The Pop-Culture E-Zine
That earworm of a song has invaded the 8-bit space! Yep, you’ll be singing “Baby shark doo doo doo doo doo doo” all day long, so we apologise in advance – at least the 8-bit visuals will be to your liking.
Once you are done singing this mega viral YouTube song, listen to the fascinating history of Baby Shark via the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast.
source: Baby Shark Official
Hands up who doesn’t like Bomberman – if you put your hand up, shame on you! Haha, just kidding, if you aren’t into Bomberman, but like Lego, this still may be of interest!
We’ll come out clean, Bomberman is one of a handful of video games we play a lot, especially with friends, so when we saw Indy988’s Lego Ideas Bomberman entry, we were quite chuffed and immediately pledged our support! We want these things to become a reality! Go and support this – right now!
image source: Lego Ideas
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The original Atari logo is as close to a religious symbol for old-school gamers as you can get. Atari may have lost its soul since it changed ownership (Ed: on countless occasions), but the vision of its original founders (Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney) and game creation engineering geniuses, will always be (fondly) remembered.
For the history conscious, on this day [November 25] in 1975, Atari registered its now ubiquitous logo. The logo design started as a doodle by George Faraco and later refined by Atari’s in-house graphic designer, George Opperman. George created lots of art for Atari’s coin-ops, but his most famous work will forever be that beautiful ‘Mt. Fuji’ logo. Just to set the record straight, the design of the logo had nothing to do with Mt. Fuji – the logo was to have a stylised letter A, the first letter of the company name, and the three prongs were a salute to its first gaming hit, Pong. All hail, the Atari logo!
We have been busting to tell you about how awesome this game is for the last few weeks! If there was no embargo period, you would’ve all known weeks ago!
Since we have already given away what we think of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends (or BB4F for short), let us tell you why we reckon this iteration of Taito’s brilliant arcade game is darn awesome.
Firstly, it’s Bubble Bobble on a new Nintendo console! And everyone loves little dragons, especially Bub and Bob! What else is good about this game? Well, you can play it solo, 2 player co-op or with up to 4 friends co-operating either at home or while you are out and about.
But wait, there is more! As the titles suggests, not only do you get the arcade game, which you can play by yourself or with a mate, you also get the new take on Bub and Bob’s adventures with 100 new stages, 5 new bosses and a new unique skills upgrade system, like the Thunder Bubble that attacks enemies in a horizontal line when the bubble bursts. This new skills upgrade features adds considerable depth to the strategy of playing the game and also its replayability.
We naturally played the heck out of the original coin-op version, which is a blast. It looks, feels and plays great. We did find it a tad hard to play while on the go (we may need better glasses!), but playing it on a large screen TV was an intoxicating nostalgic trip. The new part of the game (the ‘4 Friends‘) is also fun and innovative, clearing stages with chain reactions from multiple burst bubbles with captured enemies to generate more and higher quality food is extremely satisfying. Special bubbles, such as bomb or lightning bubbles, provide new aspects to the game and add tactical angles that provide enough challenge to keep you hooked. Where this game shines is in co-operating with other players, giving you a sense of teamwork and accomplishment.
No game is perfect, so there a a few niggles that we must point out. Firstly, there are no online leaderboards, which does detract from those that love seeing their name at the top. The other niggle is that BB4F does not have competitive modes. We guess they couldn’t cater for every type of player, but there is enough in this package to satisfy the bulk of players around the world.
There is a reason why Bubble Bobble has endured and remains a cult classic – it is just so much darn fun! The fact that Taito’s game has been ported to more than 20 different platforms since it’s original arcade release in 1986, speaks volumes. Bubble Bobble 4 Friends on the Nintendo Switch is a welcome addition which gives you the best of both worlds – the original arcade game and of course, the new take on the formula that takes advantage of its host platform. We love it!
Disclosure: Bubble Bobble 4 Friends [Nintendo Switch eShop code] was kindly provided by PR Hound for this review.
On the back of having world-breaking sales records with their Commodore 64, looks like Commodore didn’t do too shabbily with their Amiga line of computers.
Thanks to the folks at distrita, we can now check out the complete Amiga units sold history for Commodore in Germany!
• Amiga 500: 1,160,500 (Includes Amiga 500+ sales of 79,500)
• Amiga 600: 193,000
• Amiga 2000: 124,500
• Amiga 1200: 95,500
• Amiga 1000: 30,500
• Amiga CD32: 25,000
• Amiga CDTV: 25,800
• Amiga 3000: 14,380 (Includes Amiga 3000T sales)
• Amiga 4000: 11,300 (Includes Amiga 4000 030 sales)
Going by these units sold numbers, the total Amiga computers sold in Germany was 1,759,980 – not bad at all.
Some interesting nuggets in these numbers include the fact that the shortest lived Amiga line, the Commodore (Amiga) CDTV sold more units than the Amiga CD32! Having both the CDTV and CD32, let’s just say that the CDTV still looks gorgeous on our desk. Oh yeah, the CDTV is also the only Amiga to have MIDI – sorry our beloved Atari STe 😉
story source: distrita
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Being invited to guest appear (or should that be speak?) on a podcast is always humbling, very cool and a bit nerve-racking. It is exceptionally cool when invited by two of our good friends, Alex Kidman and Adam Turner to come on their Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News podcast.
Episode 254 of Vertical Hold goes all retro in the modern era, from revived Nintendo and Sega classic mini consoles, huge arcade control decks from Capcom that hook up to your TV, to questionable emulation and some iffy jailbreaking – this episode has it all!
Thanks again to Alex and Adam for having us on their podcast – we make a great triple AAA* team!
