Retro Revival 2013

I had a great time with friends last weekend enjoying a huge dollops of retro gaming awesome-ness at Retro Revival. Chris and Craig sure did put on one hellava show!

The venue was rammed wall to wall with happy gamers, retro consoles of all ages, computers, handhelds, arcade machines, exhibitions, and vendors. The great thing about this particular venue is that it was all spread over a different areas rather than being crammed into one room. You could browse along the corridors as you headed out to the bar, or seek shelter and a little quiet time in the chillout zones were you’ll find the cocktail cabinets.

Part of the main room. Bottom left is Roger Kean of Newsfield magazines and producer of the tablets of my youth, Zzap64 and Crash magazine. Behind him, sadly not in shot is the one and only cover artist Oli Frey.

My colleagues and friends from from the Retro Computer Museum had been allocated a really nice spot nestled between rows of classic arcade machines allowing  Andy and co. to setup a great selection of systems and showcasing some of their rarer gear.

I also spotted  Andy’s C64 had picked up a few more signature from the VIP’s attending the weekend too. Surely, the making of one highly sought after C64!

The Centre For Computing History also had a fascinating hands on display that charted pretty much all of the popular (and not so popular) video consoles right from the early Pong based systems such as the Odyssey  through the various generations 8,16, 32 and 64 bit  consoles and computers.

I’d forgotten how big the Atari 5200 actually is considering the size of the 2600 and 7800 models. Even the trackball module is a hefty ‘ol beast. I spent quite some time here playing Missile Command etc.

Roll up, roll up, the Carnivals in town….o.k so on the Woody it’s a bit iffy, but I just love this game (especially on the Colecovision) and am game whenever I come across it……

…..and In this instance it was part of the entrance to the Videogamecarnival where you can play, amongst other things, on giant Gameboys!

..and the Fruitcade, which uses real fruit as controls! It’s the weirdest game of Space Invaders I’ve ever played…and the sharpest (thanks Pineapple) Start button I’ve ever used too!

There was also plenty of arcade machines to play on including classics like Defender, Pole Position, Centipede, Star Wars, Outrun and Phoenix as well as a good selection of Neo Geo MVS cabinets.

and an old favourite I can play on  for hours.

One of the many gaming exhibits – the Wall of Video Game History.

..and after many years, I finally got to go on another Virtual Reality.  The owner mentioned that this particular model is based around a Commodore Amiga 3000.

He’s behind you StiGGy!

Sadly, on the day, there wasn’t much in the way of Pinball, but the handful of tables  were fun all the same. I’ll have to wait until August to get my fix as the UK Pinball party are hosting a 140+ table event :-O

There was also plenty of homebrew gaming to sample too on both  older and modern devices and plenty of the programmers around to to get chatting to. I’ve amassed quite a list of titles I’ll be looking at in greater detail and I’ll post more about these later on.

Spotted in the wild, was a full size working replica of Fix it Felix arcade cabinet ported by Jim Bagley and housed  in a custom cabinet by Turnarcades and one of those new Commodore 64 PCs.

I picked up a few things from the trade vendors including an internal DiVIDE unit for my Speccy +3 (or +2), a minty fresh mk1  Gameboy (and a few carts), a couple of 3DO games, a couple of C64 big box game bundles, some classic game magazines to add to the collection and a couple of LED arcade buttons for my Mame cab (or next project).

All in all, it was an absolutely fantastic weekend in the company of some great friends. Lets hope that this is only the beginning of more to come.

Here’s a great walkthru video showing most of the areas and all the cool stuff one could play with.

Catching up.

Phew, it’s been a hectic few weeks both at work and at home and now that the sun has finally got his best hat on (for a week ) , a good portion of game time has been swapped for gardening time and man-cave swapped for greenhouse. One plant I’m growing for fun this year could be considered a game of sort as when fully ripe and touched in the wrong place, ‘exploding cucumbers’ quite literally explode….and quiet violently too as they throw out their seeds at speed. Missile Command in the greenhouse? What I’m hoping to do is capture some of them on my camera as it has a video mode at super slo-mo 1000 frames per second.

Plans for this (bank) holiday weekend was to spend a little time putting the the final touches together on my MAME arcade cabinet but I’ve had delay this as more importantly, we’ve been out looking for a new car (the last becoming very unreliable and mechanic bills rocketing).

