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The Nintendo Museum To Be Completed By March 2024

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How darn awesome will this be when it’s finished in March 2024!

Nintendo is converting their old plant in Kyoto, Japan, into a museum to showcase products from throughout their long history in gaming.

If you are planning a trip to Japan next year, perhaps consider checking our the Nintendo Museum while you are there for the cherry blossom season 😉

Birdseye view of the Nintendo Museum roof – love the question mark [?]
Image source: Nintendo



story source: theverge.com

‘Cheers to 10 Years’ – PAX Aus Announces Even More Major Content

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‘Cheers to 10 Years’ As PAX Aus Announces Even More Major Content

With only three weeks to go until PAX Aus 2023, there is even more delicious content including more news from Nintendo and announcements from SEGA, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars Unlimited, Five Nights at Freddy’s and more to sink your teeth into!

We are hoping to see as many of you at PAX Aus this year, so we can’t wait for these weeks to fly by! Oh yeah, you should know where to find us by now (ahem, at our home base, the Classic Gaming area).

OK, without further ado, here is the awesome news…..

PAX Aus 2023 is shaping up to be an absolute whopper and there’s no better way to celebrate the last 10 years than showcasing even more great gaming content with more major announcements confirmed today. So please, take it slow and try not to stuff your face too quickly with all this delicious content…

In addition to Nintendo’s tournament in PAX Arena, Nintendo returns to the PAX expo floor headlined by Super Mario Bros. Wonder – playable before its release on 20th October! Fans can also shop in-person at the Nintendo booth with My Nintendo Store, which will have merchandise to peruse and purchase. Look forward to more information coming soon about the playable titles and available merch from Nintendo.

Gaming icon, SEGA will be attending PAX Aus this year with a booth showcasing Sonic Superstars and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Melbourne-based Ukiyo Studios will be presenting “SEA What I Made! (SWIM)”, the largest Southeast Asian indie games delegation of its kind to grace Australian shores. A total of 15 titles from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines will feature a variety of game genres from turn-based RPGs to Southeast Asian-inspired Diablo-likes and even restaurant management sims.

And for tabletop fans, Star Wars: Unlimited will be demo-ed for the first time in Australia at PAX Aus. Two icons of the tabletop world will also be at PAX Aus – Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Attendees will be able to learn to play Dungeons & Dragons with their friendly Dungeon Masters waiting to guide you on a quest. From there, visit the D&D Superstore where you will be able to find everything you need and want from sourcebooks to minis to collectibles and more. For Magic: The Gathering fans and noobs you can learn to play and get lost in the Wilds of Eldraine with fantastical creatures, unbelievable settings and beloved characters with a unique twist.

Pack your Senzu Beans and Devil Fruit, because the tabletop major moments don’t stop there with Dragon Ball Z and One Piece showcasing their games and hosting tourneys at the event. Compete for glory in the Dragon Ball Super Regionals and One Piece Card Game Tournament, pick up a free demo deck (while stock lasts), as well as try your hand at the new Dragon Ball Super Fusion World card game.

Vanguard, Weiss Schwarz, Shadowverse and Final Fantasy Trading Card Game will also be showcased at PAX Aus and Asmodee, yes, them of Exploding Kittens, CATAN, Ticket to Ride, Dobble/Spot It and so many more legendary games fame will be bringing their latest and greatest games.

What’s October without a jumpscare? Five Nights at Freddy’s will be activating the world of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza where Freddy and the gang are dying to meet you – step into the scene and see if you can survive five nights?

While on the topic of bears, what about bears, in space?! Hear from Broadside Games as they discuss how they went from working a day job and developing games on the side to focusing on a game full-time! The team behind the upcoming action-packed game, Bears In Space, tell all at PAX Aus!

And lastly, tabletop legends Phil Walker-Harding (Sushi Go, Bear Park, Imhotep) and Matt Dunstan (Fairy Tile, Relic Runners) will also be on the floor at PAX Aus, with Walker-Harding demonstrating his game, Spellbook, and Dunstan showcasing a new game, to be revealed for the first time at PAX Aus.

With 3-Day and Saturday Badges sold out and limited single-day badges available, you better gear up for PAX Aus’ 10th anniversary celebration. PAX Aus 2023 takes place October 6-8 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. For more information and badges, please visit their official website.

image source: PAX Aus



The Legend of Super Mario: The Zelda X Super Mario Bros. You Must Play

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The Legend of Zelda takes on Super Mario Bros. in this cool mashup!

There is one way to make us play the original The Legend of Zelda, mash it up with one of our fave NES games, Super Mario Bros.!

