The Pop-Culture E-Zine
In case you missed it, there is now a TV show based on the classic Konami arcade game Frogger!
Just like the video game, contestants will require quick thinking and problem solving skills in varied challenges to be crowned Frogger champion and hop away with US$100K! If you like Wipeout (the TV show, not the video game) and enjoy the Ninja Warrior type shows, then Frogger will be right up your alley!
PS: Unfortunately, Peacock TV ain’t streaming Frogger in Australia (Ed: Boo!)
source: PeacockTV
Get ready to go on an island getaway with this latest collaboration between PUMA and Animal Crossing™: New Horizons. Tom Nook and other favourite characters from the popular franchise are featured in a variety of styles, including apparel and footwear for adults and kids. You won’t trade your new outfit for anything.
The PUMA x Animal Crossing: New Horizons crossover takes cues from the beloved game; the collection’s streetwear silhouettes are reimagined with natural colours and authentic graphics from the fun franchise. The resulting collaboration is ready for anything, with styles for both adults and kids, including some of PUMA’s most distinctive shoe silhouettes, Suede, Wild Rider, and Future Rider.
PUMA’s timeless style, the Suede, features a beige hairy suede upper, triple formstrip with printed graphics on the top layer, translucent sole with graphic imprint, tongue label with debossed co-branding, a leaf hangtag, and a canvas lace bag inspired by the bell bag with additional laces.
The Wild Rider silhouette is inspired by the movement and motion of city life. The collab version has a beige nylon upper adorned with an Animal Crossing resident print with green, blue, and sand suede overlays, a translucent formstrip on the side, an embroidered leaf on the heel and a debossed lace tag with PUMA’s logo.
The pack is not complete without the Future Rider. Constructed with nylon, canvas and suede overlays, this silhouette features a debossed leaf graphic on the heel, taken directly from the iconic Animal Crossing logo. The side TPU piece includes a graphic which alludes to the game’s design elements, as well as the canvas lace bag with additional laces to customise your look.
Your island escape wouldn’t be complete without some sharp adventure-ready outfits; short and long sleeve tees, hoodies, shorts, and sweatpants all in the signature colour palette of the game, in addition to spotlighting some of its most well-known residents and elements. Just don’t forget your boarding pass.
Tom Nook is waiting for you, so prepare for the most amazing trip with the new PUMA x Animal Crossing: New Horizons Collection. Available starting 18th September on PUMA.com and select retailers worldwide.
To learn more about Animal Crossing™: New Horizons click HERE
image source: Puma AU
Press Release supplied by: Nintendo Australia
By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.
Before every NFL season begins, I like to play the full schedule of the reigning Super Bowl champion from the previous season. A few weeks ago, I played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers full 2021 season on Madden ’22 on my Xbox. My takeaway of how this season will go for Tom Brady and the Bucs is rather simple: They’re going to be very good. I only lost 3 games playing their ’21 schedule, but they were interesting losses.
Since I was a teenager, I’ve been playing a full season of Madden before the start of the NFL season. The teams that I lose to with the defending champions are usually the teams that the real squad end up losing to. It’s strange, but it’s the way it usually works out.
In my simulated, Xbox world, the Buccaneers lost an away game to the Washington Football Team by a field goal. Washington’s defense smothered any running attack by the Bucs, and Brady was on his back several times. They kept it close, and the Bucs failed to have the ball last; the way Brady and Bucs’ head coach Bruce Arians like it.
image source: xboxachievements.com
The Buccaneers offense is supposed to be phenomenal this season, but when I was in control of them, playing Madden, they had a ton of dropped balls and they couldn’t convert on 1st downs. My ’21 Bucs lost to the Colts, at Indianapolis, by 17 points. It was a blowout, and I couldn’t get my offense going. The short little passes that Brady is so good at were not connecting. All my receivers seemed covered on every passing play I’d select.
Playing the Buffalo Bills on Week 14 was difficult, but my Bucs won by a field goal. During that game, Brady had a last-minute drive that set up my kicker for the win. I lost to the Saints at Tampa Bay. None of my offensive players could hold on to the football in that rainy game. I like the elements in Madden, but not when they cost me a victory.
I’ll see if the Buccaneers will lose to Washington, the Colts, or the Saints this season. Some ESPN analysts are suggesting that the Bucs could go undefeated this season. My opinion: Not a chance. When you’re the defending champion, every opponent circles you on their schedule. Opposing teams will be ready.
We love the NZ Mint gaming related silver coins, so their latest release, the Street Fighter – Ryu Chibi Coin is so cool (and cute)!
