A few weeks ago there was a call to action for the game playing public to cast their votes for the C64 2015 Shoot’Em Up Construction Kit (SEUCK) Competition. Among the many talented candidates was our good friend, Anthony Stiller. Anthony’s entry, Abyssonaut, a horizontal scrolling shmup, was well received and deserved its entry in the competition.
Well, the votes have been counted and we can now proudly reveal the winner – drum roll please……. And the winner is, Abyssonaut (171 points) by Anthony Stiller!
Take a bow Anthony, this is a well deserved win and a great reward for all your hard yakka! As the Champagne starts flowing, we corner Anthony to ask him about the win:
AUSRETROGAMER [ARG]: Congratulations Anthony, and well done! Has the win sunk in?
Anthony Stiller [AS]: Thanks, Alex! Last night’s shock (Kev, the editor of Reset C64, gave me the heads up) has finally settled down a little. I was buzzing at 1am this morning after reading the results!
ARG: You beat some seasoned game creators, how does it feel to be crowned the winner for 2015?
AS: There were some really great entries this year and, while I was very happy with Abyssonaut and knew it was in with a good chance, I really wasn’t expecting first place. Alf Yngve, who’s been the reigning champion, is a lovely, talented guy and Gigablast was an excellent entry. Really, though, everyone who makes the time and effort to enter a solid game deserves to be commended.
ARG: What was your inspiration to make Abyssonaut?
AS: Great question! I was at a party and my eyes fell on the label of a bottle of Kraken spiced rum (true story!). Also, once I had decided to use Sideways SEUCK I was thinking of what the player sprite should look like. I wanted to see the player’s figure but I needed to work within the two frames of animation you get for the player sprite. So the player had to be riding a vehicle of some sort. I was almost immediately hit with the image of someone in SCUBA gear riding a seascooter into a seabase. I may have watched a few too many James Bond movies growing up. And the rest is history.
ARG: How long did it take to create Abyssonaut?
AS: About three months elapsed time and over 100 hours actual effort. That includes concept, design (I like the idea of using sketches for design work), testing, and a little marketing, but doesn’t factor in the time my playtesters put in.
ARG: What were some of the challenges creating the game?
AS: Like my previous SEUCK game, Sopwiths & Pterrordons (S&P), I really wanted to make a “proper” game – with gameplay flow, foreshadowing, and a subtle story built into the game itself. All that takes time and effort and lots of testing. I also wanted Abyssonaut to be on a grander scale than S&P. It has a far greater number of different enemies and the actual length of the game is more than twice that of S&P.
Finally, I wanted to ramp up the difficulty. S&P is quite easy. Level 1 of Abyssonaut is gentle but the curve ramps up dramatically in Level 2. There’s a proper end of level boss in Level 2 and at this stage I don’t think anyone’s reached it without cheating.
Oh, I also should add that getting all the animation right was a huge challenge. I need to stop using bio-organic creatures in my games!
ARG: Have you got any new SEUCK projects in the pipeline?
AS: Well, there’s a rumour that there’s going to be a Sideways SEUCK compo later this year and I’ve got this really interesting idea … ARG: Your secret is safe with us. It’s in the vault.
ARG: Just like any award ceremony, is there anyone you would like to thank?
AS: Oh, that’s a long list! First, thanks to Richard Bayliss. Not only does he run the competition, but he is also amazingly helpful and supportive. Stacey Borg, who is the best playtester ever! Cam, Rob, Raj and Kale, my brains trust. There are a whole lot more people out there in the retro scene whom I only know online and are always lifting me up! You know who you are! And, lastly, thanks to everyone who’s played Abyssonaut!
As we toast his achievement and clink Champagne glasses, we leave Anthony to enjoy his deserved win. For those of you that haven’t yet played Abyssonaut, what are you waiting for!
I know we have said this time and time again, and with the risk of sounding like a broken record, we’ll say it again – there are wonderful people around the world on social media. One such lad that fits in this ‘wonderful people’ category, is Mr. Aaron White from the UK. Since engaging with Aaron on Twitter, we have learned that he has some seriously great talent in creating chiptune music on his beloved Amiga. Ms. ausretrogamer and I have become fans of Aaron’s compositions, so it was only natural for us to sit down with the chiptune maestro and put him through some rigorous questioning. Get your headphones on, tune-in to some cool 
Many gamers, me included, have fond memories of Sega at its prime – they were ready to knock Nintendo off of its pedestal. The Sega Genesis, in all of its 16-bit glory, took home gaming to an entirely new level. The colors were more varied and vivid, the music was better, and the worlds that we visited were more realistic. That’s not to say that I didn’t love my NES, but my Sega held a special place in my heart.
source: 
On the back of the 
Should we allow our retro gaming gear to age gracefully, or do we do what everyone does in Hollywood, go under the surgeon’s scalpel in the hope of looking better? In this instance, having an Atari Lynx II upgraded with McWill’s LCD modification (with VGA out) was an easy choice. This surgical transplant was well worth sacrificing one Atari Lynx II out of the many sitting there to be used at ComLynx parties. The only difference being, I would have the best looking screen at the next meet *wink*
Before the 16-bit Sega and Nintendo console war era, there was the 16-bit computing war in the late 80s between Commodore’s Amiga and Atari’s ST. The war between these two titans was being waged in schoolyards across the world – you were either a diehard Amiga fan or an ST whiz kid.
