The Pop-Culture E-Zine
We bought the PinBox 3000 for our little one to be creative and have some fun. By creating her own pinball machine this may be the making of a future pinball designer – no pressure of course!
We can’t wait to see what our little one will come up with. We reckon Steve Ritchie and John Borg better watch out!
PS: We will report on her pinball table creations once she is old enough and stops putting things in her mouth.
When you grab hold of a tome by Bitmap Books you immediately feel its quality in your hands. Like every other Bitmap Books publication, the high standard in aesthetics extends to great content within.
We found that with each page turn of the NEO-GEO: A Visual History book our pupils were dilating in joy at the eye popping and gorgeous visuals (the photography and artwork throughout this book is simply sublime) and the content on each page, like the rare interviews with key SNK staff (Yasuyuki Oda, Tatsuhiko Kanaoka and Hideki Asanaka) and the brilliant master games list for NEO-GEO, among other great content, simply elevates the book to bible status.
It is easy to see that the NEO-GEO: A Visual History book was a labour of love for its creators. The loving and painstaking detail that has gone into each of the 400 pages makes the reader stop and absorb it all before turning to the next eye popping page. With SNK’s official blessing, this is the one and only definitive English language book you will ever need based on the great NEO-GEO video game line, from the MVS, AES, CD to the Hyper 64 and NEO-GEO Pocket systems, and the aforementioned master games list. This book will be a permanent fixture on your coffee table for ease of access to great content and reference (oh yeah, and to show off its beauty to your friends).
If you are a NEO-GEO fan (or even if you are not!) or know of someone that is a NEO-GEO fan, this book is an absolute MUST GET! With Christmas around the corner, you can’t go wrong with this as a gift for yourself or for that SNK fan you know will appreciate this fantastic publication.
If you can only buy one video games related book this year, then let me make your decision quite easy, get NEO-GEO: A Visual History now!
NEO-GEO: A Visual History Collector’s Edition is available from:
What you get in the NEO-GEO: A Visual History Collector’s Edition:
You better hurry, as the Collector’s Edition book is in limited quantity and will never be produced again!
The NEOGEO: A Visual History book (only) is available from:
Do yourself a favour and get this now. You won’t regret it!
NEOGEO: A Visual History was supplied for review by Bitmap Books and Pixel Crib
Forget the PC-Engine LT, apparently there is the PC-Engine Duo Monitor! Yep, you read that right!
NEC engineers weren’t just sitting around high-fiving each other once they released the LT version, oh no, they wanted to create something similar for the dual CD/HuCard console – enter the PC Engine Duo Monitor!
These monitors are so rare, you will have a very hard time finding one and when you do, you will have to negotiate on selling a limb (or two) and a kidney – yes, these things are very very expensive!
source: eBay
Remember when you carried your Nintendo Game & Watch (or the equivalent knock-off) in your pants pocket?
Now try and imagine putting this mega (193cm by 116cm) Nintendo Game & Watch Octopus in your pocket and then whipping it out for a quick play – your friends would have been thoroughly impressed 😉
This gigantic Game & Watch is the brainchild of computer scientists and one clever Australian, The Tominator – Dr Thomas Tilley. This would have blown our mind back in the day, as it does right now! Awesome stuff indeed.
source: WithProfessorTom
Fire up your trusty Commodore 64 and grab Jason Aldred’s brilliant new shoot’em up Galencia.
For those that have been away on Mars and have just landed back on Earth, Galencia is a fast action shoot ’em up for the C64 in the mould of Galaga, but even better! Yes, it is that good that we reckon it is even better than Galaga – there, we said it.
Galencia features 50 action packed levels with asteroid fields, challenging stages, boss battles, ebb and flow difficulty curve and siren enemy with tractor beam for double ship action (Ed: oo’er!). The game includes gorgeous intro, launch and completion sequences, coupled with 6 unique SID chiptunes for your aural pleasure.
Blast-Off!
But wait, there is more! In-game options include:
There are many great people behind great games, just like the peeps that had a hand in creating Galencia. We can all thank these talented group of people for making such a wonderful and sublime game:
Even the great Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall gives his sizzling approval!
You can grab the digital version right now via itch.io for US$4.99 (which is an absolute steal!), or for the more traditionalists among us, Galencia will be available on physical media from Friday, November 17 via Protovision Games, just take a look at these tangible temptations:
All boxed editions of Galencia will come in a fully printed cardboard box with custom inlays to hold the disk, tape or cartridge, which will also include:
With the Disk and Cartridge special edition, both physical media will be in the one box with all of the above inclusions, plus a space amulet that is much needed in higher levels of Galencia, as it has been reported to promote good fortune!
Oh yeah, the game works on both PAL and NTSC C64 computers, with all physical editions containing the tape and disk digital images. If you don’t have a C64, then emulation is fully supported through VICE.
So what are you waiting for, go and pilot the 1981 Galencia Fighter to restore order, before it’s too late!
The game is never over!
The eyes have it!
Credit where credit is due
Tough choice – will you grab Galencia on cart?
On disk?