 

I take delivery of one next week which just in the nick of time really, as I was heading out next weekend for a spot of camping and hiking in Wales and then the weekend afterwards back out west to the the ultra geek-fest retro gaming event of the year Retro Revival. Quite a few friends have been busy these past few months and I think the consensus is, that everyone is looking forward to a huge slice of downtime at Revival with plenty laughs and massive intake of retro gaming.

The lists of attending pinball tables and arcade machines keep growing as do some items of note that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing before. The list of arcade machines also includes seven colourful Zaccaria cabinets including a Phoenix cab just like my own – accept this one is fully restored. I’m also looking forward to checking out event co-creator Chris’s own Zac cabs including his highly impressive Super Cobra cab like this one.

 

Game time of late has been a little light and have a stack of titles I want to get through including all of the entries and winners for this years C64 Seuck Compo (i did try the twin stick Spy Rider a few weeks ago which was superb), a couple of Atari 2600, I picked up on eBay as well as thirty Sega MS carts I managed to bag for just £10. Fez came out for PC the other day which is also on the list as well as Sturmwind although this hasn’t arrived yet.

I have, however been looking at early video games from Capsule Computers after reading an article charting the rise of some of the biggest video game producers and am finding there first video game Vulgus to be quiet addictive despite being a little bland.

Any-ho, that me done. I hope, you’ve been getting in more retro gaming than I have and if you happened to be popping a long to Revival, maybe I’ll bump into you over in the Retro Computer Museum area?

 

Donning the VR Helmet again?

Exciting news coming from Revival Events as we count down the weeks until to their big retro gaming event in May – They’ve only gone and found a working Virtual Reality!

This unit will be available for visitors to sample.

Back in the early 90′s when VR was was state of the art and a technology that would change the world, I was working for IBM  and through some contract or another there was a team of engineers that were involved in the initial setup of a VR centre. I’m not entirely sure what IBM’s involvement were (i think theyprovided the high end workstations)  but short story was,  I somehow managed to blag my way to accompany the engineers and a have looksee for myself.

There were three VR booths in total so I climbed into one and donned the helmet with the help of one of the engineers. You stood in the centre of the booth which some sort of roofless cage that had a padded barrier about waist height which would stop you from wandering off and hurting yourself once plugged into the VR world.  I managed to grab myself a good few hours on one whilst the other engineers did their IBM engineering thang.

The huge VR helmet looked a lot heavier than what it actually was and I was surprised on how light it was considering the tech inside and what i hoped wouldn’t be a giant needle that would connect my brain to the monster 486 PC rigs

Just nippin out for a pint of milk luv.

 

You also had  sort of wired grip that you held in one hand and this would be reproduced in the VR world allowing you to interact with the environment or in the case of one of the games, hold a sword. The grandfather of the wii-mote?

Expecting some kind of funky sci-fi tunnel effect I ‘plugged into VR’. Sadly, nothing like that…just static.

 

Those initial tech demos which were mainly 3D rooms that you could ‘walk’ and look around. There was nothing much to do here other than to get used to the VR helmet tracking system which relay the image on screen based to the helmet  movement. You could  also manipulate certain items using your digital hand which really was cool. Tried as much as I did though I still couldn’t Virtual flip the bird.

 

Despite the low refresh frame rate, primitive polygon graphics and camera flicker. This was fascinating stuff alright and at times you really felt part of this new world.

After the tech demo, I got chance to play a game and a opportunity to really interact with the VR environment  Details are a little sketchy as it was a long time ago but I seem to recall the VR world being set in some sort of medieval/fantasy castle and I remember stone walls, draw bridges and flaming torches on the walls. I also remember the 3D sword welding skeleton that you had to fight as well….Maybe I should have taken the red and blue pill?

Well, when I say fight, what I mean was waving your VR sword around in the hope of either hitting ol’boney or parry any inbound blows. I’d like to say it was realistic but sadly it wasn’t. It was slow, unresponsive and the screen flicker gave you a head ache…..but, it was a first step into something us Tron loving gamers had been dreaming about  for year.

 

 

Sadly, VR never really caught on but who knows now that entertainment technology is steering towards immersible experiences with 3D, motion control console gaming and augmented reality – I for one am really excited about those Google Goggles..sorry glasses.

Still, as a fan of older retro technology be it cool or crap, I’m really looking forward to trying out that retro chic VR booth at Revival and donning the helmet again.

See you on the other side?

 

 

Retro Gaming Events 2013.

Wow, only a week into the new year and the ‘nerd calendar’ is filling up quite nicely with UK based retro gaming events this year. I’m hoping to attend them all throughout 2013 subject to a busy year at work and our redecorating plans at home. All work and no play eh?

