As the year draws to a close, it had to happen, we had to go for one final thrill of the chase!
With the adrenaline rushing at this time of year, there were classic gaming items to be found and bargains to be bagged. While everyone else was recovering from their Christmas festivities, Ms. ausretrogamer and I hit the road to find those elusive retro games and vintage toys.
There were a number of places that were closed due to the festive season, but that didn’t deter us from going to the next stop on our hit-list. We did hit the jackpot at our final stop – we may not have found what we were looking for, but we did have a blast playing some Daytona USA, Speed Race and the three-screen extravaganza, TX-1.
So with another year in the history books, we eagerly await the new year. Roll on 2015 for more thrills! Happy New Year to you all!
Spotted! Topless Skeletor
Open Pokemon
Close Pokemon. See, I can do magic!
Namco made digital alarm clocks? *Mind Blown*
Master System games + Hillbilly Jim = Perfect!
No way, A (broken) Robot Armatron!
Seeing is believing
Don’t get these two wet!
Give your TV some old school action!
Dayyyyyytonaaaaa!
20c for some action? That’s cheap as chips!
Go Speed Racer!
Gotta get pole position!
Nooooooo, it’s GAME OVER!
Struggling to find the perfect video gaming present this Christmas? Perhaps you have about three quarters of a million dollars gathering dust and would like to procure the world’s largest video games collection? Well, if you do have some spare cash lying around or you have won the lottery, you could get instant Guinness World Record recognition by grabbing Michael Thomasson’s massive 11,000+ video gaming collection! You can view the games room full of goodies in an interactive panoramic view over 
source: 
The classic Segasa electro-mechanical pinball table, Baby Doll, has been saved from the scrap heap and morphed into the fully fledged 
source: 
During the pioneering days of video gaming and home computing, our industry may have been small when compared to Japan, the US and UK, but we were (and still are) proud of our gaming heritage – we will always be proud of 
As Australian gaming enthusiasts, we always paid attention to what was happening around the world, like we still do till this day. In the early 80s, when home computing took off in Australia, we were on a parallel with our gaming brethren in Europe and the United Kingdom, more so than Japan and the US.
With our nascent video gaming magazine industry barely keeping up with our veracious appetite for gaming information, we turned our attention to the British media to satisfy our craving. Our newsstands were filled with brilliantly written British magazines, from Crash and Zzap!64, to Zero, ST/Amiga Format and Computer & Video Games (to name a few!). These magazines were our only channel to what was going on in the home computing and gaming industry. The magazines introduced us to household British developers, bedroom coders, musicians, publishers and journalists, so it is satisfying to finally watch a film based on this history.
I must admit, I prefer my 
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!
It is inevitable, you will lose all your lives or use up your time limit on a video game. This is even more apparent on arcade games. Arcade games are built to attract you and then suck as many coins out of your pocket to get that little bit further in a game.