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Genius: A Beer-Dispensing Claw Machine

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vb-claw-machineMark from Victoria (Australia) is a genius – he’s created a fantastic Victoria Bitter-dispensing claw machine. Watch it in action and be amazed!

Source: Markph01 on Rumble via Technabob

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msausretrogamerMs. 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

 

 

‘Majora’s Mask – Terrible Fate’

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majoras-mask-featured‘Majora’s Mask – Terrible Fate’ by EmberLab.

‘A tribute to the legendary game, this short showcases Skull Kid’s dark origin story. Our take on how the Zelda Universe could be realized in film. A labor of love for all those involved, this is a gift to the fans.’

Source: EmberLab via Cheezburger

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msausretrogamerMs. 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

 

 

Inside Lens: Game Preservation – The Quest

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nhk_game_preservationNostalgia can be very intoxicating, especially when it comes to video games. That affection we feel for the gaming period from our past can be lost if we do not take action to preserve it.

Preserving old video games has invaluable cultural and historical value, not just for our generation, but for generations to come. We want future generations to be able to look at, study, learn from and most importantly, play these old games.

In Japan, two video game enthusiasts, a French citizen (Joseph Redon) and a Japanese surgeon (Takuya Fukuda), are on a mission to save our old video games from extinction. They founded the Game Preservation Society, a non-profit organisation whose goal is to restore and archive video games from the past. Check out the NHK World – Inside Lens documentary – it pays tribute to their preservation work.

* The documentary is available to watch till December 12 2016, so get on over here and watch it! *

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nhk_game_preservation_8source: NHK World Japan – Inside Lens

Thank you to our friend, Lane Myer for bringing this to our attention.

 

‘Army Of Darkness’ by 8-Bit Cinema

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army-of-darkness-featured-1CineFix brings us an 8-bit interpretation of the awesome Sam Raimi classic ‘Army of Darkness’ – Hail to the king, baby!

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Video source: CineFix on YouTube

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msausretrogamerMs. 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

 

 

2SER Radio Chat: The Nostalgic World Of Retro Gaming

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2ser_radio_titleOur very own, Alex Boz, hits the airwaves in a LIVE interview with Nic Healey from radio station 2SER (107.3). Nic and Alex chat about PAX Aus, the love and allure of retro gaming, cutting out John Laws from the Commodore 64 Family Pack box and much, much more!

If you have a spare 6 minutes and 44 seconds, take a listen here!

 

Super Mario: Underworld

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Super Mario: Underworld by Nukazooka – Mario enters the upside down, spooky!


Source: Nukazooka on YouTube via Laughing Squid

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msausretrogamerMs. 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

 

 

The Retro Freak: It’s Freakin Awesome

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retrofreak_titleWhen we received the Retro Freak console from Play-Asia, we put our thinking cap on to try and find a way to review the unit objectively. Our thinking cap must’ve worked, as we came up with an ingenious idea – take the Retro Freak to the biggest gaming expo in the southern hemisphere, PAX Aus 2016!

By having the Retro Freak available to play at PAX Aus, it gave us the opportunity to observe attendees playing on the console and gauge their unfiltered and objective feedback. With thousands in attendance, we weren’t short of people having a go. There were youngsters and older players, families and couples all having a go. The overwhelming responses from players was, “What is this console?”, “Where can I get one?” and “How much is it?”.

Play your old school carts on the Retro Freak!
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For those that are not aware, this awesome console from Cyber Gadget allows you to play your original game cartridges/cards from your Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, PC Engine, TurboGrafx-16, SuperGrafx, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. By supporting these legacy systems, the Retro Freak ensures that you only need the one console setup in your games room to play all of your favourite classic titles! Hooray, you can finally declutter!

Let’s put on scanlines!
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We love the clean and easy-to-use interface
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The Retro Freak pumps out its audio visuals via HDMI, supporting 720p upscaling, which makes your old school games look great on newer TVs – so no more needing that 20 year old CRT TV! Well, we would suggest that you still hold onto your CRT TV *winks*. The other cool features that will freak you out (in a good way) include; filters, backing up of games from cartridge onto the console (on MicroSD card), instant save states and cheat codes (for certain games).

For control, there is the pack-in SNES-style controller, which does the job well, or if you prefer, modern gamepads such as the DualShock 3 and DualShock 4 can also be used (via USB). The Retro Freak Premium pack ships with a controller adaptor that supports Famicom/NES, Super Famicom/SNES, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 controllers. If you prefer bluetooth control (perhaps you dislike wires!), you can procure the 8bitdo Retro Receiver, plug it into the controller adaptor and use any one of your PS3, PS4, WiiMote or Wii U controllers you may have lying around. Oh yeah, you can re-map controller buttons to suit your style! We love the flexibility that the Freak provides!

The pack-in controller does the job! At least the USB cable is 1.8M!
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One side of the Controller Adaptor – connect your fave gamepads!
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Other side of the Controller Adaptor reveals more classic controller ports!
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So how does it compare to playing on the real hardware? We threw all kinds of games at the Freak, and it ran them without a hitch. We didn’t encounter any incompatibility issues, which ensured we didn’t rage quit and turn off the console. The transferring of original game cartridge data to MicroSD is as easy as breathing, thanks to the user friendly interface. One niggle we did have was with Cyber Gadget’s support page being in Japanese – it made it difficult to ascertain the firmware and application updates required to ensure the Retro Freak was up to date. Google did came to the rescue here by pointing us to a forum that had the instructions in English on how to upgrade the firmware.

The elephant in the room is the obvious comparison to the RetroN5. With quality issues hampering the RetroN5, we know which system we would prefer to use – if only the Retro Freak was as good looking as the RetroN5! If you want to be able to archive your original game carts and declutter by only having one console to play your classic games on, then you can’t go wrong with the Retro Freak!