Hacking games and mashing them up isn’t anything new, but when the hacked sum is greater than the individual games, we take note. Swedish ROMHacking user NESDraug has hacked together two of the greatest NES games, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. to create an awesomely playable The Legend of Super Mario mashup game. Featuring Super Mario elements set in the original world of Hyrule might just make us experience a Zelda-like game on the NES – yes, we are one of those in the minority that never were into or wanted to play Zelda games.

If you want to experience The Legend of Super Mario, you can get the game patch from ROMHacking right here. Oh yeah, you will need a patching tool (like Lunar IPS) to patch the original rom file with the .ips patch file – that’s all we can tell ya without incriminating ourselves.

Go on, what are you waiting for?!


source: Hack Games Longplay Channel



Why Retro Gamers Should Wear Blue Light Glasses

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How many hours a day do you spend gaming? Whether you play modern or retro games, most of your sessions are undoubtedly spent in front of a screen — big and small. However, this increased exposure to digital screens may harm your eyes.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over 13 million Australians have one or more chronic eye conditions, including short- and longsightedness, astigmatism, macular degeneration, and blindness. In a 2022 survey from Optometry Australia, 88% of participants reported experiencing sore or tired eyes when using a computer or tablet. For people with existing uncorrected vision problems, this can make vision problems even worse.

For gamers specifically, caring for your eye health shouldn’t be overlooked. Recently, we highlighted some of Nintendo’s new games and content coming up soon. From Luigi’s Mansion 2‘s visual upgrade to critically acclaimed titles such as Batman: Arkham Trilogy‘s Switch debut, protecting your vision to enjoy these newer games is vital. One such way is by investing in blue light glasses. Below, we’ll look at what blue light glasses are, why retro gamers may need them, and other ways you can protect your eyes while gaming:

What are blue light glasses?

Blue-violet light comes primarily from the sun and our digital devices, such as computer screens, tablets, smartphones, and handheld consoles. Unlike other forms of light, our eyes aren’t built to effectively filter blue light, causing discomfort and vision problems when viewing digital screens for long periods.

Investing in a pair of blue light glasses can help protect your eyes from your gaming devices, including your smartphone, laptop, and handheld consoles. Blue light lenses such as OPSM BlueGuard® lenses can be fitted to your existing glasses and matched with your prescription. Other blue light lenses like the Invisibles® Blue also have an anti-reflection coating resistant to smudges, scratches, dust, and water.

Blue light glasses also come in different shapes and forms, so you can opt for subtle designs that you can wear in and out of gaming sessions daily or choose more gaming-oriented designs to complement your gaming ensemble.

Is retro gaming harmful to the eyes?

Nowadays, most video games are played on LED screens that emit blue light. If you’re wondering whether older, retro gaming devices also harm the eyes similarly, the answer is yes. While old-fashioned monitors such as CRT displays don’t emit the same level of blue light as LEDs, they still emit some radiation that can harm the eyes. According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, CRT monitors can be more stressful to the eyes than modern flat-screen displays. This is especially crucial for retro enthusiasts who still use CRT monitors to capture the retro feel of older games.

CRT monitors are also known for their constant flickering that emulates frame rates and makes animations in 8- and 16-bit games look smoother. This flickering can cause dizziness and blurriness when exposed for long periods.

Even if you aren’t gaming on an old CRT monitor, you may be gaming on smaller screens and handheld devices when emulating your retro games. While this is fine for short-term use, viewing smaller screen resolutions for long periods can cause squinting and headaches and tends to make you lean closer to a screen than necessary. As such, wearing blue light glasses can still help protect your eyes and vision during retro gaming sessions.

Other ways to protect your eyes while gaming 

Finally, aside from getting blue light glasses, there are other things you can invest in to protect your vision health in the long run. Some people opt for backlight or monitor light bars to help ease the lighting situation while gaming. This is especially helpful for people who spend hours gaming in the dark or dimly lit rooms.

You can also opt to get ergonomic chairs so that you can keep a safe screen distance while gaming. Brands like Herman Miller offer chair lines that are sleek and elegant for everyday use, as well as gaming chairs that combine the gamer-friendly aesthetic with science-backed ergonomics and functionality.

Gamer or not, all of us need to take great care of our eyes and bodies.



Prime Gaming: Free Games For This Month

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Free games for the month of September 2023 – collect them all!

Absolutely love all the freebies we have stockpiled from our Amazon Prime membership. Not only do we enjoy free deliveries and streaming content using Prime, but the cherry on top is the monthly free Prime Gaming titles!

The latest games for Prime Gaming have been announced, so if you have a Prime membership, start claiming these (or diarise the dates when the game you want is available for free)!

