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You are here: Home / Archives for Geek

Geek

Hijinx Hotel – The Best Place to Play, Not Stay

03/04/2023 By ausretrogamer


Now this is something different and quite cool – the Hijinx Hotel has now opened in Chadstone’s The Social Quarter – their new entertainment precinct.

So what is Hijinx Hotel then? Well, rather than us paraphrasing, here it is from the horses mouth:

Hijinx Hotel is an immersive interactive game experience housed within the theme, wonder and theatre of a quirky New York style hotel where the rooms are reimagined into quick play, challenge rooms. Leave the suitcases at home – these are rooms where you play, not stay.

Each of the hotel wings home highly fun & experiential, game-afied rooms made up of 5 different collaborative games. Hijinx is perfect for the young and the young at heart, for groups, on a date or just out with a mate.

As lovers of escape rooms, we are very intrigued by this take on the hotel game-fueled concept which drips a lot of nostalgia. The company behind the Hijinx Hotel is Funlab, who also operate Strike, Holey Moley and Archie Brothers Cirque Electriq, so they know a thing or two on how to create fun for adults!

If you are intrigued, like us, then check out the Hijinx Hotel website to see what you can experience at this very unique hotel.

image source: Hijinx Hotel




Filed Under: Announcements, Modern Gaming Tagged With: Chadstone, Chadstone Entertainment Precinct, Challenge Rooms, entertainment, escape room, fun, Fun time, gamers, Geek, Hijinx Hotel, Kidulting, New York style hotel, Rubik's Cube, Titanic

Cool Street Fighter vs Red Bull Stop Motion Ultra Combos

30/03/2023 By ausretrogamer

Hot damn there are clever creators out there! We absolutely adore stop motion, so we had to share this one with you all!

Love Street Fighters crushing Red Bulls cans with their ultra combos? Then this vid is for you 😉


source: Animist




Filed Under: Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: Art, Chun-Li, cool stop motion, gamers, Geek, Ken, nerd, red bull, Ryu, Sakura, Sakura and Chun Li, Stop Motion, street fighter, Street Fighter Stop Motion Ultra Combos with Ryu

DOOM Ring: The Ring To Rule Them All

28/03/2023 By ausretrogamer

Hot on the heels of DOOM running on a Commodore 64 comes the DOOM Ring – you’ll have to squint, but we assure you it’s DOOM!

The version of the game being run is RP2040 Doom (designed to be run on a Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040) that’s been modified to generate grayscale graphics. It runs on a tiny printed circuit board  along 4 score lines to wrap into a ring shape.

According to James,

“I wanted to see if this was a useable technique. It isn’t. The result was very fragile, and I lost the connections to the capacitive pads and USB port during encapsulation.”


source: Ancient

story source: technabob




Filed Under: Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: C64, Doom, DOOM Ring, DOOM running on a ring, gamers, Geek, hackers, modders, mods, RAD-DOOM C64, Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040

This Is The Way: Microsoft & Lucasfilm Launch ‘The Mandalorian’ themed Xbox Gaming Gear

06/03/2023 By ausretrogamer

This Is The Way

Celebrating the start of The Mandalorian season 3 on Disney+, Microsoft/Xbox and Lucasfilm have teamed up to launch ‘The Mandalorian’-themed gaming gear, including cool Xbox Series X|S Mando livery!

The third season of The Mandalorian follows Grogu as he reunites with Din Djarin, so what better way to celebrate this much-loved Star Wars series than to have a colour-coordinated controller, a hoodie and best of all, a human-sized armoured floating pram (Pram XL), which doesn’t really float, but would still be cool to win.

The comp/sweepstajes for The Mando-themed Xbox Series X|S is open to everyone on the planet, with the only entry requirement being a retweet of this tweet!

