History

Happy 25th Anniversary Blizzard Entertainment!

01/12/2016 By Ms. ausretrogamer

Good Game’s Goose Mangus did an awesome story on the history of Blizzard Entertainment on this week’s show to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary (25 years – can you believe it?!). Check it out below:

The games

Source: Good Game on YouTube

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Ms. ausretrogamer
Co-founder, editor and writer at ausretrogamer – The Australian Retro Gamer E-Zine. Lover of science fiction, fashion, books, movies and TV. Player of games, old and new.

Follow Ms. ausretrogamer on Twitter

A Brief History of Virtual Reality

14/11/2016 By ausretrogamer

With the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR well and truly on the way to our living rooms, virtual reality (VR) is the biggest news in gaming right now. But let’s rewind the clock some two and a half decades, back when Sony was working on the Nintendo Play Station and the inventor of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, was still in his diapers.

image source: Gizmodo

In 1991, SEGA announced its SEGA VR virtual reality headset for arcade games, promising immersive gaming via its head-mounted display (HMD) unit with inertial sensors tracking and reacting to a user’s head movements.

While SEGA was talking about VR, the Virtuality Group went one better by launching its stand up Virtuality pod enclosure system (the 1000 series) – the first mass-produced, networked, multiplayer location-based VR entertainment system – all powered by Amiga 3000 computers. These Virtuality pods featured a stereoscopic head-mounted display (the “Visette”), an exoskeleton touch glove to ‘feel’ objects in the virtual world, and a ‘fast track’ magnetic source built into the waist-high ring with a receiver which tracked the player’s movement in real time within the enclosure – a truly immersive VR experience. Virtuality later introduced joysticks, steering wheels, and an aircraft yoke for control.

image source: DVD Fever

With the VR craze gaining mass consumer attention, it was inevitable that the technology would find its way into the lucrative home video games market. In 1993, SEGA was working hard to port its SEGA VR arcade HMD to its hit Mega Drive/Genesis console, but due to development difficulties, the console SEGA VR headset remained only a prototype, and was never released to the gaming public.

To fill the void, VictorMaxx entered the market with the world’s first consumer VR HMD, the StuntMaster (VM1000) – the technology being developed under license from Future Vision Technologies. The StuntMaster was released in 1993 for USD$219.95 and came with assemblies to connect to both the Mega Drive/Genesis and the Super Nintendo consoles. The StuntMaster sported a tracking stem on the head unit which had fast response times and accurate positioning, but the low resolution, lack of VR specific games, and prolonged use causing motion sickness meant that the StuntMaster never caught on with gamers.

By 1994, home consoles became exponentially more powerful than the previous generation, meaning that VR could finally realise its full potential in the home. That year, Atari jumped on the VR bandwagon by signing a deal with Virtuality to design, develop, and produce a VR HMD for its 64-bit Jaguar home console. The Jaguar VR HMD was slated for a Christmas 1995 release, but financial woes at Atari caused the program to be abandoned, resulting in the Jaguar VR HMD being thrown on the already full failed VR scrapheap. To recoup its losses, Virtuality sold the Jaguar VR HMD technology to prolific Japanese toy manufacturer Takara and the huge electronics giant Philips.

In 1996, both companies raced to have a VR HMD on the market, with Takara producing and releasing the TAK-8510 Dynovisor HMD and Philips its Scuba Visor. These units sported the Pupil Projection System, which had a (then) ground-breaking 120-degree field of view (FOV) display using Sony’s TFT LCD (thin film transistor LCD) screens. Coupled with the display was stereo sound and Inter Pupil Distance (IPD) focus adjustment – perfect for any user personalisation. The Dynovisor and Scuba could be used with any console that had composite video and red/white analogue audio ports (the PC version of the Dynovisor also came with a custom VGA PC interface). Neither units had motion tracking, hence their relatively low retail price (¥38,800 / USD$320). Like their contemporaries, they failed due to a lack of VR specific software and causing many a headaches after prolonged use.

Having recently experienced 1990s VR via Takara’s Dynovisor HMD, we can vouch that it won’t make you sick like the Virtual Boy, but that may be down to the unit having no motion tracking. After playing countless platform, driving, shoot-’em-up, and fighting games, we reckon that racing games are best suited for playing on an old VR HMD – but not for too long! These units came with a warning to rest your eyes after 30 minutes of play, and this is all for good reason.