If you are keen to check out the Retro Freak console, then head to Play-Asia now.

Play Operation Wolf straight from the PC-Engine HuCard, OR…
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Backup the Operation Wolf HuCard to microSD! It’s the best of both worlds!
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The Retro Freak makes it to PAX Aus!
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Family gaming together!
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The Retro Freak was a hit at PAX Aus 2016! The Sega Mega Drive version of Aladdin was quite popular.
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Super Famicom F-Zero action aplenty!
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Time to SUPER SMASH (some) TV!
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Thanks to Play-Asia.com for supplying the Retro Freak used in this review.



Tomica Star Wars: Star Cars Darth Vader Carrier

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If you are a Star Wars fan and are struggling to find stuff to add to your Christmas wishlist, then you are in luck! Cross out whatever is number one on your current wishlist and add the awesome Tomica Star Wars Star Cars Darth Vader carrier truck!

As you can see from the product photos, this truck is one mean looking vehicle – you can finally be driving on the dark side of the force! If you want your truck to carry cargo, you may want to add the Tomica Star Wars vehicles to your list too.

Hit Amazon now and grab yourself some cool Star Wars gear for Xmas!

This is one truck than can lure us to the dark side of the force!
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You can carry some pretty cool vehicles
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You better back off!
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Unloading the precious cargo
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Fill your truck with these cool Tomica Star Wars cars!
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image source: Amazon

 

Real-Life ‘Legend Of Zelda’ Escape Game

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‘Defenders of the Triforce’ is a REAL-LIFE puzzle escape game based on ‘The Legend of Zelda’ – thanks to a partnership between SCRAP Entertainment and Nintendo.

‘It is a fully hosted, story-based escape event designed for puzzle fans and fans of the Zelda franchise. There will be multiple teams in the event space all participating at the same time, and each team will have their own table to work at when not exploring.’

‘Defenders of the Triforce’ is touring eight American cities in 2017 – San Francisco, LA, Phoenix and San Diego seem to be sold out, but Seattle, Houston, Chicago and New York tickets are yet to go on sale. We’re just wondering when the Melbourne dates will be announced, lol!

city-listVisit ScrapZelda.com for more information.


source: SCRAP and Nintendo on YouTube via Technabob

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msausretrogamerMs. 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

 

 

ACMI’s ‘Screen It’ Awards 2016

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We were thrilled to attend this year’s ‘Screen It‘ Awards at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) last week. Screen It is a fantastic moving image competition that encourages primary and secondary school kids to create animated films, live action films and videogames. This year’s theme was ‘mystery’.

Age groups: Foundation to Year 4 (Junior), Year 5 to Year 8 (Middle), and Year 9 to Year 12 (Senior).

As ACMI puts it: ‘Screen It is designed to educate, encourage and foster the next generation of young moving image makers. It’s fun and, best of all, it’s free!’

We always love a visit to ACMI at Melbourne’s Fed Square
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A red carpet for the finalists was a nice touch
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There was an excellent turnout and the room was buzzing with excitement!
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The awards were hosted by Good Game‘s Bajo and Hex, who were joined by Academy Award winner Adam Elliot and actress Bethany Whitmore.

Bajo and Hex
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With Adam Elliot…
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… and Bethany Whitmore
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Can you tell which Pokemon is Hex’s favourite? (Answer: Jigglypuff!)
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We were incredibly impressed by all the finalists’ work – but we were, of course, most interested in the videogame category:

Junior (Foundation – Year 4)  Videogame

Encouragement Awards:

  • The Mysterious Cannonball; Essex Heights Primary School; Mount Waverley, VIC
  • Basketball; Hallett Cove South Primary School; Hallett Cove, SA
  • The Mystery of Harold Holt; Mentone Grammar; Mentone, VIC

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Middle (Year 5-8) Videogame

Winner: Day One; Kingswood Primary School; Dingley Village, VIC

Special Mention: Mots’ Mansion; Doreen Primary School; Doreen, VIC

Finalists:

  • End of the Line; Stuart C; Aldgate, SA
  • Down to Earth; Mosman High School; Mosman, NSW
  • Day One; Kingswood Primary School; Dingley Village, VIC
  • Mots’ Mansion; Doreen Primary School; Doreen, VIC

Middle (Year 5-8) winner ‘Day One’
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Congratulations to ‘Day One’ creators from Kingswood Primary School
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Special Mention: ‘Mots’ Mansion’ – Doreen Primary School
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Finalist: ‘Down to Earth’ Mosman High School
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Finalist: ‘End of the Line’ Stuart C
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Senior (Year 9-12) Videogame

Winner: The Adventures of the Lost Treasure; Bialik College; Hawthorn, VIC

Finalists:

  • Dark Hours Forgotten Paths; Mansfield State High School; Mansfield, QLD
  • The Adventures of the Lost Treasure; Bialik College; Hawthorn, VIC
  • The Chilling Chase; Ursula Frayne Catholic College; Victoria Park, WA
  • Out of the Darkness; Endeavour College; Mawson Lakes, SA

Senior (Year 9-12) winner ‘The Adventures of the Lost Treasure’
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Congratulations to ‘The Adventures of the Lost Treasure’ creator from Bialik College
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Finalist: ‘Dark Hours Forgotten Paths’ Mansfield State High School
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Finalist: ‘The Chilling Chase’ Ursula Frayne Catholic College
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Finalist: ‘Out of the Darkness’ Endeavour Collegeout-of-the-darkness

The theme for the 2017 Screen It competition was announced too:

Aaaand the theme for 2017 is … Time!
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After party snacks
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msausretrogamerMs. 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