Made from 1oz of pure silver, this new Chibi® Coin features experienced martial artist Ryu – the main protagonist in the video game Street Fighter™. The coin has been shaped and coloured in the Chibi art style to resemble Ryu. He is shown in his most recognisable attire consisting of a tattered white karate gi, long red headband, red martial arts gloves and bare feet. The Ian Rank Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II can be found on the opposite side to confirm it as a legal tender coin.
The coin is protected inside a specially designed case, moulded to the coin’s shape. The outer box is Street Fighter-themed, incorporating images of Ryu as he appears in the game, and includes a large window so you can easily display this precious collectable.
A maximum of 2,000 coins will be produced. This is confirmed by the Certificate of Authenticity printed on the box, along with the coin’s unique serial number. Don’t miss out on this officially licensed coin for Street Fighter!
PS: We can also exclusively reveal that there will also be Ken silver coin in the very near future!
source: NZ Mint
Being avid video games collectors, we love seeing other collections, especially the epic ones like Lind Guillory’s Guinness World Record collection – it’s super impressive! To say we would love to just see Lind’a collection in person would be a massive understatement.
A winner is you pic.twitter.com/DIa9FgMJkd
— 60 Second Docs (@60SecDocs) August 6, 2021
As Kotaku reports, Linda has over 3,000 pieces and is still in the midst of growing her collection. Like all of us, Linda steers well away from the cheapie handhelds, like the awful (but yet cool) Tiger Electronics ones. You can’t put a price on collections like this, as they are usually priceless to their collector. Like most collections, we hope they get used, played and enjoyed. Having said that, we were quite chuffed to read that Lind thinks the same way, she was quoted saying, “And if I love them, I’m gonna play them.” Well done Linda, your collection is awesome!
story & image source: Kotaku
Our postal service surprised us today with not one, but two packages! Wow, AusPost never ceases to amaze us.
XBOX Series S
We may stir up a few hardcore retro gamers with this first package, but before they start flying off their handle, relax, we got the Xbox Series S for a couple of reasons, the main one being that we can legitimately play our retro games on it via the retail version of RetroArch. Yep, you read that right, there is a legit RetroArch version available on the Microsoft store. The other use case we have is playing the classics we know and love via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which we scored for a bargain ($2 for 6 months)!
ARDUBOY FX:
The second parcel to arrive was in a much smaller package, which we honestly didn’t know what it was till we opened it. The story goes like this – we ordered the Arduboy FX almost a year ago, which at the time we were told that it would arrive by September 2020, but COVID derailed that ETA. Opening up this package was a total surprise and we must admit, we got more excited for the Arduboy FX than the Xbox Series S.
We bet you’ll guess what we will unbox and play first 😉
Happy Gaming peeps!
It is always a humbling experience when seeing these ‘best selling’ lists related to video games. This time, it is the franchises – the heavy lifters of their respective publisher’s bottom line.
No surprise who is on top, by a massive margin – Mario, Nintendo’s crown jewel. Mario has been a juggernaut franchise for decades! Any game containing the Italian plumber (formerly Jumpman) is almost a guarantee to make bank for Nintendo, from the Super Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Sports and Mario Party series, to Mario RPG! When looking at the list, Mario is in some good company with other massive Nintendo franchises, like the Wii simulation series and of course, The Legend of Zelda. The Wii series was a surprise, as we would have expected Donkey Kong or Metroid to be up there too.
Looking at the chart, you will notice a mixed bag of game franchises that started in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, with Minecraft being the sole representative for the 2010s! No wonder we keep seeing Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto games being made on new generation systems, they sell like hotcakes. Not content with being the biggest pop culture entity, Star Wars has done quite well in the video gaming realm too. Great to see Sega’s Sonic The Hedgehog up there and the many sports titles we have enjoyed (and still enjoy).
See any surprises?
(click to enlarge)
data source: Wikipedia
It’s heading toward the end of June, so for this month we dug up some ultra cool stuff that will give you a good old dose of nostalgia, so make sure you seek medical advice if you start feeling faint-ish.
From playing Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games on our Pioneer LaserDisc to getting some BurgerTime, Psycho Fox gaming action and of course, getting instantly sick playing on the Virtual Boy and everything in between!
If you see anything that induces nostalgia, hit us up on Twitter or Facebook and tell us all about it (or seek medical advice ;-))!
Nothing beats blowing minds by playing our Mega Drive / Genesis (cart, CD and LD) games on our Pioneer LaserDisc
Our fave conversion of BurgerTime. Yep, it plays marvellously on the Intellivision
The rage inducing Master System game!