Playing on these old-school VR HMDs is like having an IMAX screen two inches away from your eyeballs – there is a lot to take in – which works well, thanks to the 120-degree FOV. But after 30 minutes, your eyes will be begging you for a rest from the visual onslaught. Of course, none of the old games played on the unit were designed to take advantage of virtual reality, so the experience lacked the full VR immersion – a shame.

image source: eBay

On the PC front, it was VictorMaxx’s CyberMaxx model 2.0 HMD that provided the VR ‘hit’ PC gamers had been craving for. With higher resolution and improved optics than its previous 120 model (released in November 1994 for USD$499), the CyberMaxx 2.0 model also had dynamic stereo sound, focus adjustment for each eye, and real time yaw, pitch, and roll head-tracking, providing 3D stereoscopic images via compatible software. Released in August 1995 with a suggested retail price of USD$889, the CyberMaxx 2.0 didn’t take off, with management concluding that its headset was not likely to gain widespread consumer acceptance at its suggested retail price. By the end of 1996, VictorMaxx exited the consumer electronics business, thus ending the future of the CyberMaxx VR product line. However, there is hope that the legacy of the CyberMaxx will lead the current (promised) VR products to good stead.

Walking through the 1990s VR product graveyard, a common headstone could summarise the reason for their failure: “Here rests a product which caused severe headaches, induced motion sickness, lacked great software, and was a concept ahead of the technology available at the time.” Fast forward to 2016 and we have our fingers crossed for the imminent VR products to hit the market, and hope that they will deliver on the promises of their predecessors. Viva la VR!
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Alex Boz, Editor-In-Chief / Video Game Historian
Alex is a collector, arcade extraordinaire, pinball tragic, an Atarian and a C64 lover. Alex has been gaming since the early 80s when the weapon of choice was a joystick with a single fire button.

Follow Alex Boz on Twitter

This post originally published on Push Square February 17 2016.

Splatterhouse: The Complete History

01/11/2016 By ausretrogamer

Halloween may be over for another year, but that didn’t stop Daniel Ibbertson (Slopes Games Room) grabbing the Terror Mask and entering the West Mansion for a look at the complete history of everyone’s favourite slash’em up, Splatterhouse.

Daniel’s video looks at every single game in the franchise, Namco’s struggle against Nintendo and every movie reference found in the series so far. Go and grab some popcorn, leave the light on, and press play now!

source: Slopes Games Room

Double Dragon: The Complete History

16/10/2016 By ausretrogamer

If you have been following our exploits here or on social media, you’ll know that we are massive fans of Technos‘ brilliant 1987 beat’em up arcade game, Double Dragon.

What’s there not to like, two brothers, Billy and Jimmy Lee, set out to rescue Billy’s girl, Marian, from the Black Warriors gang by kicking ten-shades out of every baddie that gets in their way! This co-op game also gave the player the opportunity to grab strewn items, like a whip or baseball bat (among others) to easily dispose of the Black Warriors members.

We could go on and on about this awesome game, but we thought we’d spare you and bring your attention to Double Dragon: The Complete History by Slopes Game Room’s Daniel Ibbertson. Insert coin and enjoy!

Ah, many a coin were pumped into this machine

Double Dragon was converted on myriad of home systems. Let’s not talk about the C64 version *grumble*

The NES conversion was one of the better ones

Even the Atari 2600 conversion was better than the C64 debacle!
source: Slopes Game Room

1988 Nintendo Employee Sales Manual

23/09/2016 By ausretrogamer

If you wanted to know why Nintendo became successful in the video games industry, then this ’employee sales manual’ from 1988 will go some way in showing how the Kyoto giant ensured it’s image and products were always front and centre in your nearest store.

Nintendo’s merchandising, ranging and point of sale displays managed to catch the eye of their target market (the kids of the 80s) and extract money out of their parents wallet. This may be sale and marketing 101, but Nintendo showed the rest of the video games market how it should be done.

Each Nintendo sales representative was issued their sales manual, covering all aspects of their day-to-day associations with authorised Nintendo dealers, merchandisers and distributors.

Inside the binder, there were colour brochures and pamphlets showcasing Nintendo’s systems, games, and information on Nintendo displays/kiosks that were featured in stores, like the M82 playable games demo unit.

Also inside, the Nintendo representative had information on the different gaming categories/series, like the ‘Black Box’ NES games in the ‘Action’, ‘Sports’ and ‘Robot’ series, to name a few.