  • September 7: Football Manager 2023  — Construct a dream squad, outwit rivals and experience the thrill of the UEFA Champions League as players’ journey towards footballing glory awaits. Please note: Football Manager 2023 is not available in Brazil. Prime Gaming offers may sometimes vary by region. See gaming.amazon.com for more details.
  • September 14: Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim — Strengthen an empire and rise to power as players expand borders, build cities and raise armies in this multiplayer simulation game.
  • September 14: Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy  — Strategise for epic battles, unlock intriguing puzzles and solve exciting quests as players use various abilities to defeat Father Eldritch’s oppressive armies in this RPG title.
  • September 21: Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space — Go on an adventure to combat the mysterious robot from Planet X and save Earth as players take on the role of taco-loving Dexter Stardust.
  • September 21: Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate — Replace the entire army with a shotgun wielding king in this unique strategy roguelike based on the timeless classic, chess.
  • September 28: Unsolved Case: Murderous Script Collector’s Edition [Legacy Games Code] — Become a detective in this thrilling hidden object title, as players unravel secrets to solve a variety of cases. With the Collector’s Edition, players will also have the chance to make choices, unlock additional achievements and receive bonus collectibles.
  • September 28: Hundred Days — Winemaking Simulator — Grow your very own winery by making impactful, strategic decisions, such as choosing which vines to grow, when to harvest, what wine to market and more.



Lego Ideas: Retro Arcade

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Now this Lego Ideas entry we really really like! What’s there not to like about a Lego set that tugs on the ole nostalgic heartstrings.

The Retro Arcade Lego Ideas entry by If You Build It received the magical 10K votes, so right now, it is officially in the review (by Lego) stage! If you voted for the Retro Arcade, we thank you from the bottom of our 8-bit heart.

With the Retro Arcade project qualifying for the Second 2023 Review, we all have our fingers crossed that the powers at Lego vote with a resounding YES!

It goes without saying, we’ll keep you posted on the outcome!

source: Lego Ideas – Retro Arcade



Analogue Pocket – Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

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Analogue Pocket – is the best thing since sliced bread!

It may have taken 11 months from ordering to receiving the Analogue Pocket, and let us tell you all, it has totally been worth the wait!

With multiple handhelds on the market that emulate classic systems from yesteryear, we honestly didn’t know what we were missing out on till the Analogue Pocket arrived! The FPGA (OpenFPGA) based system is like playing on the original hardware, and this is where the Pocket shines – rising well above the myriad of handhelds on the market which use software emulation to play our beloved old video games. Comparing FPGA to software emulation is like comparing a Formula 1 race car to a Totoya Camry racing at Monaco – both will get you to the finish line, but one will get you there far far quicker (and in style).

By now you would have worked out that we are fans of our new gadget from Analogue. Yeah, the wait was excruciating at times, but we are glad we hung in there, as this has now become our choice for handheld gaming. We were very impressed with the quality and premium feel of the Pocket (and it’s packaging), being on par with Apple Inc. – yep, it’s that good!

The Analogue Pocket looks and feels like a premium piece of electronics – which it is, but it’s components are what makes it impressive. The Pocket is designed around a 3.5”, 615 ppi, LCD, which is a first-in-class. With a 1600 x 1440 resolution, the Pocket has 10x the resolution of an original Game Boy. The display is even made from Gorilla® Glass, with pro level colour accuracy, dynamic range, and brightness. We’d argue that the Analogue Pocket is the best piece of handheld hardware to play video games, bar none.

But wait, there is more to this amazing piece of kit! Not only does this Analogue product play games,  it’s for making music too! The Pocket has a digital audio workstation built in called Nanoloop. It’s a synthesizer and a sequencer. Designed for music creation and live performance. Shape, stretch and morph sounds. Capture music or play and sculpt live – you too can be a chiptune maestro! You can also connect the Pocket to your Mac, PC or other hardware with MIDI & Sync cables.

Remember how we said to wait as there is more? Well, there is more to this device, that’s what makes it impressive. If you like to tinker in game development, then you’d be pleased to know that you can bring your gaming ideas to reality with zero programming knowledge with GB Studio! GB Studio is an easy-to-use drag and drop retro game creator, allowing you to generate proprietary .pocket files and then run them off your SD card.

The Dock is a must-get accessory for the Analogue Pocket!

The pièce de résistance of the Pocket is that it’s designed for FPGA development. Analogue added a second dedicated FPGA just for developers to develop and port their own cores. With access to Analogue’s proprietary hardware and scalers, it opens up the platform for developers to create amazing feats on the system.

At the time of writing, there have been quite a few cores created specifically for the Pocket, from classic gaming consoles like the Atari 2600/7800 and the Odyssey 2, to the Master System, NES, SNES, Mega Drive and everything in between. Getting these cores and setting them up has never been easier – we used RetroDriven’s Pocket Updater to do all the fiddly stuff like finding the right cores, downloading and configuring them. If you are a masochist, you can go and find the individual cores and set them up, or you could make things easier for yourself by bookmarking the OpenFPGA Cores Inventory site.