Or on tape? The choice is yours (you can’t go wrong!)
Time to squash some bugs!
Go on, get blastin’
image source: Jason Aldred – Galencia HQ
Get your Atari 2600 and Jaguar consoles ready, as AtariAge has released six new games for pre-order!
The Atari 2600 gets, Super Cobra Arcade, Space Cactus Canyon and Draconian, while the Jag gets Escape 2042, AstroStorm and the Jeff Minter Classics, Llamatron 2112 and Revenge Of The Mutant Camels!
All six new games will feature high-quality, professionally printed boxes, manuals and labels. Draconian, Super Cobra Arcade and the Jeff Minter Classics will include a poster featuring the box art for each game (and the best part, the Jeff Minter Classics poster is double-sided!).
We are quite excited about these games, but it is the Jaguar Jeff Minter Classics we are most looking forward to! Hit the AtariAge Store now and grab yourself some cool new games for your old Atari hardware.
image source: AtariAge
One of the main highlights at every PAX Aus is the cosplay. Even if you weren’t there this past weekend, you will definitely appreciate the awesome cosplay highlights package we have for you here – and to think, this was only the tip of the great cosplay iceberg!
Overwatch cosplay was well represented!
A bunch of Links. Now, to find Zelda!
Weird and Retro’s Kelly-Maree as Lollipop Chainsaw’s Juliet Starling
Press Play On Tape’s Phoebe as ‘The Puppet’ – FNaF2
Dragonair!
Of course we were bound to find a super couple
Skyrim by the awesome Combustible Props and Zel T
Zel T is gonna get ya!
A close cut!
2B (Nier Automata)
Even Pyramid Head makes friends with Nintendo characters
Nintendo Man?
Blathers and Celeste flew to PAX Aus too!
Sewn Chaos Orianna – Legendary indeed!
Cross-Cosplay = Roadhog (Overwatch) and Deadpool!
photos by: Alan Ly and ms. ausretrogamer
While the big news is of Amazon arriving Down Under, we were more excited about their new Retro Zone!
Amazon has curated their best of the best retro gaming items, from console, games and toys, to clothing and books! Oh yeah, there is plenty of Sega, Nintendo, Square Enix and Atari gear too!
So what are you waiting for, go and hit up the Amazon Retro Zone now!
More Retro than you can poke a stick at!
The heavy hitters of retro gaming are all there! Wait, where is Commodore?
image source: Amazon Retro Zone
Set the date to 1987 and get ready to revisit the classic 8-bit adventure games that mesmerised a generation of console junkies. Now is the opportunity to play cult favourites Shadowgate™, The Uninvited™ and Déjà Vu™ the way they were supposed to be played, with controller in hand and worlds awaiting to be explored!
The 8-Bit Adventure Anthology (Volume One) will be available on Steam, PlayStation®4 and Xbox One on October 31.
The three classic ’80s thriller adventures games are being bundled into one package by Abstraction Games. Set within the realms of fantasy, horror and film noir, these three fantastic stories are a must have for those who lived in the decade of neon and those that wish that they had.
The 8-Bit Adventure Anthology (Volume One) includes these classic games:
source: GamePress
Everyone loves a nostalgia trip. They take you back to a time once forgotten, and with these awesome gifs, done by car leasing company Select Car Leasing as part of a quiz, you’ll get that two-fold, with these legendary movie motors, re-vamped into an iconic, old-school 8-Bit style.
First, we have everyone’s favourite time-travelling vehicle, the DeLorean, Marty McFly’s mode of transportation to go back and forward through time in the unforgettable Back To The Future films. The DeLorean, which had to reach 88 mph in order to time travel, is actually back in production, being pieced together in Texas, rather than in Northern Ireland where the original was produced.
This Aston Martin V12 Vanquish is probably more famous for the epic ice chase/battle it had in the James Bond film, “Die Another Day” than it is as a standalone classic bond car. Going up against Zao’s Jaguar XKR, the two cars had possibly the greatest one-on-one battle of the Bond franchise, flipping over missiles and crashing through ice walls, with the baddy meeting his demise after being impaled by an ice chandelier.
The guys at Select Car Leasing couldn’t do work on iconic movie cars without putting at least one Batmobile in. Here is the first Batmobile that hit the movie theatres back in 1989 when the first Batman film arrived starring Michael Keaton as the caped crusader.
Not all of movies’ most iconic cars were restricted to driving on the road you know? Here we see the Spinner from the classic cyberpunk film, Blade Runner that featured Harrison Ford as main character Rick Deckard. These flying Police cars were used to survey the general public from the skies and will be seen again in the upcoming remake, Blade Runner 2049.
And finally, another motor that could take to the skies, possibly the most iconic car in movie history, the amazing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This vehicle looks fantastic but according to lead actor Dick Van Dyke, saying that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was “a little difficult to manoeuvre, with the turning radius of a battleship”.
You can see more awesome 8-Bit movie cars by taking Select Car Leasing’s quiz here, which includes vehicles such as the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, Mad Max’s Interceptor, Herbie and a really cool transforming Bumblebee!