If you can’t get your hands on this Nintendo sale manual binder, then here are the contents in full colour glory!

If you worked for Nintendo in the late 80s, then this was your bible!

Divide and conquer!

Yep, that kid understands the POWER of the Big N!

Oh wow, look at that NES display case!

This is effective merchandising

Planning to the Nth degree

Nintendo knew their consumers intimately

Nintendo owned the 8-bit console market in North America

Clever play on words! Boxing was huge and Punch-Out!! capitalised on it

The NES Advantage

Legendary games!

Nintendo knocked out the 8-bit console opposition!
source: ebay

End Game: The Different Goals In OutRun

06/08/2016 By ausretrogamer

Ah, OutRun! It was the first street racing arcade game where you drove a Ferrari Testarossa at breakneck speeds with a female passenger in tow, feeling the wind in your hair as you raced to your next checkpoint area to progress further in the game. It was as simple as that, thank you Mr. Yu Suzuki.

OutRun’s simplicity was its biggest drawcard – the flash red car, gorgeous woman, awesome graphics (especially the crashes!), great European tracks (with uphill and downhill gradients!), brilliant music (oh that Magic Sound Shower tune!) and the choice of path to take when confronted with a fork in the road!

It was this choice of which road you took in OutRun which ultimately lead you to five very different goals (endings), some more humorous than others. For those of you that weren’t aware or had not seen all of OutRun’s different endings, here they are for your pleasure! Don’t forget to lock the Testarossa!

Choose your course – it’s as easy as a, b, c, d or e!

Course: Vineyard (a)
End Goal: No wine here for the easy winner. After the driver is hoisted aloft by the crowd, they then get distracted by a bikini clad lady and drop the driver to the bitumen. That’s gotta hurt!

Course: Death Valley (b)
End Goal: How apt is the name of this route as your Testarossa literally falls apart the second the winning line is crossed. Instead of celebrating, your driver will need to wait for a while for the Ferrari roadside assist van to rock up.

Course: Desolation Hill (c)
End Goal: What could be the winning prize here? Perhaps the camels to take the driver back to civilisation as the Ferrari has ran out of fuel? Hang on, what will the driver wish for when rubbing that lamp? Oh, a harem!

Course: Autobahn (d)
End Goal: As the crowd gathers to see the driver receive the big gold trophy, he gets embarrassingly bypassed by the presenter, with the trophy being handed to his female passenger! ZING!

Course: Lakeside (e)
End Goal: As the driver screeches past this most difficult of all goals, he is finally rewarded for his most excellent driving skills! Now he is ready to party!

image source: The Video Game Museum

The Commodore 64 Store

02/08/2016 By ausretrogamer

Commodore will always be our first true (gaming) love. Yeah, we may have wanted an Atari (VCS/2600), but then we saw the C64 and the rest, as they say, is history.

You could imagine our delight when we came across a Lemon64 post showing a heap of photos from an Australian Commodore store from the late 90s (thanks Rob Caporetto!).

Lemon64 forum user, CronicBadger was kind enough to share the photos he took from the Korella Trading’s ‘The Commodore 64 Store’ in Belmont, N.S.W. Being a huge Commodore fan, CronicBadger shares some great stories that he had heard in the store , including how Commodore was still importing C64s in 1993 to fulfil demand for the venerable 8-bit micro! To read more of CronicBadger’s reflection (and see more awesome pics) from ‘The Commodore 64 Store’, head on over to the Lemon64 forum now.

source: CronicBadger on Lemon64

Blast From The Past: Hewson Consultants

01/07/2016 By ausretrogamer

There were a number of big name publishers back in the day that had multiple chart toppers with an equal share of stinkers on the Commodore 64. The exception to this rule was Hewson Consultants (or simply Hewson as we affectionately called them). With absolute classics like Uridium, Paradroid, Ranarama, Cybernoid (this list could get quite exhaustive, such was their pedigree), Hewson was always going to leave a delectable and an ever lasting legacy on the C64. Their games had an undeniable quality to them which is probably why they are still spoken of so fondly even to this day, which is testament to the top notch software they pumped out for the 8-bit Commodore behemoth.

