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Retrogaming Magz, Comics and Books!

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Planes, trains and automobiles? No, magazines, comics and books, the retro gaming kind!

Last weekend we tweeted a couple of teaser photos of a number of magazines in our collection and promised that we would share more. Well, here they are! Relocating this stuff is always a chore, but the amount of nostalgia we get is priceless, so it is always well worth it.

For those keen observers, you will note that there are no photos of our most favourite 80s mag, Zzap64!, but rest assured, those issues are well preserved and didn’t require relocating. We hope these images bring back great memories for you too!

All images copyright of ausretrogamer.com



Chip’s Challenge is coming to the SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive!

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Chip's Challenge for SNES and SEGA GENESIS

Chip’s Challenge for SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Pre-Orders Now Live

Top-down tile-based puzzle game

Independent publisher The Retro Room Games has recently announced that the pre-orders for Chip’s Challenge on Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive are now open!

Play as Nerdy Chip McCallahan, who navigates through a series of increasingly difficult puzzles in 148 two-dimensional levels, in order to prove himself and gain membership to the very exclusive Bit Busters Club.

Chip's Challenge

Originally developed by Epyx, Chip’s Challenge is a classic top-down tile-based puzzle game launched on Atari Lynx in 1989. The game was also ported to MS-DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and the Amstrad CPC back in the 90s.

Chip’s Challenge was also released on Steam 6 years ago featuring 90% of positive reviews. This will be the first time that the game will be available on Nintendo and Sega platforms.

Chip’s Challenge will be available on 16-bit consoles including a cartridge in both PAL and NTSC versions, a box and an instruction booklet. Pre-orders for the game can be found here.


source: The Retro Room Roo

Features:

  • 148 two-dimensional levels
  • Block-pushing puzzles
  • Dodging enemies
  • Skip to the next level option

Price: US$24.99 (cart only) / US$49.99 (Complete In Box)



Things Are Afoot At The Ausretrogamer Fun Factory in 2021

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With having a lot of time at home in 2020, we had been thinking about changing things up in the Ausretrogamer Fun Factory!

Things are afoot with designing the new space, which will see new additions, things being moved around and unfortunately, stuff that will go to a new home. We are quite excited with the next chapter of our games room, so we’ll be sure to share our journey throughout 2021 of the new and improved Ausretrogamer Fun Factory.

For now, you can have a read how the Ausretrogamer Fun Factory has evolved over the years.

Taking one last look at the current Ausretrogamer Fun Factory (click to enlarge)

 

The New Yorker Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto

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Simon Parkin’s The New Yorker interview with Nintendo’s legendary Shigeru Miyamoto is an interesting, insightful and wide-ranging, reflective conversation. Seldom do we hear or read anything so candid or beyond Shigeru’s amazing creations in his four decade long career with the Big N.

So kick back and read Simon’s refreshing interview with Miyamoto-san, as he speaks openly about his video games design philosophy, being the boss, guns in video games, his kids love of Sega (Ed: what?!) and the new Super Nintendo World theme park at Universal Studios in Japan.

image source: The New Yorker

 

New Bucket List Entry: Super Nintendo World

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We have clearly been under a rock and missed the news that Nintendo had developed their theme park, Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in Japan.

As massive fans of theme parks, and yeah, Nintendo, this news was obviously right up our alley! With what has transpired this year, the opening of this cool ‘World’ has now been pushed out to Spring (our Autumn) in 2021! Oh yeah, not to be outdone, there will be a Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in Hollywood too!

With a lot of travel restrictions around (rightfully so!), for now we’ll just sit here and admire Super Nintendo World from afar (and drool over our keyboard).

Who else is putting Super Nintendo World on their bucket list? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook to let us know.


source: Mainichi newspaper

 

Our Favourite Nintendo Game That We Still Play Today

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Asking a gamer to nominate their favourite Nintendo game is like asking a parent to pick their favourite child. Well, guess what, we are going to do the unthinkable!

But before we crown our favourite, let us tell you about the top 3 contenders (that we still love playing till this day!):

First contender, Wave Race 64 (N64) – yes, we did pick Wave Race 64 above Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 007. Don’t get us wrong, the aforementioned games are superb, but nostalgia draws us to Wave Race 64. What wasn’t there to like – realistic water physics, challenging courses and an absolutely cracking 2 player challenge – ‘Bonsai!’. We lost a lot of hours playing this game head to head. Oh yeah, the N64 controller was perfect for this game.

The second contender is none other than Super Mario Bros. (SMB) on the NES. This 2D platformer catapulted the Mario franchise into the stratosphere for good reason. The game had great level design, matched by awesome gameplay, a mesmerising Koji Kondo tune and most importantly, intuitive control – what more could you want!

