The Pop-Culture E-Zine
After her awesome work on the Ausretrogamer Fun Factory, Ms Ausretrogamer’s turned her talents to creating the ausretrogamer social media header image you have all seen (and hopefully like) on Twitter and Facebook.
Check out the behind the scene of making this header image, as it it definitely wasn’t easy. The end result was all worth it!
This is an old one, but we thought it was still worth repeating, in case you missed it the first time around.
If you were lucky enough to have had a meal at Burger King in 2000, you may have been handed a plastic replica of the Game Boy Color which had analogue games built in.
Fast forward a decade and a half and that cute little Burger King Game Boy Colour toy with its analogue games has been DIY hacked with a Raspberry Pi Zero stuffed inside, morphing it into an awesomely cool and working Game Boy Colour emulator! Wish we were this clever.
[original story and images via Technobob]
If you were in Vegas last week for the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) you would have been forgiven for thinking that it was the 1990s!
It definitely looks like companies are finally tweaking to the fact that retro gaming is big business. From Hyperkin announcing the mighty Ultra Game Boy to Retro-Bit announcing their partnership with Sega, it looks like 2018 is going to be a big year for retro gamers and their credit cards!
Here are our hot retrogaming picks from CES 2018:
Hyperkin Ultra Game Boy in an aluminium case will turn heads for sure!
image source: Gizmodo
Retro-bit did a mic drop by announcing that they had signed a licensing agreement with Sega to produce accessories for Sega’s Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast gaming consoles! They even showed off games for the NES and SNES! These guys were on fire in Vegas!
Retro-Bit’s Sega Dreamcast Bluetooth Controller, Receiver and TV connectivity cables
Retro-Bit’s Sega Saturn controllers!
Retro-Bit’s Sega Mega Drive / Genesis Bluetooth Controllers
Retro-Bit’s Games for the NES (Holy Diver) and SNES (R-Type Returns CE)
source: Retro-Bit on Twitter
(Atari) Table Pong – If you weren’t lucky enough to snag this via its super early-bird Kickstarter price, then you will be paying three times more for it now!
source: Alex Kidman via Finder
The Atari Lynx was and still is a great handheld. Imagine if Atari had McWill’s LCD mod back then, they may have given the Sega Game Gear and possibly the Game Boy a run for their money (Ed: OK, perhaps not the Game Boy)!
If you were into arcade style games, then the Atari Lynx was your platform of choice. With games like Double Dragon, Klax, A.P.B., Battlezone 2000, Rygar, Hard Drivin’, Joust, Xybots, Paperboy and the awesome Rampage, Robotron and S.T.U.N. Runner, the Lynx was not short on quality action titles. Actually, we could have added a laundry list of other games, but we thought you’d get the picture with a subset of titles.
During the commercial lifespan of the Atari Lynx, there were a roster of big name titles that never saw the light of day. We could only imagine the impact these games may have had on the commercial viability of the Lynx! Just in case you were wondering, here are a few of the cancelled games from 1992 that we reckon could have catapulted the Lynx on the path to success:
Rolling Thunder
Vindicators
Geoduel
720°
Cabal
There were quite a few other cancelled games, but we thought we’d limit the list to ensure that we didn’t enrage you all. Actually, quite a few cancelled games did make it out when Hasbro, the owners of the Atari properties at the time, released the rights to develop for the system to the public domain, but that was well after the Lynx was considered dead (Ed: we did appreciate Alien vs Predator and Raiden)!
Ah, the beautiful Lynx, if only you were given a proper and fair chance by your creator!
Soundfly, the guys that brought you the free online chiptunes crash course has launched the “Chip It Challenge“!
The Chip It Challenge is a one-month contest (started on January 19) to win a free modded Game Boy and flash carts (courtesy of Kitsch-Bent!), feedback on your work from chip artist Chipocrite, and promo on Flypaper for your project! Entries will be judged by three prominent chiptune artists — glomag, BIAS ONE (f.k.a. minusbaby) and chiptune course instructor extraordinaire, Chipocrite! All you have to do is whip up the best 60-second cover of Devo’s classic groove “Whip It” in a chiptune/8-bit style, and you are in with a shot!
So you reckon you can whip it up? For all the info on the tools to use, rules, judgement criteria, submission and fine print details, head over here. Make sure you chip it, chip it good!
source: Soundfly
We’ve had a busy couple of months and the Smartboy story came and went. But it’s such an exciting product we thought it was worth a quick post, just in case there are others out there who missed it the first time around.
The Smartboy concept started life as an April Fools’ Day joke – but it has rightly evolved into a real product, currently for sale as a development kit.
As Hyperkin says: “WE built the Smartboy. YOU can make it great. The Smartboy Development Kit attaches to Android smartphones, turning the phone into a handheld gaming device. It will be compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. Included in the kit is an open source serial app and firmware, which will enable developers of all kinds to advance Hyperkin’s current build toward a retail-ready model. Hyperkin is offering a royalty percentage – of retail-ready Smartboy units sold – to anyone that can improve the Smartboy’s serial app and firmware.”
So, if you have the skills – go for it, please! The Smartboy is selling for $59.99 USD with an estimated shipping date of 1 December 2016.
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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
You’ll be the coolest person in the room at the next party you attend with one of these Stainless Steel, laser engraved Game Boy bottle openers by Etsy store RYEZEN. You’ll be opening bottles with power!
Source: RYEZEN 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
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
NYC-based Adafruit Industries, founded in 2005 by MIT engineer Limor ‘Ladyada’ Fried, is ‘one of the largest collections of open source hardware, educational electronics and tools for the hobbyist and engineer‘. While the Adafruit Learning System is an awesome free online resource with heaps of tutorials for learning about electronics.
Feast your eyes on the best of the Adafruit retrogaming-themed DIY kits and projects.
MONOCHRON Open Source Retro Clock Kit
Video source: Adafruit Industries on Vimeo
The Raspberry Pi-Powered Cupcade Kit
Video source: Adafruit Industries on YouTube
The Uzebox: A Fully Open Source, DIY 8-bit Game Console
PiGRRL – Raspberry Pi Game Boy
Video source: Adafruit Industries on YouTube
LedGames – A Two-Player ‘Cocktail’ Style Game, With A 64×64 LED Display
DIY Pocket LED Gamer – Tiny Tetris!
Retro Gaming With Raspberry Pi
Video source: Adafruit Industries on YouTube
Source: Adafruit Industries
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Ms. ausretrogamer
Editor and Researcher 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
What should you do when your console dies and goes to console-heaven? Take a leaf out of Michael Chipper’s book and recycle it into a cool clock!
Game Boy Colour Clock
PlayStation Clock
PS3 Clock
Game Boy Clock
Nintendo Wii Clock
Xbox 360 Clock
PS2 Clock
Xbox Clock
Source: SlothJunk on Etsy via Cheezburger
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Ms. ausretrogamer
Editor and Researcher 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