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Nintendo Quest: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Nintendo Documentary is now on SBS OnDemand!

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PLEASE NOTE: As at February 11 2019, this documentary has expired and is no longer available to view!

Don’t you just love SBS Viceland! For the next 30 days (starting January 11 2019), you can watch the awesome Nintendo Quest: The Unofficial And Unauthorised Nintendo Documentary for free on SBS OnDemand. Oh yeah, it is geo-locked, so it is Australian residents only (sorry everyone else).

For those of you that don’t know about this documentary – it is a fun film that follows Jay Bartlett, a fanatic video game collector, who, on a dare, tries to collect all 678 original NES games – a long-time dream of his. The kicker is, Jay must achieve this tall order in 30 days without using the Internet in any way. While following Jay on his adventure, the film also examines Nintendo’s cultural history, their on-going legacy, and specifically, the endurance of the NES. If you have ever played on a Nintendo system, not just the NES, then we highly recommend you watch this most unofficial and unauthorised Nintendo documentary ever! Oh yeah, it is free (to watch) for the next 30 days, so hop to it!

image source: Rob McCallum Films

 

Fun Little Nintendo Console Infographics

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Thank you to our awesome friend Goose (on Twitter), for letting us know about these lovely little Nintendo console infographics.

We knew we had to share them with the rest of you! Now we just need to convince Entartika to create some for the SNES, N64 and GameCube.

image source: Fun Little Infographics on imgur

 

Handcrafted, Vintage and Unique Retro Gaming Goodies

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When our friends at Pinball Press covered handcrafted and unique pinball products on Etsy, we have a lot of you asking us to do the same for retro gaming. So your wish is our command!

Here is a selection of pretty cool retro gaming items on Etsy to suit any budget and any occasion – let’s go shopping!

Sega Seal Of Quality

Streets Of Rage 3D Shadow Box Art – framed

Hylian Shield Wooden Pin – Zelda

Awesome Nostalgia Retro Gaming T-Shirt

Game Over – enamel pin

Street Fighter – Ryu: 3D Shadow Box Art (framed)

80’s Retro Gaming Cartridge Throw Pillow Case

Altered Beast T-SHIRT / Beast Mode Gym / Retro Gaming / Unisex

Video Game Controller Poster

Oregon Trail Mug

Pokemon 3D Shadow Box Art (Framed)

NES Controller Patch

Retro NES Controller Card – A Card For Any Occasion (Birthday, Christmas, Gift)

Pixelated Heart Deco Coin Necklace

Custom Commodore 64 Printed Converse Sneakers

 

 

Sam’s Journey on THEC64 Mini

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The greatest ever Commodore 64 platformer (yes, it is!), Sam’s Journey has now been tweaked to play natively on THEC64 Mini!

When C64 games publisher and our very good friends at Protovision gave us the news that they are working with Knights of Bytes to bring us a THEC64 Mini version of Sam’s Journey, we must admit, there were lots of high-fives around the office.

If you don’t know anything about Sam’s Journey, well, all you need to know is that it is an absolutely sublime platformer and one of the best games released for the C64 in the past decade.

So what’s different about this version you may ask? Well, this version permits the THEC64 Mini user to read and start the game from a USB stick, making the previous workarounds totally obsolete. THEC64 Mini version also allows the user to jump by means of the additional buttons where you previously had to use the “joystick up” move. Oh yeah, this version of Sam’s Journey also takes advantage of better loading routines (taking advantage of the latest THEC64 Mini firmware).

If you have THEC64 Mini, then this special version of Sam’s Journey is a must! The download package is available via Protovision as well as on itch.io. If you already own Sam’s Journey, then you are in luck, as this special version is available free of charge to you!

 

Review: Atari Retro Handheld

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Let’s get one thing straight, this Atari Retro Handheld is not a Flashback portable console by ATGames! There, hopefully we have clarified this point for you all.

This cool Atari Retro Handheld is by powered by Blaze. With its iconic Atari faux wood veneer and Vader lines along its front, this portable system design screams late 70s kitsch. It is like having an Atari VCS woody in your pocket – almost! We say almost, cause you can’t really grab your old Atari 2600 carts and slam them in this handheld, but you can play one of 50 classic titles, including Asteroids, Adventure, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Sword Quest, Yar’s Revenge  and our absolute fave Atari 2600 game of all time, Missile Command – check out the full list of games below.