With a ton of games to choose from, our favourite Hewson title was the 1987 hit, Nebulus! We were suckers for brain teasing platform games, and Nebulus provided a mind bending experience in spades. The central character, Pogo was so damn cute and yet so very deadly – once we took control of him, we were addicted. Moving Pogo and jumping over obstacles to try and get to the top of each tower felt as natural as breathing. We remember the first time we saw the tower spin as Pogo walked left and then right, we were all wide-eyed with mouth open as if we were swallowing flies! This innovation was refreshing and executed inch perfect, which only Hewson could pull off.

To read the rest of this story, grab Reset #9 now and turn to page 28! Oh yeh, Reset is totally free!

For the latest on Hewson Consultants projects, check out their Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight now!

Neo Geo AES Press Kit From 1991

27/06/2016 By ausretrogamer

You know the free information paraphernalia you get when a new system or game comes out – make sure you hold onto them! If you are in the media, it is even more imperative to keep those press kits you usually turf away, even if there is no t-shirt or other trinkets on offer.

This 1991 SNK Neo Geo AES (USA) press kit is a prime example of how sort after press kits have become, especially the ones for older systems. They definitely spared no expense creating a bling media kit to peddle their awesome (and quite expensive) systems. What’s with SNK, even there press kits are damn sexy!

Before you go hunting for gaming related press kits, including this one, be informed that these items fetch a pretty penny. For now, we’ll just drool over this SNK Neo Geo presser!

Even the box looks expensive, just like their consoles!

Let the drooling begin!

Definitely bigger, badder and better!

Flicking goodness

SNK spared no expense with this press kit!

Oh wait, there is game info in the kit too?!

OK, we may need to sell a kidney or two now!
source: eBay

Retrospective: E3 1996

14/06/2016 By ausretrogamer

With E3 2016 being the biggest news this week, we thought we’d rewind the clock twenty years, back to 1996 when Nintendo, Sega and the newest player on the console block, the Playstation were the headline acts.

After wowing the crowds with their hardware the previous year, Playstation ensured that the 1996 E3 event was going to be even bigger and better by announcing a price drop to get the console into more homes, sending shivers down the spines of the old guard, Nintendo and Sega. Not to be outdone in the gaming stakes, Sony Computer Entertainment introduced everyone to Crash Bandicoot, who would go on to become a PlayStation mascot (and get remastered for the the PS4 20 years later!) and Lara Croft, whose appearance in Tomb Raider was the first step towards becoming a cultural icon.

At this second ever Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Sega was showing off the latest and greatest games for their Saturn in the hope of making a dent in the Playstation’s armour. With games like Virtua Fighter 3 (which was ultimately cancelled), Fighting Vipers, Virtua Cop 2, NiGHTS into Dreams, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei and Daytona USA (among others) from their own stable, Sega was ensuring that heads would be turned towards their 32-bit beast.

Third-party Saturn games were also announced by Acclaim (Alien Trilogy, Battle Monsters, The Crow: City of Angels, Dragonheart and Space Jam), Ubisoft (Rayman 2), Capcom (Marvel Super Heroes), Crystal Dyanmics (3D Baseball, Ghost Rider and Legacy Of Kain) and Konami (ISS Deluxe and NBA Hangtime).

Sega also wanted to show that there was still (some) life left in their 16-bit Mega Drive (Genesis) by showing off Arcade Classics, Sonic 3D Blast, Vectorman 2, X-Perts and X-Women (which never saw the light of day!). Perhaps Sega should have given up on their 16-bit console (and it’s many add-ons) and concentrate their might on the 32-bit battleground. Ah hindsight, it’s always 20/20.

And then there was Nintendo. The Kyoto giant chose the 1996 E3 event to showcase their latest hardware, the Nintendo 64. Nintendo chose to up the ante in the ‘bit’ wars by leaping over their two main rivals with their 32-bit systems. Basking in the glory of their 16-bit success with the SNES and full of confidence, Nintendo chose to stick with cartridges rather then the now-accepted CD format. To ensure that the Nintendo 64 was going to pull-in the crowds at E3 that year, Nintendo had a number of launch titles available to experience – Wave Race 64, Pilotwings 64, Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire and Super Mario 64. New hardware needs a ‘killer app’ that captures the public’s imagination and makes consumers snap up a machine – Super Mario 64, just like Super Mario Bros did for the NES, did exactly that! With Mario entering 3D for the first time, Nintendo no doubt were the best in show at E3 1996.

What product will wow us and become best in show at E3 2016?

sources: [IGN | Sega Retro | Playstation.blog]

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