When you dream of having an arcade and pinball parlour integrated in your home, Gary McTaggert’s Willy’s Arcade is surely the perfect blueprint.
On a cold and miserable night in Melbourne earlier this week, eight hardened retro gamers converged on Wadham House for the monthly 
I love social media. I keep on banging on about how awesome it is to connect with like-minded people, and social media provides the perfect platform, especially when people are on the other side of the country! The world certainly is a smaller place with all these online channels allowing us to meet great people.
When I first heard about the 
As I step out of the car, I immediately wish I’d stayed home. Who the heck is going to show up to this thing? 4 people total? It’s all about those Sony Playtendo whozits now. Nobody wants to play pinball anymore. I ask the reception lady about the pinball expo and am told it’s “outside, to the left in a big tent”. Pffft, tent? I’ve come this far so I’ll begin my perilous journey to that tent. As it comes into view, my regret quickly turns to not-so-regret. “That’s a pretty big tent” I think to myself, immediately followed by “Hey! Is that Aqua Golf?! Holy crap. I should go do that!”. I approach the tent, take obligatory photos (my sincerest apologies for the quality – my phone is as old as the bands that I listen to), and make my way in. I slam my order confirmation down on the counter and demand my Ultimate Warrior neon bracelets. If I’m going to play some pinball, I have to look the part, and what better way than with neon colours adorning my wrists. I step inside and am frankly, amazed. That’s a lot of pinball and look, there’s already dozens of people here. Colour me impressed (or badd, that works too).
My first order of business was to locate the Terminator 2 machine. Oh, it’s right there. That was easy. I should take some photos and video. Clickity click, walkety walk. That was fun. Let’s play some T2. Wait, what’s that next to T2? Is that… it is… a Street Fighter II machine! My all time favourite pinball machine mere feet away from my all time favourite video game. Hold on, that’s not a Street Fighter II machine. That’s a cabinet running an emulator that just happens to be running Street Fighter II. Screw it, don’t care, I’m playing. Guile Guile Guile Guile. awww. I lost. I’ll come back and play later. That, in a nutshell, was my day. I would attempt to play Terminator 2 whenever it was available, follow it up with some Street Fighter, and fill in the gaps with the plethora of other machines available (Indiana Jones got a good playin’ too). 6 hours of standing was all that I could stand (pun obviously intended) so at 3:00pm, 2 hours before closing, I made my journey home. Even the cheapskate in me was too tired to play any longer. There’s always tomorrow.
Is the cost of admission worth the time? Absolutely! With close to 200 machines ranging from 1940 all the way to the current digital machines, there really is something here for everyone. Everything is, as far as I can tell, arranged by period with the earlier machines at the far end of the tent and the latest and greatest closer to the entrance. The old simple machines had a charm to them that the newer machines cannot replicate. The pinging and minimalistic gameplay transported me back to the good old days when I’d go down to the local speakeasy, have a few, ogle some women and come home to my wife. Good times. With that said, it was the machines of the 70s, 80s and 90s that felt right to me while the entirely digital machines were just… wrong. No steel balls, no flippers, no pinging, no ponging. If I wanted to play a digital version of pinball, I’d head to Steam and buy Pinball FX2 or better yet, go retro and play some Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies or Slam Tilt on the Amiga. Part of the appeal of pinball is the ding ding, bzzzzz, pooookh, bing, boof. You need that boof (Ed: tactile pleasure!).
As one would expect, the machines from the 40s, 50s and 60s were seldom used while the newer machines had a constant queue of people waiting to get their chance to outdo one another. What I personally found most interesting is the range of people that had turned up. Male and female, old and young. Everyone was covered. The older folk (50+) stuck to the older machines while everyone else generally played with anything that wasn’t an older machine, with the exception of the kids that would play on anything that was free. The hipsters that showed up also primarily hung around the older machines, presumably because the pinging of old hardware isn’t mainstream, so it soothes them. I did what I could to play from every period, with the exception of the purely digital machines, because they’re the poo-poo faces of the pinball world and don’t deserve my time.
If you have the opportunity to attend an expo like this, I suggest you do it. If you have to, drag your family along. Everyone will have fun and if they don’t, divorce/break-up/disown/post drunk photos of them online! The Australian Pinball Expo was a thoroughly enjoyable event – make sure you go in 2015!
Frankie!