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LEGO Ideas: The Karate Kid

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With the popularity of Cobra Kai, of course it was only a matter of time before some clever peep would create the infamous ‘All Valley Karate Championship’ duel between Daniel Larusso and Johnny Lawrence, complete with Daniel San’s all conquering crane kick with Lego bricks!

If you haven’t guessed, this LEGO Ideas design is based on the 1984 The Karate Kid film, depicting the final fight scene between the protagonist, Daniel and his nemesis from Cobra Kai, Johnny.

The posable characters are really cool, so surely all of you The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai fans will give this a vote!

source: Lego Ideas



Linda Guillory’s Awesome World Record Gaming Collection

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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.

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



Have A Blast With The LEGO Sony Walkman

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What do you get when you cross Lego with an iconic piece of audio history – you get the LEGO Sony Walkman, that’s what!

Forget about your CDs and MP3 files, grab your trusty old cassettes (if they haven’t oxidised!) and blast them on this awesome Lego Ideas entrant – vote here so this becomes a reality!

source: LEGO Ideas – Sony Walkman



Keeping San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique Open to the Public

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We last visited Musée Mécanique in San Francisco in 2012, which was a major highlight for us, so when we heard that this antique arcade was doing it tough, it was definitely difficult to hear.

We had a blast when we last visited Musée Mécanique! To view the album of our visit, go here
Musée Mécanique

The below ‘Nostalgia Museum’ short documentary by Sofie Kodner and Eleonora Bianchi, provides an intimate portrait of owner Dan Zelinsky as he struggles to keep the legacy of this iconic San Francisco institution alive in the face of economic loss and mechanical deterioration.


source: KQED Arts



Atari VCS River Raid in MagicaVoxel Glory

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We love River Raid on the Atari VCS/2600. Heck, we love it on pretty much every other 8-bit platform.

When we saw Mauri Helme’s tweet about a gorgeous looking River Raid made with MagicaVoxel, well, we can say that it was an easy question to answer.



The Retro Gaming Vault – July 2021

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Going deep into our vault for more intoxicating nostalgia for the month of July, we uncover some cult classic JCVD LaserDiscs, tabletops that go pew, pew, pew, a Neo Geo AES, a Sonic VHS tape (remember those!), some old school gaming patches, a Star Wars rip off for the Bally Astrocade and everything in between!

Go on, take a look, but scroll slowly to take it all in! Happy Retro Gaming to you all!

 



The Force Is Strong in these Unofficial Nike Star Wars Runners

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According to our friends at Kotaku, Nike is releasing three pairs of runners (or sneakers for our US friends – Ed) in a line that’s an unlicensed tribute to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

The Boba Fett, Darth Vader and Rebel Pilot* (* not their model names) are quite impressive, even if they are known by other model names to avoid any potential licensing issues. In case you wanted to know, Adidas has the Star Wars license, so it is interesting that Nike is releasing a line of runners with Star Wars inspired themes and colourways – surely this is just a coincidence!

Nike has scheduled to release these runners November 2021, with the best part being that they will not be in limited quantity!

source: Kotaku



What Arrived: An Xbox Series S and an Arduboy FX

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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!

Arduboy FX



 

Top 20 Best-Selling Video Game Franchises of All Time

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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



The Retro Gaming Vault – June 2021

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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