Retro Gaming Culture

Supa Cosplay at Supanova Expo Melbourne 2016

April 23, 2016 By Ms. ausretrogamer

We love watching cosplay – the wigs, the makeup, the lycra, the armor, the props – wow! We especially love seeing the amazing variety of characters and interpretations people come up with. Well, our fellow Melbournians did us proud at the recent Supanova Expo, here are our cosplay highlights from the 2016 Supanova Pop Culture Expo Melbourne.

Amazing dwarf makeup – we think this was done by the Weta Workshop

Kool Kylo Ren Kosplay

This – This is Negan, and he is awesome
(surprisingly, this was the only Negan we came across)

A stunning display at the Torb and Reiner booth

Punky Bowser

Ready… Fight!

Welcome to Silent Hill – quick, where’s my Rock Drill?!

So much Star Wars

Boba Link: The Zeldalorian bounty hunter

The steampunk elf king

You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper

Wow – Fallen Captain, Destiny

Marvel-ous cosplay by David Cunning a.k.a. Delta one cosplay

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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

Supanova Temptations

April 20, 2016 By ausretrogamer

If checking out the wonderful roster of TV stars and the awesome cosplay wasn’t enough, Supanova Pop Culture Expo (in Melbourne) hit the trifecta this past weekend by tempting its visitors with cool gear, from comics, novels, animation cels, action figures to Game Of Thrones leggings – let’s just say that there was something for everyone!

As we walked around the main hall of Supanova, we found ourselves stopping at each stall and taking a good hard look at what wares were available for purchase. The temptation was strong to buy everything in sight, but we had to be mindful of that dreaded credit card sitting in our back pocket.

There were plenty of items we would have loved to had taken home, but for now, we’ll just reminisce about them…

We stood and stared at these for hours! Well, ok, we stared for minutes!

Tada! The (evil) Doctor is in da house!

Shoot that Well Walker in the head!

It is Judgement Day! The menacing T800 is coming to get us!

Flipping the bird at Iron Man

Wanna go back to ’85?

Where do we even start?!

The most evil bust in the universe!

The most evil statue in the universe!

Let’s bag this, Mario!

Magic mushroom?

Look who we ran into!

House Targaryen!

We bet on House Stark!

Oo’er, nice framed Zelda artwork!

Oh man, Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake! Now that’s a blast from the past!

Whoa! Where is Jabba The Hutt?

More Star Wars goodness!

Where do we even start here? Oh look, it’s Daryl Dixon!

We might need a few bags here! *wink*

NG:Dev.Team Dreamy Dreamcast Titles

April 18, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Just in case you have been on a sojourn to the moon and have just landed back on earth, we have some HUGE news – those awesome folks at NG:Dev.Team have announced that due to popular demand, they will re-issue some of their past Dreamcast games in Japanese styled CD jewel cases!

If you haven’t already got them, you can grab Gunlord, Fast Striker and Last Hope Pink Bullets now to enjoy on your Dreamcast. These re-issued games are aimed at new customers but previous owners may want the CD case releases to compliment their DVD case editions of the same games.

There is a limited run of each game and the special bundle, so you better be quick! Shipping is scheduled to commence between April 20th and 25th! More details at the NG:Dev.Direct site – get ordering!

image source: NG:Dev Team

Arcade and Pinball Sale Of The Century

April 16, 2016 By Aaron Clement

So it was at some unholy hour on a warm Saturday morning back in early January that I found myself standing outside of an old office supplies warehouse in North Hobart along with a whole range of people from all over Australia. Why you ask? Inside was a significantly large assortment of pinball tables, jukeboxes and arcade cabinets, all for sale or auction by one of the oldest operators in Tassie.

Proof that we do get warm, clear days in Hobart!

If you’ve ever spent time in Hobart, you may have passed a building on the corner of Patrick and Campbell streets with a faded sign advertising “Pinballs from $400”. The building is home to Automatic Music, a local family-owned amusement operator founded by a guy named Erwin Boot back in the 1960s. While their focus now is mainly pool tables and jukeboxes, Erwin had kept a lot of the older and unused machines stashed away at various locations across the state. So with retirement looming, there was only one thing to do; open the warehouse to the public and sell, sell, sell!

I want a $400 Pinball machine!

Quite the line-up!

Jukeboxes were the major theme of the sale, with easily a hundred or more out on display, although it was hard to miss the entire wall lined with some 30 to 40 years of pinball history! With machines ranging from early electromagnetic releases like Sky Jump (Gottlieb, 1974), Sky Kings (Bally, 1973), Lawman (Gottlieb, 1971) and Super Star (Williams, 1972), through to more recent titles like Star Wars (Data East, 1992), Judge Dredd (Midway, 1993) and Dr. Who (Midway, 1992). There were definitely bargains to be had, although the cheaper the machine, the better your repair skills had to be!

Smaller than their solid state descendants, the electromagnetic Pinballs of the 60s & 70s are unmistakable

The most expensive machine sold on the day wasn’t a pinball table, it was a 1959 AMI Continental Jukebox that was snagged by a Gold Coast man for $6100! On the pinball front, Star Wars, Playboy (Bally, 1978) and Dr. Who all cleared the $3000 mark, with the cheapest going for just over $200 (for a mostly incomplete, non-working machine I might add).

The Doctor is in the house!

Given my holy grail was well out of reach (I’ll own Star Wars one day!), I was happy to just attend and spend time walking amongst all of the amusement history on display. Although there’s another long time amusement operator down here with an equally large warehouse of machines, so maybe we’ll see another sale sometime soon…

Oh my, $50 for a Taito Thunderbolt!