Retro Computer Museum gaming weekend.

29th March – April 1st  @ Snibston. Starting off the new year with a bang, the Retro Computer Museum will return to Snibston Discovery Museum for another fun filled weekend of retro gaming goodness.

http://retrocomputermuseum.co.uk//index.php

Revival 2013.

18th -19th May  - This one is going to be flippin awesome. A dedicated retro gaming event containing pinball, arcade machines, retro computers and consoles , homebrew, Q&As. Basically all the good bits from Replay without all that modern gaming milarky RCM will be supplying a lot of the consoles and computers for this one so a busy weekend it’s be. Hopefully, will have chance to hit the pinball tables again.

http://www.revivalretroevents.com

 

TBC Retro Derby GNG.

 

Last years event was great fun and a real enthusiasts vibe going on. Got to play on some great homebrew games as well as  new/old tech toys. Hopefully the Commodore Super-CPU will return!

See previous blog post – (http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/retro-gaming-weekend-at-derby-sunday/ )

 

Silicon Dreams.

5th – 7th July – After many requests, the guys behind the awesome-ness Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley park are back for another event this year. All is still in the planning stage but RCM will be helping out and supplying some of the equipment. Sadly, the venue moves from Bletchley to Snibston Discovery Museum which is a shame as Bletchley is the perfect place for a computer event. Never mind though, still one I’m looking forward to as details emerge.

http://www.silicondreams.org.uk/

See previous blog post – (http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/vintage-computer-festival/)

SuperByte Festival.

13th – 14th September – Another event I’m looking forward too and one that’s being held in the coolest retro gaming pub in the UK – The Lass O Gowrie. Retro Gaming, chip tunes, great food and my fellow RCM’er will be along to join in the fun. As a fan, I’m particular looking forward to hearing Sabre Pulse play -

 

I’m still awaiting dates but RCM will also be hosting a couple of members events this year as well as the possibility of running a dedicated Commodore, Sinclair and Atari event(s).

Likewise, the computer club  and homebrew gaming weekends continue at the Lass ‘O Dowrie so check out Mikes facebook feed for details -

http://www.facebook.com/HomebrewGaming

 

Game on 2013!

 

 

 

 

 

Retro GNG review at Commodore Free #66

Commodore Free issue # 66 is out for download and yet again, is chock full of all the good stuff for all you Commodore users.

http://www.commodorefree.com/

 

This particular issue is rather special for me as it contains a review by Peter Badrick about the  RetroDerby GnG  event  that myself and my colleagues from the Retro Computer Museum attended.

 

<see previous posts - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/retro-gaming-weekend-at-derby-saturday/ and

http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/retro-gaming-weekend-at-derby-sunday/

 

If you missed out this year, event hosts Shaun Bebbington and Mr C16 – Chris Snowden are planning on holding similar  events next year and I’m sure they’ll be announced in future issues of Commdore Free. Alternatively, I’ll post here.

A great read this month, and again, tons of new homebrew game info and articles – I particularly enjoyed the  feature about  tape piracy and its effect (or lack of ).

Outstanding work again CF team and if the jolly fella happens to stick a new shiny tablet device under the tree this year, treat it to a bit of Commodore love this Christmas and check out the tablet friendly epub and mobi (and PDF) editions or Commdore Free.

 

Hehe, warning! – There’s a picture of yours truly on page 35/36, That RCM Zip Stick joystick, Amiga & Banshee got a bashing that weekend!

 

History of Ocean Software Book gets the green light.

Although a little slow to get going, with just 7 days left, the Kickstarter project to produce a biography about Ocean Software has reached its goal. Fanfare!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/47744432/the-history-of-ocean-software-by-retro-fusion

There’s still time to back this great project though including additional  stretch goals to have as many ex Ocean staff attend the Revival Retro event being held in the spring next year (UK).

Until then, am looking forward to hearing all about the development of the new book and counting down until summer 2013 when we can all get out mitts on it. Nice one Chris :-)

Here’s a quick look back at when i managed to locate their old offices during a trip to Manchester.

http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/a-wave-to-ocean-software/

..and finally, a line from a website I read today that made me smile.

‘Back in ’88, everyone had Kylie & Jason but we had US Gold and Ocean’

RCM Members gaming weekend.

Just got back from another damn fine weekend of retro gaming goodness at the Retro Computer Museum.

Despite a nip in the air, +40 classic computers, consoles, one projector and a collection of eager gamers was all that was needed to raise the temps and to get everyone enjoying themselves. There was a couple of new faces this time around which is always nice to see as well as the ‘usual suspects’ for guaranteed laughs and fun.

