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Oz Comic-Con Melbourne 2018 Highlights

June 14, 2018 By ausretrogamer

If you missed out on attending Oz Comic-Con 2018 in Melbourne, we have you covered!

With our trusty cameras in tow (thanks Alan Ly!), we snapped quite a few photos (over 60 photos actually) to make you feel like you were there, from awesome cosplay, comic book creators, artists, vendors with tempting gear, to a Star Wars X-Wing waiting for you to enter its cockpit and some Doom shenanigans at Bethesda’s booth.

Scroll through and enjoy what was a pretty epic Oz Comic-Con 2018!

If you made it this far, please consider supporting us by shouting us a coffee so we can keep bringing you heaps more awesome content! Thank you.

Unofficial Super Mario 64 Maker Released for the N64

August 7, 2017 By ausretrogamer

Just in case you were visiting Mars and just came back to Earth, there is now an unofficial Super Mario 64 Maker for Nintendo’s 64-bit beast! The brainchild of this awesomeness is Kaze Emanuar, the coder extraordinaire!

For those gamers itching to let loose with their Super Mario 3D level creativity on the N64, you better grab your trusty Nintendo 64 controller and get busy! For instructions on how to do all this stuff, go here (and click on show more).

Don’t believe us? Then you better take a gander at this!

source: Kaze Emanuar

Price Evolution: is Nintendo Switch following the pricing trend from the past?

February 22, 2017 By ausretrogamer

Article provided by Cuponation Australia. Prices quoted are in US Dollars

Cuponation Australia, a specialist in savings, delved into some market research to see how the prices of videogame consoles has changed through the last 30 years. The data includes prices from the launch of the first Nintendo video console in 1985 till their latest console release, the Nintendo Switch (March 2017). To see the evolution of prices, the research considered the inflation rate from the corresponding year of release.

Gaming has become cheaper by 24% (on average) over the last 30 years
The result shows that nowadays consumers are paying 24% less than 30 years ago. The price trend shows that each brand had lowered their prices since the launch of the first videogame console. It seems that Sega became 32% cheaper by their last console, Playstation cut their prices by 15%, Xbox and Nintendo by 25% and 29% respectively. The first videogame console produced by Nintendo, the NES, would cost $420USD nowadays which is already more than what you would pay for the Nintendo Switch. We obviously would not know the impact of inflation to the cost of the Nintendo Switch in future years.

Nintendo remains consistent in its pricing policy
The launch prices of Nintendo systems have remained relatively stable over the last 30+ years, with the exception being this year. The Nintendo Classic Mini from 2016 was not taken into consideration as it was not a next gen console. In relation to consoles from Xbox, PlayStation and Sega, consumers would notice some significant jumps in pricing over the decades – the launch of Sega’s Saturn in 1995, would cost $629.29USD in today’s money and the PlayStation 3, launched in 2007, would cost $578USD today.

The top 3 closest competitors in terms of price to Nintendo Switch ($299USD):
1) Xbox One S, launched in 2016 with inflation price of $299USD
2) Nintendo 64, launched in 2005 with inflated price of $298USD
3) Sega Dreamcast, launched in 1999 with inflated price of $288.11USD

source: Cuponation Australia

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*

Melbourne Silverball League: Get Flippin

March 31, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Attention all you pinball loving peeps, April 1 2016 will mark the commencement of the new Melbourne Silverball League monthly pinball tournament. This new tournament will be based on a selfie format, but more on that later! No, this is no April Fools’ Day joke, this is for real!

After his recent US trip to Arcade Expo 2.0 competing in the It Never Drains In Southern California pinball tournament, Martin Robbins was inspired to set up a similar qualifying and competition format here in Melbourne, hence the Melbourne Silverball League (MSL) was born. The first selfie competition in Melbourne will be at Bartronica in Flinders Lane. This is how the MSL pinball competition format will work:

Each month there will be particular pinball machines at Bartronica selected for qualifying – for the month of April the machines will be: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Party Zone, Addams Family, Goldeneye 007 and Pin*Bot. Play on each of these machines and take a photo of your score. You can either upload your picture via the tournament location at Matchplay.Events or post it to the Melbourne Silverball League (MSL) Facebook page. One of the MSL scorekeepers will review your photo and then submit your score. Your ranking on each machine will be worth more points the higher up you are to give you a combined overall ranking (based on the PAPA format i.e.: 100 points for the top score, then 90 for 2nd, 85 for 3rd and so on). The combined scores of the top 16 ranked players will qualify for the playoff (which is on the first Sunday of the following month).

To ensure your score submission goes smoothly, your selfie should have your face and the score to help the MSL scorekeepers validate your submission. Some patience might be needed where certain machines take a while to scroll through credits to get back to your score.

If we have lost you so far, here are the TL;DR (that’s Too Long;Didn’t Read) notes:

Register your participation at the MSL Facebook page;
play pinball at Bartronica;
upload pictures to MSL Facebook page of your awesome scores;
check the MSL Facebook page to see how you are ranking for that month;
get in to the top 16 players to qualify for the monthly head to head comp to determine the overall winner.

It is that easy! So what are you waiting for? Go and register now and then hit Bartronica during the month of April to rack up your high score!

Martin Robbins – the brains behind the Melbourne Silverball League

Shane Rubans getting some testing done at Bartronica
source: Melbourne Silverball League

Street Fighter The New Challenger: Ryu

August 6, 2015 By ausretrogamer

Attention Street Fighter fans: The highly successful The New Challenger (T.N.C.) 01: Ryu figure from BigBoysToysHK is reaching its last and final run and is about to release soon! Make sure you do not miss out and orders yours now, and use the LASTCHANCE4RYU code for a further $8.00USD discount upon checkout! It’s a win win!

This stylized Ryu sits on a custom diorama representing his Street Fighter II: The World Warriors stage and is depicted with his iconic Hadouken stance; the Hadouken actually lights up by pressing the Street Fighter button on the diorama stand (Ed: Oo’er!)! As well, for every press of the button, the official soundclip of Ryu shouting “HADOUKEN” will be played! This is truly a great collector piece. Grab it while you can!

image source: Play Asia

It’s On Like Oz Comic-Con

June 25, 2015 By ausretrogamer

As the excitement builds for this weekend’s Oz Comic-Con at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, the ausretrogamer crew are giddy with anticipation of the geeky awesomeness to come! Being our first Oz Comic-Con, we can’t wait to immerse ourselves in all things pop-culture – from TV and film guests, to great cosplay and cars from movies, it’s going to be huge.

For those of you that cannot be there in person, we will be keeping you up to date on social media using #OzComicCon, so make sure you tune in!

image source: Oz Comic-Con

Jammin’ at the Commodore Club

June 24, 2015 By ausretrogamer

It had been a while since we last attended the Amiga Users Group’s Commodore Club day. Going to one of these club meets is like a family reunion you look forward to – you know you will see people you know and like, and you are assured to have lots of fun. Well, it is safe to say, we had lots of fun playing games (terribly) and catching up with our great Commodore friends.

The highlight of the day was playing Throwback Games’ Jam It in four player mode on the C64. This pre-release basketball game even had our teams (Tweeters vs Slackers) and player names (I was MagicBoz) hard coded in by Leigh White, the brains behind the one-man-developer-shop at Throwback Games. We will interview Leigh in an upcoming feature to get to know him a little bit better and find out about his creation, Jam It, and its official release details. For now, I want to keep on jammin and slam-dunkin!

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