The Pop-Culture E-Zine
We may not be wearing our nerdy Christmas jumpers, you know, coz it’s bloody hot here, but we still thought we’d take this opportunity to wish you all an awesomely geeky, safe and fun Christmas!
Hope Santa can drag himself away from playing pinball and deliver presents to all the good folks out there.
On behalf of the ausretrogamer team, Merry Christmas!
Have you had enough of the huge prices that Nintendo’s Game & Watch games demand? Well, you are in luck, as JB Hi-Fi have the exclusive Retro Pocket Arcade handheld going for $24.95!
This fun on the go mini handheld arcade sports a colour 1.8″ LCD and comes packed with 150+ games – take that Game & Watch! The little pocket rocket is powered by 3 x AAA batteries so you can game on the go for hours.
We know what you are thinking – what games are on it and how does it play? Well, if you like Game & Watch games, then you’ll love the incarnations on this little beast. Games like Parachute are on there (it’s actually called Parachute!) – save the parachuting kamikazes by catching them with your boat. We’d be here all day if we went through the entire list of games, but rest assured there are games on the Retro Pocket Arcade to please everyone (take a peek at some in the pic below).
The LCD is nice and bright, making viewing better and easier on your eyes. The D-pad is replaced with four buttons, but that isn’t a bad thing, as it’s reminiscent of the older Game & Watch games that predate Gunpei Yokoi’s wonderful directional pad. The buttons all feel easy on the finger without any lag, but they would have been even better if they were convex instead of being flat. At $24.95, this little beast comes highly recommended if you can’t be stuffed chasing the elusive and expensive Game & Watch games by Nintendo.
With Christmas around the corner, this is a great stocking stuffer for the retro gamer. JB, you’ve done it again!
* The Flea Market Retro Pocket Arcade handheld was supplied by JB Hi-Fi for this article.
It absolutely boggles the mind to think about the talent some peeps have. I mean how does one come up with the idea to make a real life Super Mario Bros. game using cardboard? It is truly an amazing DIY creation that blows our minds! Take a peek, you’ll be impressed.
source: Sata Production
Virtual Consoles – a recently launched website makes it possible to play legendary computers and consoles like the Apple II, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Super Nintendo (to name a few) right in your web browser.
The Virtual Consoles website offers its services free of charge: you can play on 9 old school gaming systems without installing any add-ons or plug-ins. Now that is pretty damn cool!
With the revival of retro gaming and the ever escalating costs, this site has come at the right time. “The site generally uses open-source development, so the use of emulators is completely free of charge. An up-to-date browser and an average desktop computer is all that is needed, although most of the retro computers offer good experience on tablets, as well”, says Kornel Kolma, founder of virtualconsoles.com.
Play with Spacewar! from 1962
Currently there are 9 online emulators available on the site: Apple II, Atari 2600, NES , Super NES. DOS, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. There are also some curiosities to be found in the collection, like the CHIP-8 interpreter which ran on microcomputers of the 1970s, and the DEC PDP-1, which was introduced in 1959 – making it possible to play the original Spacewar! game online.
“We only attached games to the emulated computers and consoles if they were freeware games or had gotten approval from the copyright owner. For most of the emulators we made it possible to upload games from existing collections. Our long-term goal is to come to an agreement with copyright owners of old games and make these games available in a retro gaming online store”, says Kornel Kolma. Kornel also added, “The short-term plan of Virtual Consoles is to launch additional emulators which will run in your web browser”.
With Virtual Consoles, the game is definitely not over!
If you have been with us since we began our retro gaming journey, you’d know that we are huge Double Dragon fans, especially the arcade game!
Speaking of the arcade, would you believe that Double Dragon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year! It’s amazing that after three decades, this game is still being talked about with such affection.
Kung-Fu Master and Renegade may have preceded it, but Double Dragon was the first co-operative beat’em up on the arcade block. Who could forget the two Lee brothers punching, kicking, elbowing Black Warrior thugs to get to their damsel in distress. Let’s not spoil it for those that haven’t finished the game, but let’s just say that brotherly love doesn’t count.
Being the first co-op beat’em up game, Double Dragon paved the way for all that came after it and kickstarted the golden age of the beat’em up. Long live Double Dragon!
Interesting fact: Double Dragon’s arcade board is quite complex – instead of utilising an expensive 16-Bit CPU, the game runs on two 8-Bit CPUs with a third CPU dedicated to sound! How ingenuous!
*GULP* Hope you are all sitting down, cause you gotta check out the official SNK Neo Geo attire available now on Fangamer!
The only problem we can see is, which piece of clothing to get? Actually, there is an easy answer, ALL OF THEM!
Which one do you like?
image source: Fangamer
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
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
For a 5th year in a row, the PAX Aus Classic Gaming area proved yet again to be a popular spot for families, friends, kids, teenagers and people of all other ages wanting to get their hit of nostalgia.
The Classic Gaming area had it all – consoles, computers, handhelds, arcade and pinball machines. And for the more competitive types, there were tournaments to show-off their old school skills, like Press Play On Tape’s International Karate comp on the Commodore 64.
The museum displays had visitors intrigued, from Weird and Retro’s awesomely rare Atari pieces (like that cool Atari baseball and patches!) and Lord Sugar’s Amstrad micros, to our custom built Neo Geo MVS console and games.
In the arcade area, Greg Pell and Bartronica had curated some very cool and rare machines, like an original 3-player Rampage and a Ms Pac-Man. But once again, it was the fighting machines (Mortal Kombat II) and the gun games (Point Blank and Time Crisis) that proved quite popular.
As proven in previous years, pinball is getting a lot of attention, and rightly so. Skott Kellett assembled some absolute beautiful pinball machines with the help of the great pinball community – Bayside Pinball Club, Pinmem, Melbourne Silverball, Mr. Pinball and Zax Amusements. There were machines older than most players playing them and there were machines from Stern and Jersey Jack that had just been released. You would have been hard pressed not to have found a machine you would’ve liked to flip on.
The Classic Gaming area will be back bigger and better for PAX Aus 2018. For now, enjoy these photo highlights!
Look, this is where we are!
Almost there. Oh wait, we know this guy – it’s Mr Ant Stiller!
We have arrived!
On the way to the pinball section and look who we run into – Melbourne Silverball & Head2Head Pinball’s Marto!
Love this machine, again!
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