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Get Your Keyboard To Match Your Original Game Boy

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In my mind’s eye, if I imagined a Game Boy type keyboard I could use on my computer, it would definitely not look as cool as this creation by The Key Company!

The iconic look of the original Game Boy, with its white, navy, maroon and black colour scheme oozes cool Nintendo late 80s aesthetics which would look pretty awesome on other devices, like keyboards! The Key Company is currently running a group buy for their GMK DMG key-set, which is based on, surprise surprise, Nintendo’s iconic handheld. The GMK DMG key-set was designed by Reddit user Futurecrime, with colour matching being professionally done by German industrial equipment maker GMK to directly match Nintendo’s Game Boy colour scheme.



The Base kit, which is USD$169, includes 150 keys designed to cover a majority of keyboards sporting Cherry MX-compatible stems. Pull off one of your normal keys, and if there is a plus (+) sign shaped plastic peg underneath, they’ll fit. The base kit includes some super cute novelty keys sporting Game Boy button graphics, along with a set of direction keys in black with grey stripes.

There are cheaper kits, like the Pocket kit, which costs USD$48 – it comes with keys to fill in some of the more popular smaller keyboard layouts. There is also a $22 Spacebars kit which contains various sizes of space bars in the Game Boy maroon colour.

So if you are into the original Game Boy and want to pair up its colour scheme with a device you use often, like your keyboard, then check out the GMK DMG group buy at The Key Company site for more details. If you prefer to wait for the key-sets to hit the streets (Reddit’s Mechmarket), then diarise April 2019 right now!

Image source: The Key Company

[source: Kotaku]



80s Baby: NKOTB Are Back Baby!

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New Kids On The Block are back, baby! Well, so are Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty By Nature, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson performing 80s Baby. Part of the ‘The Mixtape Tour 2019‘, this new single is a throwback to the awesomest decade of them all, the 1980s!

This song will have you bopping along with that familiar cool 80s tunes. Oh yeah, the video clip is a throwback to Sega’s cool OutRun arcade game – a nice touch indeed!

Huge thanks to Poop Face (aka: Freakin Frankie) for letting us know about this!


source: New Kids On The Block

 

Introducing the RepliCade Mini Centipede Arcade Machine

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When we backed New Wave Toys‘ RepliCade: Mini Centipede Arcade Machine Kickstarter, we only imagined how good it would be. Well, we have received our limited edition RepliCade Mini Centipede and let’s just say, we are totally blown away by it!

The level of detail, from the cabinet styling, artwork, light-up marquee, control panel overlay, old school P1 and P2 player select buttons to the fire button, coin slots and the beautiful trak-ball, New Wave Toys should be commended for a prefect recreation of Atari’s iconic Centipede arcade machine – it truly needs to be seen to be believed!

The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin approves of the RepliCade Mini Centipede Arcade Machine

OK, we know what you are thinking, it looks great, but does it play well? In short, it plays perfectly, we cannot fault it one bit! The trak-ball feels oh so right (you can adjust its sensitivity) even though it looks small, it feels great under the index finger. The concave fire button also feels right, with no lag at all. The emulation used is as if it was yanked right off the Centipede arcade board, it plays unbelievably smooth. Just on this, New Wave Toys are using their proprietary RepliCade high-performance chipset for smooth, lag-free gameplay. It runs on a closed system that boots directly into ROM. By pressing the right coin slot, you have access to all the options that the original machine had in the arcades. Seriously, these guys have thought of everything!

The RepliCade Mini Centipede Arcade Machine comes highly recommended. The design and level of detail of this replica mini arcade machine is simply sublime. Dona Bailey and Ed Logg would be quite impressed with what New Wave Toys have achieved. We now look forward to their next creation in their RepliCade series, the Mini Tempest Arcade Machine!

PS: The Atari 25c insert coin keychain (bottom of this article) was available to Kickstarter backers only! The generic 25c insert coin keychain is available via Amazon!

 

80’s Arcade Video Games, Pinball and Mullets

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Ah the good old days of the 1980s, hanging out at our local arcade parlours with mates and our monster mullets!