No tabletop dancing on these old beauties!

Let’s go Raving!

Even Judges need repair from time to time

Rock ‘n’ Wrestling – A good combination!

We’re only playing it for the multiballs, right?

Sweet sounds of Wurlitzer

Shoot’em up gallery

Checking out the lethal merchandise

It’s seen better days, but you can almost hear Sweet Georgia Brown

Feeling like a superstar!

More awesome pics from the arcade and pinball sale of the century here!

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Aaron Clement
Tassie based retro gaming guy. Father of 3 and married to the very tolerant Kellie Clement. Coffee powered!

Follow Aaron Clement on Twitter and Instagram

A Disturbance In The Force

April 15, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Check out these awesome (and very funny) Mark Hamill autographs on a selection of Star Wars collectible cards! We sense a serious disturbance in the Force 😉

You can see the rest of Mark Hamill’s autographs on the CityOfWalls imgur page!

Right, who pinged Luke on his pager?

CAUTION: DO NOT PRESS!

Um, this looks suss

Voted as most likely to become a Jedi

Warning: Smoking causes health problems

Let’s go visit dad!
source: City Of Walls on imgur

Patti Lapel: Awesome Retro Pins

April 14, 2016 By Ms. ausretrogamer

Jensen Karp‘s Patti Lapel sells awesome retro pins among other weird things (check out the Ian Ziering/Led Zepplin mashup T-shirt for example). The latest pins include a N64 GoldenEye cart and a NES Game Genie.

And there’s plenty more – you’d better buy some more jackets because you’re going to start running out of lapel space!

Source: Patti Lapel

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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

Pocket Atari 2600: Gaming On The Go

April 11, 2016 By ausretrogamer

We absolutely love DIY console mods, especially cool ones like this Atari Flashback 2 stuffed into an Atari VCS/2600 cartridge!

We are fans of old systems being shrunk down to a portable size (Ed: we all remember the portable Atari 2600, yeh?), but this creation by lovablechevy tickles our nostalgic fancy due to its pocket friendly size and use of an Atari 2600 cartridge – which are so damn cool. Before you get upset, the game on the cartridge was long dead before it was used and converted as a pocket gaming unit.

Lovablechevy states that her creation was conceived almost a decade ago with it only coming to fruition now! We say that it’s better late than never! As mentioned right off the bat, the Pocket Atari has an Atari Flashback 2 stuffed inside of a standard Atari 2600 cart with a 2.5″ screen plus an audio amp, transplanted Wii Remote D-pad and buttons, a Super Joy III controller board and 2 x 3.7v li-ion 700 mAh batteries for power (giving you 3.5 hours of carefree and very loud gaming)!

This is definitely the smallest portable Atari 2600 which fits great in your pocket without weighing you down (Ed: it’s a measly 4.6 ounces in weight!). Now, let’s play some River Raid on it *winks*

Doing The Math: The Pocket Atari plan

Cramming a lot of video gaming smarts in confined spaces!

Looking good!

Anyone for tennis?

source: lovablechevy

Fancy Pants: Pac-Man Suit And Tie

April 9, 2016 By Ms. ausretrogamer

Do you have a big job interview or a wedding coming up? Well, Oppo Suits has you covered (literally) with this brilliant Pac-Man suit.

Source: Oppo Suits

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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

Ben Heck’s Giant Game Boy: The Game Man

April 8, 2016 By Ms. ausretrogamer

Ben Heck and co. from Element 14’s The Ben Heck Show made this amazing 670 percent scaled-up Game Boy (aptly named ‘The Game Man’) in just 4 days! It runs off an actual Game Boy connected to a VGA monitor and is awesome, see exactly how they made it in the video below.

Video source: The Ben Heck Show on YouTube

Source: Element 14’s The Ben Heck Show via Technabob

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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

The Lovely Atari STacy

April 6, 2016 By ausretrogamer

The Atari STacy! What the? If Atari were good at one thing, it was naming their computer range, hence the STacy being a play on their Atari ST range and a cool woman’s name.

Who didn’t want a portable ST back in 1989 that weighed almost 7kg! Well, if we had arms like Arnie Schwarzenegger and a matching bank balance (The Atari STacy was not cheap – it retailed for a cool $3,000AUD!), we probably would have forked-out our hard earned cash for one. It definitely would have been a wise investment, as there were less than 35,000 units sold, making this portable Atari computer a very rare commodity.

The STacy came in four models, with the STacy 4 (4MB RAM version) being the top of the line. For those technically minded, here are the all-important Atari STacy specifications:

Operating system: Atari TOS 1.04
CPU: Motorola 68HC000 (at 8 MHz)
Memory RAM: 1 MB (4×220 bytes) (expandable to 4 MB)
ROM: 192 KB
Storage: 3.5″ floppy drive, 3.5″ SCSI 20MB-40MB harddrive Conner Peripherals Inc.
Display: 10.4″ EPSON LCD passive matrix backlight
Graphics: 320×200 (16), 640×200 (4), 640×400 (2)
Sound: Yamaha YM-2149, three channels, 8 octaves
Input: 95 keys, QWERTY, 2 Joystick ports, RS 232C, Centronics, external Floppy, ROM-Cartridge, DMA for Printer/HD, MIDI In/Out, Monitor
Power: NiCad pack, 12 standard C cell alkaline batteries, DC18V 2.0A 36W AC Adaptor
Dimensions: 13.3 x 15 x 13.3 inches
Weight: 7kg/15.2 lb