*Triple AAA team = Alex, Adam and Alex 😉
Title image source: Fordham IPLJ
Slider image source: Vertical Hold
When it comes to peculiar gaming systems from the Far East, us folks in the West seriously missed out.
For instance, take Taiwan based Redant’s Game Axe Color FC-868 LCD handheld. The Game Axe Color, released in late 1998, is a Famicom compatible handheld system (aka: Famiclone), which plays the Nintendo Famicom game cartridges. It is powered by AA batteries or by the Famicom’s AC adaptor. We must admit, this is a cool looking and well built handheld which we wouldn’t mind in our collection.
Oh yeah, the Game Axe Color will not play your NES carts natively. For that, you will require an adaptor. If you live in Australia, then you will require a step-down converter – if using your Famicom PSU, otherwise you can power the unit via AA batteries. Having RCA (composite) connectivity, the Game Axe Color is flexible enough to hook up to your TV (preferably CRT) to become your home Famicom console.
We are in love with this peculiar little beast!
source: eBay
My Arcade’s motto, ‘Retro Gaming For A New Generation‘ is pretty much spot on when we think about their product range, like their Micro Player Mini Arcade Machines. We managed to get our hands on two of the My Arcade Micro Players, Bad Dudes (aka: DragonNinja) and Rolling Thunder, which we gave a good old fashioned thrashing.
Let’s first talk about the physical attributes of these cute little machines and their features. The packaging is so great that we decided to keep the units in them when not in use. The game’s story on the side of the packaging is clever too. Once you bust these open, you’ll find the Micro Player and a user manual (remember those!) inside. The Rolling Thunder Micro Player came with an added poster featuring the Micro Player machines range, which harks back to when we used to get posters with our games – a neat touch that we wish that the Bad Dudes unit also came with this inside.
The Micro Players themselves resemble their arcade counterparts, from their cabinet profile down to the artwork on the sides and control panel. Bad Dudes pips Rolling Thunder here with the bezel artwork and Data East logo on top of the unit. The detachable joystick on the D-Pad, the two fire buttons and the Reset and Start buttons are identical on all Micro Players, which ensures a consistent look, feel and play across the range. Speaking of the control panel, we found that we preferred to play Bad Dudes with the D-Pad (sans joystick), however, Rolling Thunder felt better to control with the joystick in place. The best part is that you have options for your control preference that suits your play style. A word of warning, if you like to play without the joystick, you better put it in a safe place, as they can easily get misplaced. The buttons are standard fare and feel responsive enough when playing either game, but they are on the small side, so if you have large or fat fingers, you may struggle a bit. Powering on the Micro Players is as easy as pushing in the coin slot door, which lights up when on – another cool feature which get our tick of approval. On the back of the machines you’ll find volume control buttons, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a battery compartment (for 4 x AA batteries) and a Micro-USB port for powering these little beasts.
For those that like their feature specifications in bullet-point form, here you go:
The burning question on everyone’s lips is, how do they play? If you are expecting the arcade versions of the games, then you may be disappointed. But before you start moaning and groaning, we can tell you that these are NES versions of their arcade counterpart, which isn’t a bad thing. Out of the two Micro Player’s, we definitely preferred playing Rolling Thunder, as the NES conversion was brilliant, translated perfectly on its corresponding Micro Player. As for Bad Dudes, since it is the NES version, you can’t play co-op, which is fine, as the Micro Player only has a single-player control deck. The emulation is true to their source, ensuring that the games play pretty much identical to the NES versions. We did note that Rolling Thunder boots up almost immediately to its title screen, whereas Bad Dudes took a few seconds. This isn’t a negative, it was just noticeable to us when turning on these machines side by side. The screen is bright (there is no brightness or contrast control), so you will have no issues seeing what is going on. Being on the small side, the screen does feel a tad cramped when there is lots action going on, especially on games like Bad Dudes.
So how do you decide which Micro Players to get, if any? Well, if you liked these games on the NES, then you will definitely love playing them on the Micro Players. Out of the two we got to play, we found ourselves going back to Rolling Thunder over and over again, not because we are crappy players (the game is tough as nails!), but the fact that the game is based on a wonderful conversion which was quite faithful to its arcade big brother. Let’s also not forget that these Micro Players are so darn cute and cool, they would be perfect for displaying in your games room or office.
With the Festive Season fast approaching, these would make a great gift for either yourself or that good friend of yours that is into retro gaming.
The My Arcade Micro Player Mini Arcade Machines range is available via Amazon (and reputable bricks and mortal stores, like JB Hi-Fi):
Disclosure: The Rolling Thunder and Bad Dudes My Arcade Micro Player machines were kindly provided by Turn Left Distribution for this review.
Um, just in case you missed this or want to see it again and drool some more, check out Technical Designer extraordinaire Cem Tezcan’s Commodore HX-64 – a handheld version of the greatest 8-bit computer of all time!
The level of detail is in insanely cool, from the plastic, colour, keys, screen, ports to the ever so damn cool mini cassettes used to load programs! Forget the C65 or the SX-64, this is the ultimate Commodore 64 based dream machine. WOW!
source: Cem Tezcan via ArtStation
If there ever was a perfect use of the “Shut up and take my money” meme, then these hand built retro game visual displays by Leigh Allen (aka: PlayRetroDesigns) can take our wallet right now!
Who wouldn’t want Double Dragon, Galaga, Paper Boy and Gorf on their game room wall? And these are just the start! There are plenty more mind blowing displays based on your fave console and arcade games in Leigh’s Etsy store. Now, where was that bank withdrawal slip…
Image source: PlayRetroDesigns