proves their mastery! The game provides the player with two difficulty options which affects the timer, thus making an impact on game play. For those that have twitch skills who can truly master the game, the game ramps up its mechanical challenge to nightmare levels!

Grab Slow Mole for free (or for a small token of appreciation for Erik) from here and get running!

Slow Mole (NES) Trailer – The 80s NES claymation trailer that never was



Chip’s Challenge is coming to the SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive!

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Chip's Challenge for SNES and SEGA GENESIS

Chip’s Challenge for SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Pre-Orders Now Live

Top-down tile-based puzzle game

Independent publisher The Retro Room Games has recently announced that the pre-orders for Chip’s Challenge on Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive are now open!

Play as Nerdy Chip McCallahan, who navigates through a series of increasingly difficult puzzles in 148 two-dimensional levels, in order to prove himself and gain membership to the very exclusive Bit Busters Club.

Chip's Challenge

Originally developed by Epyx, Chip’s Challenge is a classic top-down tile-based puzzle game launched on Atari Lynx in 1989. The game was also ported to MS-DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and the Amstrad CPC back in the 90s.

Chip’s Challenge was also released on Steam 6 years ago featuring 90% of positive reviews. This will be the first time that the game will be available on Nintendo and Sega platforms.

Chip’s Challenge will be available on 16-bit consoles including a cartridge in both PAL and NTSC versions, a box and an instruction booklet. Pre-orders for the game can be found here.


source: The Retro Room Roo

Features:

  • 148 two-dimensional levels
  • Block-pushing puzzles
  • Dodging enemies
  • Skip to the next level option

Price: US$24.99 (cart only) / US$49.99 (Complete In Box)



Spooky Pinball: Halloween VS Ultraman

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Well, well, well, not one, but two pinball machines are simultaneously announced by the cool peeps at Spooky Pinball. No one saw that coming! This 2 from 1 (2 machines from the 1 design) is a stroke of marketing genius!

First, Halloween Pinball, a not so well kept secret. Spooky did their darnedest to keep this horror themed machine under wraps, which was fun to watch on their social media channels, but since they dropped the news early this morning (Australian time), let’s just say that the internet has been abuzz! With the multiple play-levels and cool Michael mech scaring the hell out of you from the hedges, John Carpenter’s Halloween Pinball by Spooky looks dead set amazing – just check out the trailer!

With a total of 1,250 machines, ranging from US$6,995 for the standard, US$7,995 for the Blood Sucker Edition to the all bells and horror whistles Collector’s Edition for US$8,995, we have no doubt these will be snapped up in no time! Do you dare to battle against Michael Myers in Haddonfield?!


source: Spooky Pinball

The second machine to be announced by Spooky which was a total surprise was Ultraman: Kaiju Rumble. Basically a reskin of the Halloween Pinball machine, which is a) impressive and b) clever. Killing two birds with one stone by catering for different sets of fans is clever indeed – if you aren’t into horror themed pinball but love the Ultra Series, then this pinball machine will defnitely be up your alley!

Ultraman Pinball will be the same pricing as the Halloween Pinball machine editions with the only difference being the total number of machines being limited to 500.


source: Spooky Pinball

For more in-depth information and heaps of photos of these pinball machines by Spooky Pinball, check out the excellent Halloween Pinball and Ultraman: Kaiju Rumble Pinball articles by our good friends at This Week In Pinball.



Celebrating The 35th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda

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Game and Watch: The Legend of ZeldaAfter this week’s Nintendo Direct, we are obviously most excited about the Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda announcement, with the green G&W beauty slated for release later this year (Friday, November 12 2021 to be exact)!

As part of its 35th anniversary celebration, this Game & Watch will let you play The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy version), and a special Game & Watch edition of Vermin (featuring Link)! Just like the Game & Watch Super Mario, this will have a playable clock and timer too!

At a cost of AU$79.00 (via Amazon), who is pre-ordering one? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook to let us know.


source: Nintendo



Atari returns with the new Atari VCS on June 10

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’80s video gaming icon Atari targets the living room with the Atari VCS — a completely modern gaming and video computer system!

Bluemouth Interactive today announced 10 June as the Australia/New Zealand retail on sale date for the Atari VCS, Atari’s modern video computer system that blends the best of PCs and consoles. The Atari VCS is the company’s first new hardware product in 25 years, which retails for AU$849.95 / NZ$899.95 and is currently available for preorder from JB Hi-Fi, EB Games, Catch.com.au, The Gamesmen, and Mighty Ape for NZ residents.

“We’re so excited to bring this reimagined ’80s icon back in a completely modern way to everyone’s living rooms with the Atari VCS,” said Bluemouth Co-Founder and Managing Director David Provan. “The system brings a hit of nostalgia to fans with its classic arcade titles, but also complete versatility to play newer games and stream all in the same place.”

“June 10th is a day that eager Atari fans have been waiting for. The Atari VCS has been well-received by our early-adopter community and we are thrilled that more people will have an opportunity to enjoy Atari’s Video Computer System in their homes.” said Michael Arzt, COO of Atari VCS and Connected Devices.

“We appreciate the strong support of Bluemouth and their retail partners, including EB Games, JB HiFi, The Gamesmen, Amazon Australia and Catch.com.au during this exciting launch.”

The Atari VCS offers something for every gamer, starting with over a dozen titles from popular independent game developers — including Boulder Dash Deluxe, Danger Scavenger, Guntech, Jetboard Joust, Sir Lovelot, Something Ate My Alien, Tailgunner, Atari’s Missile Command: Recharged, and more — with new titles to launch on the Atari VCS store through the year. The Atari VCS also comes preinstalled with the Atari VCS Vault, an exclusive collection of over 100 arcade and Atari 2600 classics, fully optimised for use with the Wireless Classic Joystick, with its rumble and LED light effects that give retro favourites new life.

To coincide with the launch of Atari in Australia and New Zealand, Antstream Arcade is launching for Australian gamers, giving players access to a massive library of classic arcade games. Dubbed as the Netflix of retro games, Antstream opens up a catalogue of over a thousand carefully curated games to choose from, providing Atari users in Australia an expansive gaming experience. Antstream is currently live in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

The Atari VCS includes Chrome as its built-in browser, allowing full access to Google’s Workspace apps for productivity use such as checking emails and social media, catching up on work, or streaming content. The Atari VCS’s unique PC Mode is compatible with Linux, Windows and Chrome OS operating systems, among others, making the system a versatile two-in-one device. The Atari VCS is compatible with most PC peripherals including keyboards, mice and game controllers to create a flexible home game system.

The Atari VCS PC/console hybrid is designed as a multimedia PC and home game system to delight a whole new generation of gamers and creators. The Atari VCS is powered by an AMD Raven Ridge 2 APU and Ryzen GPU and comes equipped with 8GB DDR4 RAM and a 32GB hard drive with the option to customise and upgrade both RAM and storage. Atari VCS All-In system bundles also include a Wireless Classic Joystick and the all-new Wireless Modern Controller designed for both retro gameplay and the latest PC game titles.

For more information on the Atari VCS, visit atarivcs.com.

Source: Media Release (including images) supplied