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PC-Engine Duo Monitor

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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

 

Super Size Me: Mega Nintendo Game & Watch Octopus

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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

 

Galencia Blasts Onto Your C64

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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:

  • Load, Save and Reset High Scores
  • Extensive CRT options including 3 levels of Starfield Brightness
  • 3 different Score Palettes
  • Tournament Mode
  • Music and Simultaneous Sound Effects or Sound Effects only
  • 3 selectable difficulty levels; and
  • Pause and Quit game options

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:

  • Jason Aldred: programming and graphics
  • Pulsebot: all music and some sound effects
  • Saul Cross: additional graphics and sound effects
  • Lobo: physical artwork including box and manual
  • Mark Hardisty: manual back cover illustration
  • Flemming Dupont: concept art
  • Jakob Chen-Voos: Protovison

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:

  • Cassette (without box) €10.00 – comes on a green cassette with a j-card that can be flipped around for an alternative cover picture. The tape comes in a neon green jewel case (front side is fully transparent, only back is neon green).
  • Cassette (boxed) €30.00
  • Disk (boxed) €30.00
  • Cartridge (boxed) €40.00
  • Disk and Cartridge Special Edition (boxed) €50.00

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:

  • a full colour manual with 16 carefully designed pages (A5 sized),
  • Galencia coaster with a scratch free glass surface,
  • Bee key ring that can serve you as a trophy when you battle against vermin,
  • Big Galencia sticker that you can stick on your disk sleeve if you have the disk version; and
  • While stocks last – the first 200 boxed version orders will receive an additional small Galencia sticker!

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

 

Grab Some New Atari Jaguar and 2600 Games!

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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

 

PAX Aus 2017 Cosplay

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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

 

Amazon’s Retro Zone: All Retro. All The Time

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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

 

8-Bit Adventure Anthology: Retro Horror and Thriller Adventures Just In Time For Halloween

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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:

  • Shadowgate™: The wind whistles through the silent halls as you step through the stone threshold. You’ve just entered Shadowgate, a once shining castle, now an evil, dark moldering ruin. Swallow your fear and take up your torch. You are the ‘Seed of Prophecy’ and in your hands lies the fate of the world itself.
  • The Uninvited™: The last thing you remember was a figure appearing in the middle of the road and the sound of your sister’s screams over the screeching tires. When you come to, you discover two horrifying things: your sister is missing and the mansion that now looms before you seems to be calling your name…
  • Déjà Vu™: It’s 1942 and you wake up in a seedy bathroom with no idea how you got here or, for that matter, who you are. You grab a .38 hanging on the door, stumble up the stairs and find some stiff slumped over a desk with three bullet holes in him. You check your gun. Three bullets are missing. This is gonna be a bad day.

source: GamePress

 

Iconic Movie Cars In 8-Bit

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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!

 

Atari Table Pong Project: More Than A Coffee Table

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Back in March of this year we told you about the incredible Table Pong Project Kickstarter. Raising in excess of US$335,000, this project was always going to be under huge scrutiny. Well, we are happy to report that the project is on track and the early prototype looks absolutely amazing! We honestly can’t stop staring at this gorgeousness!

If you want to see how awesome this coffee table is, then put on some water proof clothing, as you will be drooling with excitement! Oh yeh, if you want to deck out your house with a great interactive coffee table, then hit Table Pong Project’s pre-order page right now.

Now imagine if we had one of these tables in the Classic Gaming Area at PAX Aus 2017 – it would totally blow everyone’s mind. We may need to have a chat to the Table Pong Project crew *wink*


source: Table Pong Project

Superman 64: The Worst Video Game Ever Made

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By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.

When I was a kid, I was so ecstatic when I read that Nintendo 64 was releasing a Superman game. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and play it.

Fortunately, my friend down the street bought Superman 64 before I did. I was lucky enough to never spend a dime on the controversial game made by Titus Software.

Superman 64 begins with Lex Luther telling you “You will never find your friends in this world…” That confused me. The game isn’t set in Metropolis, it’s set in Luther’s “virtual world.” You would think that the natural setting for a game starring Superman would be Metropolis. Too many cooks in the creative kitchen at Titus Software perhaps?

The dumb, unimaginative plot of the game has you (as the Man of Steel) go through a simple maze in Lex’s “virtual world” to save Superman’s friends. All you do for most of the game is fly through an unbearable number of rings that get tedious after ten seconds. Why did anyone think that this would make for an appealing game? It has the kiss of death for a console game: it’s boring.

It’s incredibly hard to control Superman’s course of flight at times. If you have Superman at the centre of your game, you would think developers would’ve had a surplus of ideas that they could incorporate into the game to make it exceptional. The game was released in 1999; there were a lot of back issues of Superman for them to pull appealing ideas from.

At one point in Superman 64, you have to pick up a police car and carry it to the end of a street…real exciting stuff. During one mission, you have to blow random tornadoes away with your super breathe. And yes, I just wrote that sentence.

“LEX WINS.” I got so sick of “LEX WINS.” And you hear Lex do some creepy, stoner-like chuckle every time he wins. Then, in all of that excitement, you have to fly through more rings. There are no instructions for how to fly or breathe your super breath. There are moments in the game where you have a timer, and then, during other stages, there’s no timer at all. It also takes a long time for Superman to get back up when he is knocked down. That was frustrating, and nothing about Superman’s ability to take a punch should be frustrating.

There were moments during Superman 64 where you would get stuck in corners of the game and it would take a moment to find a way to fly again. When I played this frustrating game, I had no idea that Titus Software hadn’t actually finished it. I found that out much later. But just from the confusing game play and the strange, green haze in Lex’s “virtual world,” it was obvious that Titus developers had a little trouble in the developing stage of Superman 64.

If flying through rings surrounded by a green haze sounds like a fun gaming experience, you may enjoy Superman 64? As a huge Superman fan and gamer, this game was a big disappointment. Titus should have never let this game see the light of day.