Well, if it wasn’t for the next game, I guess the choice would have been easy and SMB would have walked away with the prize. Let us tell you about a 16-bit platformer that took the SMB ingredients, gave them a fair shake and then poured the contents into the SNES for a game we call (drum roll please), Super Mario World (SMW)! With SMW, the 2D platformer reached its pinnacle – sublime level design, 16-bit aesthetics that were an absolute feast for your eyes and the sound was perfectly atmospheric. This was a game that you could lose yourself in. SMW is one of those games you can either pick up and play for half an hour to get your Mario fix, or play till the wee hours of the morning. SMW walks away with the prize of our favourite Nintendo game of all time. Thank you Mr. Miyamoto for creating the definitive 2D platformer.

Phew, that was hard!

 

Retrofy Your Nintendo Switch Dock

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The Nintendo Switch is still our go to contemporary gaming system, so when we see clever peeps injecting nostalgia with their Switch, we definitely take note!

One such clever peep, Imokruok has created two cool casemod docks for his Nintendo Switch, one based on the 8-bit NES and the other on the 16-bit SNES, albeit the North American version 😉

The best part is that Imokruok has documented these creations in step by step photos, so make sure you check out the full compliment of pics in the above Imgur links. Oh yeah, check out the video of the NES Switch dock builds process below:

NES Switch dock (build pics in comments) from r/NintendoSwitch

Donor SNES case – it all begins!

The completed SNES Switch dock – it’s a beauty

The NES case mod – it all has to start somewhere!

The finished product!
image source: Imgur

 

FunKey S – All Your Retro Games On A Keychain

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We promised no more Kickstarters, but this FunKey S – the world’s smallest handheld gaming system, has grabbed us by the scruff off the neck and it ain’t letting go!

You can relax with the question about funding, the FunKey S is already well and truly funded – by a long shot! Right, let’s get straight to it – if you want a retro gaming system small enough to fit on your keyring so that it can be taken anywhere, then the FunKey S is your jam. The FunKey S features a clam-shell design, just like the classic GameBoy Advance SP. Once opened, it greets you with a 1.54″ IPS LCD screen and a D-pad style controller. This teensy little beast is no slouch, with an ARM Cortex-A7 CPU @ 1.2 GHz under the hood. Playtime is roughly 90 minutes on a 20 minute charge, which is pretty decent too.

Most importantly, the games are loaded via its SD card slot, supporting memory cards up to 128GB, which should be enough for pretty much every retro game under the sun – which bring us to the shady part. To play NES, SNES, Game Boy (Original, Color, GBA), Sega Master System, Sega Genesis / Megadrive, Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Playstation, WonderSwan and Neo Geo Pocket games, you will have to hunt for ROMs in some pretty murky areas on the web, which is kinda not so legal.

If you are craving to play classic video games on the go, then you can’t really go past this small and very cute foldable handheld!

story & image source: technabob

 

How Much Storage Would It Take To Store Every Nintendo Video Game That Can Be Emulated?

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So how much storage space would it take to store every Nintendo video game (from the stable of their major consoles) that can be emulated?

Don’t worry about trying to work out the answer, as Reddit user, RHYTHM_GMZ, has already done all the hard work for us.

You’ll need roughly 7.53TB (yep, that’s TERABYTES!) of space to be able to emulate every darn Nintendo video game! With the Wii making up 6.56TB of the 7.53TB total, you may want to know the breakdown of the rest of the Nintendo game libraries, so here you go:

  • NES – 237 MB
  • SNES – 1.7GB
  • N64 – 5.5GB
  • GB/GBC – 568MB
  • GBA – 8.4GB
  • NDS – 83.2GB
  • GameCube – 867GB
  • Wii – 6.56TB

For those of you that prefer to visualise these figures, we have you covered – see below!

NOTE: Games libraries based on the uncompressed NTSC versions

[story source: RHYTHM_GMZ  via Reddit]



TMNT SNES Party Wagon Retro System

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Check out this one of a kind TMNT SNES Party Wagon console created by Jarno Kotavuopio (aka: JRN33). Surely this would be the first Turtles SNES Party Wagon in the world?!

We love everything about this, from the headlights and passenger compartments lighting up, working tail lights, glass windows, to the steering wheel, the secret battle button “Turtle Power” and the original car parts!

But wait, there is more – the POWER and RESET buttons are located on top just in front of the controller ports and the top loading cart slot. The power and audio/video cables plug into jacks mounted on the back of the van. To ensure completeness, there are matching custom painted controllers and game cartridge. Jarno informs us that all stickers on the controllers, game carts and wagon are custom made (with the exception of the TMNT logo).

Turtle SNES power!

source: Jacki33 via Deviantart