Australia's Retro Gaming and Pinball E-Zine
Still get surprised to the lengths some talented folks go to for merging their passions, like this Cranmer Guitars built Super Mario World guitar, made from 10,000 lollipop sticks!
We just want to know, how long did it take to lick and eat all those lollipops!
Oh yeah, we love the guitar 🙂
[story and image source: Geekologie]
It is amazing to think that we started ausretrogamer 8 years ago! How time flies when you are having fun!
When we started our site and social media channels in January 2012, we had no idea what was to come. We were pleasantly surprised to find so many like-minded people who enjoyed playing and talking about old games we used to play many many decades ago. Nostalgia is a powerful force that binds us all – long may it continue!
To all the people that have contributed and to those that are still contributing content and everyone that engages with us, thank you very much – you all rock our world!
Looking forward to another year full of retro gaming goodness 🙂
We love receiving emails from modders out there to show us their customisation work.
We received an email from Dorison Hugo (aka: @lyberty5 on Twitter) who tinkered with his purple GameCube to make it look like as if Mario was trapped inside the console. Dorison explains that this was a cosmetic mod, which still needed a bit of tinkering to get it done – like freeing up the space, in which he had to move the fan onto the other side of the case. Also, he had to drill small holes to allow air intake near the Mario figurine to ensure the console would not overheat.
This is a fairly simple and cheap-ish mod, with the window frame and Mario being made out of cheap water-based clay. Dorison has shown ingenuity throughout this customisation, including the use of cotton tips (Q-tips) acting as the prison bars. Dorison’s aim was to show that no real (and expensive) equipment was needed for a simple mod.
Have you customised your consoles? If you have, we’d love to check them out – hit us up on Twitter or Facebook!
image source: Dorison Hugo
If you thought the contemporary F1 Spirit video game, a remake of the classic MSX title by Konami, was awesome, wait till you play Retro Reloader’s Project D – F1 Spirit, a tweaked version of Brain Games‘ remake with Initial D arcade style elements, from the music, sound effects, to the enemies, graphics and menu.
Go and burn some rubber, drift or blast a berm in Project D – F1 Spirit!
source: John Retro Reloader
The very first game we bought when we got our Neo Geo MVS arcade machine was Metal Slug. That was quite a while ago, and we must admit, we have the series on pretty much every format – the games are that darn good!
Once we had heard that Bitmap Books was going to publish a book on this brilliant gaming franchise, our interests were obviously piqued. Upon receiving Metal Slug: The Ultimate History from Pixel Crib, we noticed this thing was heavy, which is a good thing when it comes to these kinds of publications.
If you have read any of our previous Bitmap Books book reviews, you’ll know what to expect from this published work of art – it oozes quality and quantity. When you hold a Bitmap Books tome in your hands, we guarantee you’ll be smiling from start to finish. Sam Dyer and his amazing team have done a wonderful job in bringing us a fully licensed art book on the Metal Slug series.
With unprecedented access to SNK‘s vast archives, this book contains some of the best high-resolution artwork (including concept artwork) and illustrations, with some being made publicly available for the very first time. Even though it is primarily an art book celebrating Metal Slug, this tome also contains eleven exclusive and detailed interviews with key members of the development team, including Kazuma Kujo, Takushi Hiyamuta, Andoh Kenji and Takeshi Okui, the latter two of which have never spoken about the series previously. These insightful discussions bust myths and reveal the real truth behind the creation and evolution of this esteemed franchise, extensively covering the formation of Nazca and the truth behind Metal Slug Zero – the version of Metal Slug when you only controlled the SV-001 tank. The book also dives into and explores the roots of Metal Slug, looking at Irem titles In the Hunt and GunForce II and how these arcade cult classics influenced what was to come later. This page turner is definitely a must for any fan of the Metal Slug series, and if you are into art, then this book is for you too.
Since Christmas is around the corner, we reckon the Metal Slug: The Ultimate History book would look pretty good under that Christmas tree.
The important bits:
Disclosure: Metal Slug: The Ultimate History book was provided by Pixel Crib for this review.
When it comes to pinball themes, there is a ton of video game franchises that would translate (and sell) quite well in their silverball incarnation. Getting the permission and license to translate the said video game franchise to make a pinball machine is another story altogether – unless you go homebrew!
Step in Enea Toluzzo, the Italian homebrew pinball extraordinaire, who is in the middle of creating a pinball machine based on Don Bluth and Rick Dyer’s classic arcade video game, Dragon’s Lair. Interestingly, Dragon’s Lair was originally going to be produced by Gottlieb after Black Hole, and an early whitewood prototype was built by the Black Hole designers. However, the idea ended up being scrapped and they built Haunted House instead.
