The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Who would have thought RACV were into retro gaming?!
To our astonishment, we stumbled upon a great article in their bi-monthly magazine, RoyalAuto, where they ask the most pertinent question, does Sam Crowther have Australia’s best Nintendo collection? To find out, go and read all about Sam’s impressive and vast collection here.
story and image source: RACV RoyalAuto
Nikola Tesla was one clever cookie – imagine what he could’ve come up with if he was still around? Well, we would guess that he would use his namesake coils to perform an 8-bit cover of the Super Mario Bros. theme.
Watch out for the sparks!
source: Franzoli Electronics
Remember the Tetris light you could build from tetrominos? Well, now there is a Super Mario Bros. light you can build too!
The Super Mario Bros Build A Level Light is a stackable 16 light-blocks set that features a host of familiar icons and characters from the much-loved Mario saga, which you can arrange as you wish. Each pixelated cube is double-sided and can be stacked in a whole host of combinations to create your own unique Mario level.
With Christmas around the corner, this is the perfect gift for gaming geeks and nostalgia junkies alike, that will brighten up their home or gaming space.
source: Firebox
story source: technabob
First it was NFTs, and now it seems hermetically sealed classic games are being auctioned off at some nose-bleeding prices!
Goldin Auctions have been spruiking their recent record breaking auction sales on their social channels, which want of a better word or phrase, has put a lot of noses out of joint. Unless you are the seller that just pocketed US$430,500 for Sonic The Hedgehog, this rating/grading system and auction of video games is seen as a form of evil in the worldwide retro gaming community.
Final Sale Price: $430,500
An all-time record for any @SEGA Genesis game. pic.twitter.com/aGgBX0cSjh
— Goldin Auctions (@GoldinAuctions) September 19, 2021
Sure, lets WATA-rate games and then pawn (Ed: ahem, auction!) them off for some absurd amounts of money, but this whole setup and process just doesn’t sit right. From our perspective, it is great that video games share the limelight with other highly sought after memorabilia, but c’mon, a Sonic The Hedgehog Sega Genesis / Mega Drive game going for almost half a million US dollars is just mind blowingly ridiculous, or are we missing something here? At this rate, our 1989 factory sealed Commodore 64 disk version of Double Dragon would be rated a 10 and be close to being priceless!
What are your thoughts on these video game rating systems and auctions? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook and let us know!
Now this is so darn cool! A robot creates a giant Super Mario Bros. mural out of a record breaking 102,600 dominoes in a little over 24 hours! We bet that this has now piqued Skynet’s interest.
NASA engineer, Mark Rober released the below video and stated that he was happy to finally have it out after 5 years of development. Using precision-engineered toppling dominoes, the clever robot, dubbed “Dominator”, can setup 300 dominoes at a single time – imagine the amount of hands you would need to do the same!
Who said hard work doesn’t pay off?! Well done to Mark and team for creating an ingenious robot that can create impressive murals like this one.
source: Mark Rober
story source: laughingsquid
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
It took a while for our 35th anniversary Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. to arrive, but we are so glad that it did!
Nintendo sure knows how to tug at our nostalgic strings, as we pre-ordered this as soon as it was revealed in early September. We recall how excited we were at the time and couldn’t wait for November 13th to come around! Well, November 13th come and went, with the dreaded postage notification advising us that good ole Aussie Post would deliver our Game & Watch (G&W) some time between Nov 16 – Nov 19, which was like a pixel dagger thrown right into our 8-bit heart. As it turned out (and luckily for us), Aussie Post took the median value and delivered this precious cargo today (November 17). At the time of writing, we still had a number of our friends that hadn’t received their units.
Enough with the negativity regarding pre-orders not arriving on the day of release (although, this should be fixed!), this Game & Watch has exceeded our expectations by a country mile. The see-through sleeve on the gold packaging was an indicator that this thing was going to be special. Upon opening and holding the G&W, it was like being in the playground at primary school, being wowed by this little contraption made by Nintendo and showing it off to our friends. The look, the feel – including the D-pad and buttons, has been nailed by Nintendo. We didn’t need any LR-44 cell batteries to power this unit, so that was a plus. The only niggle we had, this new G&W did not come with the little tuck-in stand that the old school ones have. But like we said, it’s a very very small niggle. Of course we compared it to a number of our original Game & Watch units, including its namesake, and we can say, this new one fits right in!
The only wish we have at this stage is for people interested in this 35th anniversary G&W game (that missed out on the pre-order) get an opportunity to get one, at a non-scalped price! Oh yeah, we also wish for a Donkey Kong Multi-Screen G&W next, with the original Donkey Kong and perhaps Donkey Kong Country – surely that’s not too much to ask for!
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!
We must admit that the latest Nintendo Direct got us excited with all of the games, products and events that are coming up to celebrate Super Mario’s 35th anniversary!
In particular, we were most excited about Super Mario 3D All-Stars, the Augmented Reality (AR) induced Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and the awesomely cool Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. These will all be launching in the very near future (make sure you pre-order, as they will go quick)!
We have included the rest of the announcement further below, so let us know on Twitter or Facebook of what you are most excited about!
Wahoo!
source: Nintendo
To keep up-to-date with the latest Super Mario news, check out the official Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary website.
Related videos:
| Super Mario Bros. 35th Anniversary Direct | https://youtu.be/pmEhxzbPjCI |
| Super Mario 3D All-Stars is coming September 18th! | https://youtu.be/tXcHqmPI_3k |
| Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit – Coming October 16th! | https://youtu.be/5W_MNv65UMc |
| Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury comes to Nintendo Switch on February 12th, 2021! | https://youtu.be/1LoC9hK_zLo |
| Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. – coming November 13th! | https://youtu.be/DrCI0Z-_o5E |
| Super Mario Bros. 35 – Announcement trailer (Nintendo Switch) | https://youtu.be/AMpi0rTvCuQ |
After the Legend of Zelda LEGO Ideas set, we thought that would be it with Lego news for this week. How wrong were we!
Japan is such a cool country! Wish we could visit there on a regular basis to stock up on super cool stuff that we will never get or get months or years later.
So what’s this about then? Well, it’s more cool Lego stuff. We previously informed you all that LEGO Super Mario was set to launch in August, however, Nintendo have announced that the Starter Course and two expansion (Piranha Plant Power Slide and Desert Pokey) sets will launch first in Japan on July 10.
Wish we could be at the Nintendo Tokyo store on July 10 to get our mits on this Lego awesomeness! Alas, we will have to wait till August 1 like the rest of the world.
story source: Kotaku / image source: Nintendo