Australia's Retro Gaming and Pinball E-Zine
Another darn awesome Lego Ideas entry by Bricks Down Under that tickles our nostalgic nerve!
This playable Lego Space Invaders arcade game replica has the charm of the 1978 arcade machine that took the video gaming world by storm. We reckon Tomohiro Nishikado would be quite impressed too.
If you want this Lego Ideas Space Invaders to become a real Lego set you can buy from your fave retailer, make sure you go and vote for it now!
source: Bricks Downunder
source: LEGO Ideas: Space Invaders
If you follow Mark R. Jones on Twitter, you may have come across his post about the Diary on the making of MrDo! for the 48k/128k ZX Spectrum.
Mark’s 50 page PDF is a fascinating read for any gamers that want to learn how Mark and co. converted the 1982 Universal arcade game and why it took nearly 2 years (Feb 2017 to June 2019) to complete! Oh yeah, did we mention it is free?!
source: Tweet link
After this week’s Nintendo Direct, we are obviously most excited about the Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda announcement, with the green G&W beauty slated for release later this year (Friday, November 12 2021 to be exact)!
As part of its 35th anniversary celebration, this Game & Watch will let you play The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy version), and a special Game & Watch edition of Vermin (featuring Link)! Just like the Game & Watch Super Mario, this will have a playable clock and timer too!
At a cost of AU$79.00 (via Amazon), who is pre-ordering one? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook to let us know.
source: Nintendo
’80s video gaming icon Atari targets the living room with the Atari VCS — a completely modern gaming and video computer system!
Bluemouth Interactive today announced 10 June as the Australia/New Zealand retail on sale date for the Atari VCS, Atari’s modern video computer system that blends the best of PCs and consoles. The Atari VCS is the company’s first new hardware product in 25 years, which retails for AU$849.95 / NZ$899.95 and is currently available for preorder from JB Hi-Fi, EB Games, Catch.com.au, The Gamesmen, and Mighty Ape for NZ residents.
“We’re so excited to bring this reimagined ’80s icon back in a completely modern way to everyone’s living rooms with the Atari VCS,” said Bluemouth Co-Founder and Managing Director David Provan. “The system brings a hit of nostalgia to fans with its classic arcade titles, but also complete versatility to play newer games and stream all in the same place.”
“June 10th is a day that eager Atari fans have been waiting for. The Atari VCS has been well-received by our early-adopter community and we are thrilled that more people will have an opportunity to enjoy Atari’s Video Computer System in their homes.” said Michael Arzt, COO of Atari VCS and Connected Devices.
“We appreciate the strong support of Bluemouth and their retail partners, including EB Games, JB HiFi, The Gamesmen, Amazon Australia and Catch.com.au during this exciting launch.”
The Atari VCS offers something for every gamer, starting with over a dozen titles from popular independent game developers — including Boulder Dash Deluxe, Danger Scavenger, Guntech, Jetboard Joust, Sir Lovelot, Something Ate My Alien, Tailgunner, Atari’s Missile Command: Recharged, and more — with new titles to launch on the Atari VCS store through the year. The Atari VCS also comes preinstalled with the Atari VCS Vault, an exclusive collection of over 100 arcade and Atari 2600 classics, fully optimised for use with the Wireless Classic Joystick, with its rumble and LED light effects that give retro favourites new life.
To coincide with the launch of Atari in Australia and New Zealand, Antstream Arcade is launching for Australian gamers, giving players access to a massive library of classic arcade games. Dubbed as the Netflix of retro games, Antstream opens up a catalogue of over a thousand carefully curated games to choose from, providing Atari users in Australia an expansive gaming experience. Antstream is currently live in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
The Atari VCS includes Chrome as its built-in browser, allowing full access to Google’s Workspace apps for productivity use such as checking emails and social media, catching up on work, or streaming content. The Atari VCS’s unique PC Mode is compatible with Linux, Windows and Chrome OS operating systems, among others, making the system a versatile two-in-one device. The Atari VCS is compatible with most PC peripherals including keyboards, mice and game controllers to create a flexible home game system.
The Atari VCS PC/console hybrid is designed as a multimedia PC and home game system to delight a whole new generation of gamers and creators. The Atari VCS is powered by an AMD Raven Ridge 2 APU and Ryzen GPU and comes equipped with 8GB DDR4 RAM and a 32GB hard drive with the option to customise and upgrade both RAM and storage. Atari VCS All-In system bundles also include a Wireless Classic Joystick and the all-new Wireless Modern Controller designed for both retro gameplay and the latest PC game titles.