Just checking out the eye popping photos of Enea’s creation will induce a heap of nostalgia and plenty of excitement! Enea aims to complete the homebrew machine and showcase it at Pinball Expo 2020! We may be visiting Chicago in October next year 😉
You can follow Enea’s progress via the Dragon’s Lair Pinball Facebook group.
image source: Dragon’s Lair Pinball – Facebook
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Hands up who doesn’t like Bomberman – if you put your hand up, shame on you! Haha, just kidding, if you aren’t into Bomberman, but like Lego, this still may be of interest!
We’ll come out clean, Bomberman is one of a handful of video games we play a lot, especially with friends, so when we saw Indy988’s Lego Ideas Bomberman entry, we were quite chuffed and immediately pledged our support! We want these things to become a reality! Go and support this – right now!
image source: Lego Ideas
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We have been busting to tell you about how awesome this game is for the last few weeks! If there was no embargo period, you would’ve all known weeks ago!
Since we have already given away what we think of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends (or BB4F for short), let us tell you why we reckon this iteration of Taito’s brilliant arcade game is darn awesome.
Firstly, it’s Bubble Bobble on a new Nintendo console! And everyone loves little dragons, especially Bub and Bob! What else is good about this game? Well, you can play it solo, 2 player co-op or with up to 4 friends co-operating either at home or while you are out and about.
But wait, there is more! As the titles suggests, not only do you get the arcade game, which you can play by yourself or with a mate, you also get the new take on Bub and Bob’s adventures with 100 new stages, 5 new bosses and a new unique skills upgrade system, like the Thunder Bubble that attacks enemies in a horizontal line when the bubble bursts. This new skills upgrade features adds considerable depth to the strategy of playing the game and also its replayability.
We naturally played the heck out of the original coin-op version, which is a blast. It looks, feels and plays great. We did find it a tad hard to play while on the go (we may need better glasses!), but playing it on a large screen TV was an intoxicating nostalgic trip. The new part of the game (the ‘4 Friends‘) is also fun and innovative, clearing stages with chain reactions from multiple burst bubbles with captured enemies to generate more and higher quality food is extremely satisfying. Special bubbles, such as bomb or lightning bubbles, provide new aspects to the game and add tactical angles that provide enough challenge to keep you hooked. Where this game shines is in co-operating with other players, giving you a sense of teamwork and accomplishment.
No game is perfect, so there a a few niggles that we must point out. Firstly, there are no online leaderboards, which does detract from those that love seeing their name at the top. The other niggle is that BB4F does not have competitive modes. We guess they couldn’t cater for every type of player, but there is enough in this package to satisfy the bulk of players around the world.
There is a reason why Bubble Bobble has endured and remains a cult classic – it is just so much darn fun! The fact that Taito’s game has been ported to more than 20 different platforms since it’s original arcade release in 1986, speaks volumes. Bubble Bobble 4 Friends on the Nintendo Switch is a welcome addition which gives you the best of both worlds – the original arcade game and of course, the new take on the formula that takes advantage of its host platform. We love it!
Disclosure: Bubble Bobble 4 Friends [Nintendo Switch eShop code] was kindly provided by PR Hound for this review.
On the back of having world-breaking sales records with their Commodore 64, looks like Commodore didn’t do too shabbily with their Amiga line of computers.
Thanks to the folks at distrita, we can now check out the complete Amiga units sold history for Commodore in Germany!
• Amiga 500: 1,160,500 (Includes Amiga 500+ sales of 79,500)
• Amiga 600: 193,000
• Amiga 2000: 124,500
• Amiga 1200: 95,500
• Amiga 1000: 30,500
• Amiga CD32: 25,000
• Amiga CDTV: 25,800
• Amiga 3000: 14,380 (Includes Amiga 3000T sales)
• Amiga 4000: 11,300 (Includes Amiga 4000 030 sales)
Going by these units sold numbers, the total Amiga computers sold in Germany was 1,759,980 – not bad at all.
Some interesting nuggets in these numbers include the fact that the shortest lived Amiga line, the Commodore (Amiga) CDTV sold more units than the Amiga CD32! Having both the CDTV and CD32, let’s just say that the CDTV still looks gorgeous on our desk. Oh yeah, the CDTV is also the only Amiga to have MIDI – sorry our beloved Atari STe 😉
story source: distrita
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Being invited to guest appear (or should that be speak?) on a podcast is always humbling, very cool and a bit nerve-racking. It is exceptionally cool when invited by two of our good friends, Alex Kidman and Adam Turner to come on their Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News podcast.
Episode 254 of Vertical Hold goes all retro in the modern era, from revived Nintendo and Sega classic mini consoles, huge arcade control decks from Capcom that hook up to your TV, to questionable emulation and some iffy jailbreaking – this episode has it all!
Thanks again to Alex and Adam for having us on their podcast – we make a great triple AAA* team!
*Triple AAA team = Alex, Adam and Alex 😉
Title image source: Fordham IPLJ
Slider image source: Vertical Hold