  1. 3D Tic-Tac-Toe (31 in 1)
  2. Adventure
  3. Air-Sea Battle
  4. Asteroids ®
  5. Black Jack
  6. Bowling
  7. Breakout ®
  8. Canyon Bomber ®
  9. Casino
  10. Centipede ®
  11. Circus Atari ®
  12. Crystal Castles ®
  13. Demons to Diamonds ™
  14. Desert Falcon ®
  15. Dodge ’em
  16. Double Dunk
  17. Fun With Numbers
  18. Golf
  19. Gravitar ®
  20. Haunted House ®
  21. Home Run
  22. Human Cannonball ™
  23. Maze Craze
  24. Millipede ®
  25. Miniature Golf ®
  26. Missile Command ®
  27. Night Driver ™
  28. Off the Wall
  29. Pong – Video Olympics
  30. Quadrun ™
  31. Radar Lock ™
  32. Realsports Football ®
  33. Realsports Tennis ®
  34. Realsports Volleyball ®
  35. Sprintmaster
  36. Steeplechase
  37. Stellar Track ™
  38. Street Racer
  39. Submarine Commander
  40. Super Baseball
  41. Super Breakout ®
  42. Super Football
  43. Swordquest: Earthworld ™
  44. Swordquest: Fireworld ™
  45. Swordquest: Waterworld ™
  46. Tempest ®
  47. Video Checkers
  48. Video Chess
  49. Video Pinball
  50. Yar’s Revenge ®

The Retro Handheld sports a 2.4″ screen, which surprisingly suits most of the games, however, there were a few that felt cramped on the tiny screen. The unit does come with a composite A/V out interface, so you can plug it into a TV (preferably a CRT) for some big screen action. Emulation was pretty much spot on, with the games playing like their cart counterparts. To round out its retro-ness, batteries, yes, batteries the AAA kind, are required to power this little Atari – relax, this isn’t like the original Atari Lynx, you’ll definitely get a considerable amount of playing hours out of 3 x AAA Duracell batteries.

We were a bit iffy when we first saw the controls, especially the funny looking d-pad nub. Once we started playing, the d-pad and the buttons felt good under the thumbs and were responsive. However, there was one game that was totally unplayable using the nub – not looking at you Pong! Apart from that little niggle, gamers will feel right at home with the controls. Oh yeah, one nifty feature is when changing games, you simply hit the Start and Select buttons at the same time and viola, you exit the current game and go back to the menu to select a new one – this was cool, as we didn’t want to turn off the unit every time we wanted to play a new game.

There will be some that will scoff at this little handheld and others that will absolutely love it for what it is – a portable little Atari that looks like your old Atari 2600 woody and plays your favourite games. We definitely love playing on it (bar the unplayable Pong!), even though we are not big fans of the current Atari SA company. If you can get past this, then this is a little winner.

If you are keen on one of these Atari Retro Handhelds, grab one from FunstockRetro right now! They will even throw in a limited edition Atari Centipede Gold Coin for free – but you better hurry, as this sale ends soon!

Disclosure: The Atari Retro Handheld was kindly supplied by FunstockRetro for this review.

 

A Rare Look Inside SEGA In The Mid 90s

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We couldn’t only feature Nintendo, so to balance things in the universe, here is the follow-up to the series of translations from the French documentary “Otaku”, this time taking a rare look inside Sega, their Sega vs Nintendo rivalry and Sega arcade games from the mid 90s.

Oh yeah, there is ample footage from the 31st Amusement Machine Show (1994 JAMMA Convention) in Japan! Once again, big thanks to Game Escape for the English subtitles!


source: Game Escape

 

A Rare Look Inside Nintendo During the SNES Era

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If you’ve ever wondered what it was like in the Nintendo offices during their Super Nintendo days, then this excerpt  from the 1994 French documentary film Otaku is exactly what you are looking for!

Thanks to William Cladley from Game Escape for discovering this film and for adding English subtitles! Oh yeah, you’ll all recognise a younger Shigeru Miyamoto who even back then was always striving for a balance in creativity and management – both attributes have served him well.


source: Game Escape

Get Your Keyboard To Match Your Original Game Boy

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In my mind’s eye, if I imagined a Game Boy type keyboard I could use on my computer, it would definitely not look as cool as this creation by The Key Company!