Tabletop action, starting with Astro Wars!
Contemplating on sorting out our Amstrad CPC6128 collection…..
Anyone else have a Bally Astrocade or the Sega Lock-On?
Yeah, we love all things Star Wars, including pinball machines and LaserDiscs!
Sega Power! Two of our favourite Sega consoles in one image!
One of our all time favourite video games. We have played this infinite amount of time in these last 30 years!
Instant headache! We love the Virtual Boy, but our brain and eyes don’t 🙁
Original image copyright: ausretrogamer
UPDATE 5-October-2021: Arcade1Up has released a firmware update to resolve the lag on the White Water game and a few other bugs which you can read about here. This review has been amended to account for this firmware update.
We love playing our real pinball machines. Heck, we love pinball on any platform, including in the digital space. Where digital (aka: virtual) pinball has always fallen short is in the physical and mechanical feel that real pinball machines provide, but that gap has somewhat been bridged, with digital pinball machines being fitted with solenoids and haptic flippers to provide the player that real tactile pinball feeling. How good can these digital pinball machines be?
| PROS
|
CONS
|
| + Build quality is AMAZING! The Cabinet and Backbox are glorious | – 720p is sacrilege in this day and age |
| + Compact size makes it fit in all kinds of spaces | – |
| + Packed with 10 of the greatest pinball machines of all time | – No Internet connectivity / No way of updating with more tables (right now) |
| + Haptic flippers for real flipper feedback | – Price! The sweet spot would have been sub-$1,000 (AU). |
| + 4 x Solenoid modules for real ball feedback | |
| + A real working plunger |
Arcade1Up needs no introduction, as their 3/4 arcade machines of iconic arcade games have proven to be quite popular with gamers and collectors the world over. When Arcade1Up announced at CES 2020 that they would partner with Zen Studios to create 3/4 size digital pinball machines, our interest was piqued big time. At the show they announced three pinball machines, Attack From Mars, Star Wars and Marvel, each packed with themed pinball games from Zen Studios’ Pinball FX platform. We naturally gravitated to the Attack From Mars pinball machine, not only due to owning the real one, but the fact that it came with 10 of the greatest pinball machines of all time – Attack from Mars, Fish Tales, The Getaway: Highspeed II, Junk Yard, Medieval Madness, White Water, Red & Ted’s Road Show, Hurricane, Tales of the Arabian Nights and No Good Gofers.
The beast arrives!
While suffering insomnia one evening, we did what anyone would – we hit the web for some late night shopping (beware of weekend night-time shopping! – Ed). When we stumbled upon the Arcade1Up pinball machines, we ended up procuring the Attack From Mars machine, which surprisingly arrived on our doorstep a mere 48 hours after the purchase! Upon delivery we were taken aback by the size of the box, we somehow visualised a 3/4 sized pinball machine to be smaller than 3/4 – crazy hey!
Loving our @arcade_1up Attack From Mars pinball machine so far.
We’ll gather our thoughts & tell you what we think overall (soon-ish)!#pinball #gamer pic.twitter.com/42ZXejHQM1
— ausretrogamer (@ausretrogamer) April 30, 2021
We noticed that the pinball machine and all of its parts to put it together were perfectly packed, minimising the chance of damage while in transit. Once we started taking things out of the box the first thing that struck us was the build quality – it totally blew our expectation, with the whole thing feeling and looking superb! From the cabinet to the backbox, artwork and buttons, to the polished steel lockdown bar, legs and side rails, this thing oozes quality and is almost as good as a real commercial pinball machine, minus the cost (relax, we said “almost”! – Ed). Putting the machine together was a cinch, but it helped having another person around to assist in lifting the cabinet as it’s not that light. While the machine was coming together, we were constantly wowed by how good it looked and how sturdy it felt – it was a good start!
Assembling the machine was a breeze
The QA department checking our progress
Being impressed with the physical aspects of the machine was one thing, but how did it fare once the rubber hit the road, or should we say, once we turned it on – would it play as good as it looked? The quick answer is yes, but – there is always a but! Once we fired up the machine, we instantly loved the lit up backbox – it just makes the artwork pop! On the playfield screen, the interface felt familiar as it uses Zen Studios’ Pinball FX software platform. The button layout for interacting with the machine was intuitive, with the flippers acting as the selector (left, right, up or down) and the start/launch button (under the plunger) as the selection confirmation. On the front of the cabinet there are two rocker-type switches, one for turning on the machine and the other to control the volume – we preferred to set the volume via the software settings. Below these two switches are the settings and table guide buttons. The settings allow for the usual stuff, from adjusting the audio and video, to the pinball machine specific settings for the solenoids and plunger calibration. For the record, we left our machine settings stock, which worked perfectly fine for us.
