On a cold and miserable night in Melbourne earlier this week, eight hardened retro gamers converged on Wadham House for the monthly Retro Tuesday meet.
Serblander, of Weird and Retro fame, convinced the organisers to make the meet all about Atari‘s little feline, the Lynx. With all members contributing their Lynx wares, there was ComLynx action aplenty. Checkered Flag provided some friendly rivalry (Ed: and some very colourful language!), while Dr C. stamped his dominance, yet again, on the 8-Player Slime World.
The night wasn’t just for great gaming fun (which it was!), the display that Weird and Retro had put together for the Lynx was a great homage to the Atari handheld! Check out the pics and drool over that store stand and all those different Lynx boxes!
As usual, it was difficult to leave my Lynx friends, but good things must always come to an end. After leaving the Retro Tuesday meet, I was informed that a new California Games BMX bandit was crowned – well done & congrats to Serby!
Thank you to: Aleks, Stacey, Jerry, Pedro, Callum, Paul and Mal for an awesome night of Lynx action! Can’t wait to do it again!
The Great Wall Of Lynx
The one and only, Atari Lynx
Badges of honour
The Games!
The Lynxes!
Travel in style, keep your Lynx in a pouch
Fan magz – Lynx User!
Serby preparing the awesome Lynx stand!
Jerry is the BMX bandit on the big screen!
Dr. C cautiously approaches the ledge! Double backflip coming up!
ComLynx gaming = heaps of fun!
Yours truly giving the thumbs up! Too bad my car was off the road!
More Checkered Flag action coming up!
8P Slime World! Let the smack talk begin!
LCD comparison: Original vs McWill’s LCD modded (with VGA) Lynx II
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!