Thanks heaps to We Are Diehards on Facebook for sharing this most awesome vid with us all – let the nostalgia ooze baby!


source: We Are Diehards via Facebook

 

80’s Street Party To Celebrate Barkly Square’s 35th Anniversary

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Woohoo, who doesn’t like an 80s party? If you put your hand up, then this isn’t for you! For everyone else, read on…

Barkly Square is turning 35! Barkly Square will be marking this milestone (September 7 to 9) with an 80’s themed street party celebration which will feature 80s-style workshops and cool stuff from the best decade, like arcade games, flash dancers, hula-hoops, scrunchies and even an old-school JB Hi-Fi 80s type stall to name just a few!

If you want to attend and celebrate 80’s style, then check out the full details here.

image source: Barkly Square

 

90s Nostalgia Series Art By Aly Jones

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Gotta thank our friends Weird and Retro for bringing this art to our attention!

You all got to check out Aly Jones’ 90s Nostalgia Art Series artwork, the jolt of old school popular culture stuff will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy inside! Aly’s artwork will definitely make you miss the 90s!

Check out the entire Aly Jones 90s Nostalgia Art Series on Facebook and also hit Aly’s site for more of her awesome art!

image source: Aly Jones’ 90s Nostalgia Series via Facebook

 

Passport: The Vectrex Owners Club Magazine

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If you were lucky enough to have had a Vectrex back in the day (Ed: or lucky enough to have one now!), you may have not know that there was an official owners club magazine titled, Passport.

We take a look at a few pages from the premiere issue of Passport from the summer of 1983 and see what was hot on the Vectrex, from the Light Pen and 3D Imager glasses to six of the best Vectrex games and some mailbag shenanigans.

All image source: © 2018 Chris ‘Vectrexer’ Romero via eBay

 

One Hour of 1980s Video Game Commercials

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Enjoy a trip down memory lane with Dave Freeman’s hour long compilation of 1980s video game commercials from the Video Game Commercial Archive that was released on DVD in 2007.

This video is jam packed with so much nostalgia, it will make you giddy!


source: Dave Freeman

 

Man Walks into a Bar and Sees a Pac-Man Machine

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Source: Steve Ringman/The Chronicle 1981

By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.

I recently walked into a hipster bar that I had never been in before. I immediately felt slightly old. Everyone there was in their early twenties; some of them didn’t look old enough to order a beer. As I made my way past the bustling, long bar, I noticed something in the back corner of the place that I hadn’t seen in a longtime.

A large group of twentysomethings were gathered around an original Pac-Man arcade machine. I hadn’t seen a Pac-Man machine since I was a little kid. It was a smack of nostalgia in a place I didn’t expect it.

Like the Rubik’s Cube or the DeLorean DMC-12, Pac-Man is an 80s icon. Seeing a vintage machine with a group of Millennials playing it, made me curious. I sat at a small booth near the Pac-Man machine and watched the young group feed the machine quarters. They were having such a blast trying to see who could reach the highest score with one quarter.

source: ausretrogamer

After a few craft beers, I wanted to try my hand at Pac-Man; but they had taken over the machine. It was entertaining watching them shriek and groan when they got devoured by a ghost. It may’ve been the first time any of them had ever played the arcade version of Pac-Man, but I still wanted my turn.

Pac-Man brings people together. From the time the game was released in arcades in October 1980, Pac-Man has been a unifier that you could play with friends. Pac-Man is cross-generational. It seems simple at first, but as you keep playing, the difficulty of each stage keeps you addicted to clear the maze.

When Pac-Man was released in 1980, movie theatre owners and movie moguls were worried that the game would hurt the film industry. Pac-Man was taking money away from Paramount and 20th Century Fox. Pac-Man’s enormous popularity was short-lived, but at its height, movie studio executives had to be worried about how long they would be competing with the bright yellow machines.

I never got to play the Pac-Man machine in that bar that night, but I enjoyed watching the twentysomethings play a game that this October will turn 38-years-old. Will there ever be another Pac-Man? I doubt it.

source: ausretrogamer

 

Ah the 1980s, We Miss You So Much!

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Gotta share this video that was posted by video game history guy, John Anderson. Using John’s words, this is, “A 1981 TV news report by WMAQ-TV in Chicago about the makers of Defender (Williams Electronics) and inside the Midway factory assembling Pac-Man arcade cabinets (350 a day!)”.

Ah the 80s, we definitely miss you so much!

source: John Anderson via Twitter