Welcome to the family

Setting up the cores on the Pocket is a cinch with RetroDriven’s Pocket Updater tool

The flexibility, power and premium componentry is what sets the Analogue Pocket apart from other handheld systems. The fact that it is FPGA based is a total game changer – pun fully intended. With a thriving development community, we are starting to see what this machine is capable of. The future does look quite bright for the Pocket, and that’s us saying that while we await our PC-Engine, Neo Geo Pocket and Atari Lynx adapters to arrive! Coupled with the Dock, the Analogue Pocket is truly the best thing since sliced bread in the video gaming world.

Tech Specs – Pocket:

  • Compatible with Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance game cartridges (and Game Gear, PC-Engine, Atari Lynx and Neo Geo Pocket via separate adapters)
  • 3.5″ LCD. 1600×1440 resolution. 615ppi
  • 360° display rotation (tate mode)
  • Variable refresh display
  • Rechargeable lithium ion 4300mAh battery (6-10 hour gameplay time & 10+ hour sleep time)
  • All buttons mappable/reconfigurable
  • Stereo speakers
  • micro SD card slot
  • USB-C charging
  • Original-style link port (woohoo, link action!)
  • 3.5mm headphone output

Tech Specs – Dock:

  • 1080p HDMI output
  • Bluetooth and 2.4g support for wireless controllers
  • 2 USB inputs for wired controllers
  • Up to 4 player support (4p Bluetooth, 2p 2.4g, 2p wired USB)
  • DAC compatibility (coming soon)
  • Power Dock on from controller



5 Terabytes Of Old School Gaming

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If you are pressed for time or don’t really want to muck around with setting up emulators to play old video games, this post is for you!

Emulators have come a long way with their (relative) ease of setup and use, however, they still have a number of quirks that need tweaking to their configuration to get them humming properly. There is also the question of storage and having your local workstation polluted with a mass of different emulators.

Having setup multiple emulators on our Windows PC, we know how time consuming they can be to setup properly. Once they are setup, you then realise the precious storage they have consumed. The solution would have been to leave the myriad of emulators on our PC, but move all the backed up games to an external drive – again, more time sunk in setting up, than playing our fave retro games! So what is the answer?

Let us introduce you to the plug and play Hyper Base Mix 5TB external drive, with perfectly configured emulators and absolutely packed to the brim with pre-installed games – almost the entire 5 terabyte drive is full! So if you have a Windows PC, it’s as easy as plug the drive into a spare USB port, and then fire up your desired emulator.

The pre-configured emulators include LaunchBox, RetroBat and Playnite, arguably the best emulators/front-ends currently available. What, no RetroArch? Nope, not needed at all, as RetroBat (and LaunchBox) do the job admirably. Wish we had bought this drive earlier, as it would have saved us a lot of time (and headaches).

The details:

  • Product: Hyper Base Mix 5TB HDD
  • Price: AU$277.37 (as at publication date)

Packed full!

What should we play first……

RetroBat it is! And then straight to the Neo Geo MVS!

54,055 games on RetroBat! Surely we’ll find a few we’ll want to play…

Testing out a few arcade classics

The lovely LaunchBox – great for games from the 5th generation and onwards!

Playnite is a great platform to consolidate all of your fave PC games!



The Incredible LEGO Mario Kart Roller Coaster

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Let’s-a-go! Wahoo!

What do you do if your name is Scott Makes MOCs and you love Lego, Mario Kart and coasters? Well, you make an insanely amazing LEGO Mario Kart Roller Coaster!

3 years in the making, this incredible build by Scott just needs to be seen to be believed. The intricate details and care taken in making this Mario Kart themed LEGO roller coaster is beyond our wildest imagination.


source: scottmakesmocs

Instead of just throwing in just one video of this incredible LEGO roller coaster, we thought we’d also share the time-lapse one which compresses 3 years into 5 minutes! Totally mind-blowing!

We may need to be shrunk down to size so we can ride this coaster too! Wahoo!


source: scottmakesmocs



[story source: borninspace]

Fan Favourite Pokémon Happy Meal Returns to Macca’s

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Hey Pokemon peeps, Macca’s newest Pokémon Match Battle Happy Meal is coming to Australia – available nationwide from Thursday 24 August!

For a limited time only, Macca’s fans who purchase a Happy Meal will have the chance to collect official Pokémon Match Battle trading cards, a card flip coin and instructions – everything needed to stage an at-home Pokémon Match Battle!

With 12 types of Pokémon Match Battle games up for grabs, Aussies will be able to collect fan favourites including Pikachu, Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly!

image source: McDonald’s Australia