For more information on the Atari VCS, visit atarivcs.com.
Source: Media Release (including images) supplied
Our first retro gaming vault feature proved successful, so we thought we’d keep things going!
For this month’s images, we delved further into our vault and dug up some cool and peculiar photos of items we have in our collection and from gaming parties we have attended and ComLynxed with our friends!
We hope you keep enjoying these blasts from the past!
Will always love the PC-Engine HuCards – they are so cute and packed with awesome gaming!
Keeping our N64 in tip top shape!
Got to get our monthly C64 fix (especially some World Class Leaderboard)!
Llamatron 2112 on the Jag or…..
……Revenge of the Mutant Camels?
Love getting some action on the little Neo Geo Pocket Color
ComLynx parties are always the fun!
The Neo-Vec controller is pretty darn awesome to use on the Vectrex
The rare and obscure Noun. Tempest 3000 is just sublime!
Our favourite Commodore 64 in our collection. The Suncom Thumbstick is a brilliant little controller, especially on Wizard of Wor!
Original image copyright: ausretrogamer
We love these time-lapse sliding charts, so when we found this one based on sales of Commodore computers, we knew we had to share them with you all.
It is no surprise which Commodore computer ends up on top pretty much from 1982 to 1996, but the others were a bit of a surprise (which we won’t spoil).
Are you keeping up with the Commodore? 😉
source: Sven Dännart
NOTE: The creator (Sven Dännart) has advised that some of the figures are estimates, so take all of this with a grain of salt. It’s still cool though.
We are excited to start a new monthly feature, which we hope becomes a regular on ausretrogamer.com.
So what’s this newfangled feature we are so excited about? Well, as the title suggests, we’ll be delving deep into our photo vault full of retro gaming photos from years gone by. The aim is to give you all a dose of nostalgia and hopefully connect with new audience members.
For this very first edition, we dug through thousands of our images from the last dozen years and came up with a swag of nostalgia inducing photos; from the best joystick ever made, board games based on classic arcade titles, to our Commodore 64 smart watches and playing classic games on our Game Boy Micro – it’s all easy money 😉
Enjoy!
Original image copyright: ausretrogamer
We have fond memories of our times in Vegas. Travelling to the US was never complete for us without popping into the desert city to catch a show, fly over Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon, and of course, hit the Pinball Hall of Fame (PHoF).
Since our last visit at the Pinball Hall of Fame in 2015, a lot has changed! Pinball Hall of Fame’s Tim Arnold bought a large parcel of land on the strip (4925 Las Vegas Blvd South), which allowed for a huge building to be erected (25,000 square feet to be exact!) to house the many many pinball and arcade machines that the PHoF had in their old location (on and in storage. When we stumbled upon Debbie Courson Smith’s Facebook post about her visit to the new Pinball Hall of Fame, we were quite chuffed to see how far along Tim and his crew had come since we saw an empty lot that long ago.
According to Debbie, this was a soft launch, with the grand opening scheduled for July. Once air travel is safe, we know where we are going again 😉
PS: If you want to see how the old Pinball Hall Of Fame looked like, check out this post.
image source: Debbie Courson Smith via Facebook
This is what we call fan dedication! Actually, French Nintendo collector, Fabrice Heilig is what we would call a dedicated SUPERFAN!
Not only does Fabrice have an extensive collection of all things Nintendo, he has gone the extra (massive) step to recreate Nintendo’s 19th century Kyoto office in his backyard. Fabrice has created what all collectors yearn for – extra space (to house his collection), which he has done in style and in keeping with his love of all things Nintendo.
We must say, the result is incredible! Fabrice has faithfully recreated the iconic Nintendo building, with a tasteful fit-out to match the traditional Japanese style. If he wanted to charge for visits, we’d be his first customer!
Read more about the process of recreating this amazing building (with a ton more pics!) at Before Mario. This is amazing stuff.
Let the planning begin!
Foundation done and now the framework!
Laying the traditional Japanese roof tiles!
The level of detail is unbelievable – bravo Fabrice!
Now, to re-home the massive Nintendo Collection!
The finished product – WOW!
image source: Before Mario
As Daniel Ibbertson (aka: Slope’s Game Room) so eloquently puts it, it’s time to drop a coin into one of the highest grossing video game franchises of all time – Pac-Man!
In this history documentary, Daniel discusses the inspiration and creation behind Namco’s flagship mascot, the troubled development between Namco and Midway when bringing him to western shores as well as the interesting backstory behind the controversial Atari 2600 port.
source: Slope’s Game Room