Once the language is selected, the machine presents the 10 pinball machines to choose from. As mentioned earlier, we were quite chuffed to see that most of the classic Williams pinball tables were on this model. Barring the unplayable White Water due to excessive flipper lag and jerky motion, the rest of the pinball tables played pretty darn well, just like they do on any system that has Zen Studios’ Pinball FX.
We love playing digital pinball on any device!
With the screen being 23.8″, the first thing that ran through our minds was that it was too small. However, after playing a few games, we realised that the screen size was admirable and found that it did not detract from playing pinball. Our eyes adjusted and really didn’t know the difference in screen size – it’s as if someone played a Jedi mind trick on us! The best analogy we could come up with regarding screen size is that it’s like telling someone how great your 65” TV is and they are completely satisfied and don’t see the difference 3 minutes into watching the same stuff on a smaller, 55” inch TV – all being near the same in the minds eye. One thing that is unforgivable is the use of HD (720p) instead of Full HD (1080p) – it just makes the visuals not as sharp and looking a bit dated for this day and age where we expect 4K+ visuals! Hopefully this can be resolved with an update from Arcade1Up. And while they are at it, we hope they fix the lag on White Water too this has now been fixed with the latest firmware update!
There was quite a lot of discussion on social media regarding the black plastic bezel around the screen due to its thickness. When you stand over the machine while it is turned off, the bezel does detract from the visual aspect of the machine, however, once it’s turned on, the bezel, coupled with the screen set under it, creates a depth of field to the playfield screen which adds to the realism of playing pinball. Another neat touch in the video department on this machine are the different colours represented for each of the 4 players on the DMD (the small screen in the backbox), so there will never be any confusion whose turn it is or who wins!
We couldn’t really fault anything in the audio department on this little beauty. The dual speakers pump out great tunes and sound effects which immerse you further into your pinball playing pleasure. With the addition of the solenoids giving the player physical feedback plus the well integrated sound effects pumping through the speakers, you definitely get a sense of playing a pinball game just as you do from playing the real thing. Oh yeah, you’ll find that on maximum volume this thing can really get the heart rate going and possibly have your neighbours calling in to see what the heck is going on!
We’ve been playing digital / virtual pinball games since the days of Video Pinball on the Atari 2600, and the one thing we used to always wish for over the decades was a way to play these games in a physical pinball cabinet format, just like the real deal. What we can say is that as an off the shelf consumer product, Arcade1Up have delivered on our wish, and even more so with the firmware update even if it’s not 100% perfect. If you want to play the awesome Zen Studios produced pinball games, then there is no better way than playing them on an Arcade1Up pinball machine.
Build quality is top stuff!
Looking good from any angle!
Interface instructions – quite easy really!
Settings galore!
Front of the cabinet – the control deck of the Arcade1Up pinball machine
Love how the angled bezel creates the depth of field!
Can’t wait to get flippin’
Let’s get these pesky Martians!
The backbox does pop once the machine is switched on!
Another fave table of ours
Oh how we wish they used 1080p to sharpen the look on these games!
Lil austretrogamer loves a bit of flipper action! The kids seem to love this machine.
It looks just as good turned off!
For the record, nothing beats playing our real pinball machines, but the Arcade1Up is still darn cool!
We have featured a number of Blockbuster Video stories on here, so it is friggin cool to see our very good friend, Freakin Frankie, emulate his very own Blockbuster Video Store right in his dining room!
Before we start drooling over his setup, we have been aware of Frankie’s love of movies and his growing collection ever since we met many moons ago, but to see his vast collection in the below pics has totally blown us away – but wait, there is more……
Once Frankie put out his initial tweet about embarking on the massive task of presenting his collection of 3,500+ titles, we put down our our bowl of Cheezels and took note! The follow up tweet thread of his home video store setup was impressive to say the least! As collectors ourselves, we can quite easily say that Freakin Frankie’s Home Video Store setup is darn awesome and impressive. Frankie mentioned that he opted against double stacking (as he wanted the authentic video store feel) and decided to sort his collection in alphabetic order, which works very well for our OCD brain – now where is that Akira DVD at?!
Ok, now you can start drooling!
Frankie’s old setup
The tough part – sorting through the massive library!
Experimenting with the video store setup!
And now, the finished product – welcome to Freakin Frankie’s Home Video Store!
images used with permission from Freakin Frankie