PS: For more news and how to enter the sweepstakes to win the Pram XL, head over to the Xbox News site right now.

image source: Microsoft Xbox News




Filed Under: Announcements, Modern Gaming Tagged With: Box Series S, Competition, Din Djarin, gamer, gaming, Geek, Grogu, Mando, Microsoft Xbox, MS Xbox, Pram XL, Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Mandalorian Xbox Sweepstakes, videogames, Xbox, Xbox Series X, Xbox sweepstakes

Mega Book Collection Digital Book Is Now FREE

21/02/2023 By ausretrogamer

Yep, you read that right! The ‘Mega Book Collection – A Visual Guide to the Sega Mega Drive’ digital book – the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis visual opus is now totally gratis!

The author, Darren Doyle (Greyfox Books) explains the reason this book has now been released for free:

We attempted to bring this book physically to everyone back in 2021 via crowdfunding but alas we were unable to do so. So going forward, we decided rather than this amazing project to be left sitting on a hard drive gathering dust forever, we made the decision to offer it for free for everyone to enjoy and because we are very nice and generous people here at Greyfox Books and love to support the Sega retro gaming scene.

In case you were wondering, the great big SEGA put the kibosh on this book being published physically. So before they kill the digital one, grab it now! And while you are at it, please consider leaving a donation via the publisher’s PayPal account.

image source: Greyfox Books




Filed Under: Announcements, Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: A Visual Guide to the Sega Mega Drive book, Darren Doyle, digital book, Free book, gamer, Geek, Greyfox Books, Mega Drive, retrogamers, sega, Sega Enterprises, Sega Genesis, Sega Mega Drive

Zen Studios’ Pinball FX now on Xbox and PlayStation

17/02/2023 By ausretrogamer

Being in a future timezone, we in Australia had to wait a few extra hours for Zen Studios’ Pinball FX to hit Xbox and PlayStation consoles!

The latest in the FX series, Pinball FX has graduated from early access to full release at the Epic Games store, as well as making its debut on PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One! Nintendo Switch fans will have to wait a bit longer.

This is a new era of digital pinball from Zen Studios, including a day-one, ever-expanding lineup of 86 tables, plus an impressive suite of new features, the revolutionary pinball platform is inching ever closer to the real silverball game. If you love playing pinball video games, then jump on this right now and enjoy the Wild West Rampage table at no cost, and check out the trial modes for all other tables.

All returning tables from previous editions have been fully remastered in Unreal Engine, with ray-tracing-enhanced, 4K-HDR visuals, as well as upgraded Pro Physics. Not lacking plentiful fresh downloadable content, Pinball FX also introduces three brand new releases: Borderlands®: Vault Hunter Pinball, Brothers in Arms®: Win the War Pinball and The Addams Family (itself including a never-before-seen enhanced play, as with all Williams classics). At the same time, console players can get their hands on more than 15 tables for the first time that Pinball FX Early Access players enjoyed in 2022, such as Star Wars Pinball: The Mandalorian, World War Z Pinball, DreamWorks Pinball, five Zen Originals, plus Williams classics World Cup Soccer and The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot. Zen will release new tables regularly, many involving exciting new licensed IPs – most immediately, Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla vs. Kong.

Go on, get flippin’ peeps!


source: Zen Studios




Filed Under: Announcements, Pinball Tagged With: Epic Games, gamers, gaming, Geek, pinball, Pinball FX, pinball video game, PinFX, Playstation, PS4, PS5, Xbox, Zen Studios, Zen Studios Pinball FX

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game – Official Trailer

16/02/2023 By ausretrogamer

The official trailer for Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game premiered today on the leading entertainment site, IGN. Watch the trailer below now!


source: IGN

Written and directed by The Bragg Brothers (Austin and Meredith Bragg), Pinball is based on the true story of Roger Sharpe, the GQ journalist and real-life pinball wizard, who in 1976 helped overturn New York City’s 35-year ban on pinball. The film’s all-star cast is led by Mike Faist (Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story), Crystal Reed (Teen Wolf, Swamp Thing), and Dennis Boutsikaris (Better Call Saul, The Bourne Legacy).