The iconic look of the original Game Boy, with its white, navy, maroon and black colour scheme oozes cool Nintendo late 80s aesthetics which would look pretty awesome on other devices, like keyboards! The Key Company is currently running a group buy for their GMK DMG key-set, which is based on, surprise surprise, Nintendo’s iconic handheld. The GMK DMG key-set was designed by Reddit user Futurecrime, with colour matching being professionally done by German industrial equipment maker GMK to directly match Nintendo’s Game Boy colour scheme.



The Base kit, which is USD$169, includes 150 keys designed to cover a majority of keyboards sporting Cherry MX-compatible stems. Pull off one of your normal keys, and if there is a plus (+) sign shaped plastic peg underneath, they’ll fit. The base kit includes some super cute novelty keys sporting Game Boy button graphics, along with a set of direction keys in black with grey stripes.

There are cheaper kits, like the Pocket kit, which costs USD$48 – it comes with keys to fill in some of the more popular smaller keyboard layouts. There is also a $22 Spacebars kit which contains various sizes of space bars in the Game Boy maroon colour.

So if you are into the original Game Boy and want to pair up its colour scheme with a device you use often, like your keyboard, then check out the GMK DMG group buy at The Key Company site for more details. If you prefer to wait for the key-sets to hit the streets (Reddit’s Mechmarket), then diarise April 2019 right now!

Image source: The Key Company

[source: Kotaku]



Super Nintendo Anthology: The Ultimate Book

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If there is one sure thing, it’s that Geeks-Line Publishing know how to create brilliant gaming tomes. Their latest book, Super Nintendo Anthology has launched on Kickstarter and it has already blasted past its goal.

Geeks-Line had so much content on Nintendo’s 16-bit beast that they had to split the Anthology into two volumes, one for Software and the other for Hardware. There is also a Kickstarter exclusive “Ultimate Edition” where the software and hardware volumes are bundled together in a super-duper slipcase. With a combined 620+ pages, this is going to be MEGA! Oh yeah, have no fear as Geeks-Line always delivers on their crowdfunded projects. If you already have the PlayStation, N64 and GameCube Anthologies, you know what to expect – lots of awesomeness!

As already mentioned, the 620+ pages will be richly illustrated with documents from the period, with the two Super Nintendo Anthology volumes recounting the life story of the Kyoto-based giant’s wondrous 16-bit console and delve deep into its huge international games library. This will be the definitive SNES work of reference.

Back the Kickstarter project now!

Table of contents (“Ultimate” Edition):

Software Edition

  • The Complete Official Games Library (1724 games)
  • All Games in Alphabetical Order
  • The Box Art of each Game
  • Alternative Game Titles by Region
  • ‘After-Market’ Games
  • Canceled Games

Hardware Edition

  • The SNES Epic
  • Hiroshi Yamauchi: The Man behind the Machine
  • A New Revolution Is Afoot
  • Rise of the 16-bit Machines
  • Observe – Create – Play
  • War on the Horizon
  • The First Announcement
  • The Japanese Launch
  • The American Launch
  • The European Launch
  • The View from the Top
  • A New Era
  • Swansong and Beyond
  • Secrets of the Hardware
  • Accessories (Official and Unofficial)
  • Interviews with People Who Made History
  • Developers’ Words
  • Collectible Treasures
  • Bundles & Collectors’ Editions from around the World

 

source: Geeks-Line’s Super Nintendo Anthology on Kickstarter

 

The Largest Playable Game and Watch Device

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Cast your mind back to November last year when we told you about Dr Tom Tilley’s awesomely cool gigantic Nintendo Game & Watch Octopus game? No? Shame on you!

If you do recall Tom’s great creation, then you will be happy to know that the folks at Guinness World Records took note and have officially recognised Tom Tilley’s mega G&W Octopus game as the “Largest playable Game and Watch device”!

Tom’s feat will feature in the Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2019 at the start of the Retro Gaming section. Well done Tominator, all of us Australians (and fellow retro gamers around the world) are very proud of this achievement.

source: Guinness World Records