The award-winning film will be released in select theaters and on your favorite streaming platforms, including Apple TV, iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play, beginning March 17, 2023.

Get flippin’ 😉

[press release supplied by MPI Original Films]




Filed Under: Announcements, Pinball, Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: Bragg Brothers, Chicago, Crystal Reed, Film, Geek, GQ, Mike Faist, Movie, MPI, New York City, pinball, pinball film, pinball machine, pinball player, Pinball The Man Who Saved The Game, Roger Sharpe

Sega’s 1993 Virtua Fighter gets an AI makeover

27/01/2023 By ausretrogamer

We always thought that Sega’s polygonal 1 on 1 arcade fighter, VIRTUA FIGHTER looked awesome.

After taking off our nostalgia-tinted glasses, we can now see how lo-fi  (but still cool) they look, especially after some AI shenanigans bringing each of the fighters on the roster to be life-like.

With ChatGPT being all the rage, it would seem there is another AI tool gathering steam in the form of Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image deep learning model capable of generating photo-realistic images. Clever Tech Artist, Colin Williamson put this learning model to the test by feeding it the original Virtual Fighter polygonal images from a Sega Saturn emulator into the Stable Diffusion model. The results, as you can see, are darn scary and impressive all at the same time)!

Surely Skynet is now coming for us all….

[story & image source: technabob]




Filed Under: History, Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: AI, Arcade, arcade fighter, Art, artist, Colin Williamson, gamers, Geek, Learning Model, polygon, Retro Gamer, retrogaming, sega, Sega Saturn, Stable Diffusion, Virtua Fighter, Virtual Fighter gets AI

Gone (Adult) Toy Hunting

20/01/2023 By ausretrogamer

Ah, let’s not kid ourselves, these aren’t exactly adult toys, but they do indeed invoke nostalgia, a yearning if you will, for us adults of a certain vintage to want raid the toy shelves of our nearest department store!

If you are lucky enough to have a BIG W near you, you may want to head in and check out the toy section, as they are stocking a myriad of toys that us Gen X’ers will go absolute bonkers over!

The toys that grabbed our attention were of course the Star Wars action figures and the Nintendo related toys. What I wasn’t expecting was the variation of Masters of the Universe stock, which also included the retro 40th anniversary line – we had to wipe our drool!

See anything that takes your fancy?

This packaging brings back memories!

The MOTU Revelation line is very tempting!

Not sure we can relate to this MOTU, but younger generations may appreciate it

Stratos ($19) versus Mer-Man ($50) – big difference

Pokemon, Minecraft and Roblox – Big W has you covered!

Cat Peach!

Our favourite Princess – we miss her so much




Filed Under: Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: BIG W, gamer, gaming, Geek, Kmart, Masters Of The Universe, Masters of the Universe Revelations, MOTU, MOTU action figures, Nintendo toys, Pokemon, Retro, Retro MOTU, Star Wars, Target, Toys, Video Games

Weeping At Another Video Rental Store Closing

18/01/2023 By ausretrogamer

Another Australian video rental store bites the proverbial dust!

We reported back in 2019 when the last Australian Blockbuster was closing its doors, and this time it’s no different, which we are sad to report that the independent family run video rental store in Kambalda, a mining town in the WA Goldfields, is closing its doors one last time after 40 years in business.

Run by the Assaad family since 1983, the video rental store has succumbed to FIFO (fly in, fly out) – where mining workers no longer reside in the town and are instead flown in and out. The steady decline has been a long time coming, with patronage almost nil which left the Assaad’s with no other option than to close this once thriving video rental store.

We wonder if there are other video rental stores still about in Australia? If you know of any, please let us know!

story and image source: ABC




Filed Under: Announcements, History, Retro Gaming Culture Tagged With: ABC NEWS, ABC TV, Assaad Video Library, classic, DVD rental store, DVD video rental store, FIFO, Geek, movie rental store, rental store, Retro, VHS rental, VHS rental store, video rental store, Western Australia

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