I’ve not taken a great deal of photos this time around as I was rather enjoying quite a bit of gaming on the Saturday including copious amounts of Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. Here’s a handful of the quick snaps I made in between bouts.

This weekend was a chance to take a good look at some of RCM’s new toys like this Memotech MTX 512 complete with Rememorizer addon board which provides additional VGA output, SD card storage and 512k of extra RAM. With this much tech, I’m pretty sure our MTX 512 can now recreate our own Kelly LeBrock

The ZXpand on the ZX81 still continues to impress and at one point we had one of the old ’81′s running at 20mhz! The game ‘Mayhem’ still continues to be an event favourite and high score sessions to beat Stu’s 72 points where attempted. I think Soph came closest with 60 odd points.

JT was happy to test fit one of his SwinSID C64 SID chip replacements into one of RCM’s breadbins and take it for a test drive. Big thanks for letting me have one of these puppies myself. It’s currently sat in my C64 next to me playing a bumper crop of High Score Ballads from CSDB . More on the SwinSID later on.

I also managed to pick up another homemade SD2IEC for my Commodores as my own has developed a bit of a fault. Hopefully the chip will be of use to you JT?

Mike brought along his Android based MK808 mini computer which is so small it makes the Raspberry Pi look huge…and to think, something that small can run pretty much all console emulators (even PSX) full screen in hi def! XBMC runs beutifully on it as well as PC games like GTA3. Add to that all those lovely Google apps and for around £45, i’m highly tempted to get one of these myself. I’ll be researching a bit more on the Mk808 these coming days as its a real tinker’ers tech toy!

What was also impressive was Sophie’s new Atari Mega STE. Some of the demo’s running on this boxy monster were veeeery impressive. This was the first time I’ve seen a Mega STE before and despite it looking a bit ugly, was quite an impressive piece of kit it was. Soph was telling me it’s one of those rare items that pop up from time to time and she’d managed to locate this faulty unit on eBay in Germany which was being sold for next to nothing as it was faulty. Having won the item, said fault turned out to be very was minor and is all in working condition again. Top marks Soph!

Sunday was all about relaxed, chillin and having a natter and I spent a while trying out a someones Android tablet – one of those very impressive – now it’s a netbook, now it’s a tablet Asus Transformers thingymebobs. We wanted to see if we could get Mame and other emulators working with my iCade. After detecting via Bluetooth and pairing successfully we tried a few emulators but couldn’t get it to work . Even mame4droid, with native icade support wouldn’t work. In the end, we downloaded a simple joystick app, mapped the controls of the iCade as keyboard inputs and used this configuration to set the control type for each emulator. This time it worked, and really well too. In fact, just as well as on the iPad with no lag or connection issues after that initial hiccup. With Christmas coming, and if you’re an Android owning retro gamer. Maybe think about adding one to your list to Santa?

Messing around with the iCade, messing around with the MSX.

Amongst the games played this weekend, there was a couple that seemed to stand out for me so i’ve added them to my list further exploration.

More digital pinball courtesy of ‘Ruiner’ on the Atari Jag. I’m still tempted to get a Jag now, even if it’s just for this one game.

Moon Cresta on the Dragon 64 (via multicart). Suprisingly a very faithful port of the arcade original…on a Dragon!

Strider II – Sega Master – I’ve not played this one before and was instantly hooked. Will be tracking down my own copy of this fun little run and gun sequel.

Soviet Strike – Playstation. I haven’t really played any of the ‘Strike’ games since Desert Strike on the Sega Megadrive but this 3d-ish incarnation on the Playstation was actually rather fun.

More Soul Caliber but not before resting ones aching wrists. Thanks to Levs for bringing the arcade sticks in, much better than standard controllers. Am now on a mission to find myself one!

Even better connected to the projector and the lights off.

All in all a rather splendid weekend of gaming with friends new and old. That pretty much wraps it up for gaming events this year and it was nice to have the last of 2012 finished off at home at the retro computer museum.

Here’s to more next year.

Commodore 16 & Plus/4 collection.

I just wanted to post some of the pictures I taken at last weekends retro gaming event showing parts of our hosts epic Commodore 16 and Plus/4 collection.

Chris has a copy every game ever released for the C16 & Plus/4,apart just one game which is a variant of an existing game  he owns but was released in a larger outer box.

The collection contains all tapes, disks and cartridges.

 

Look at all those goodies! – I found quite a few of my favourites here and I even managed to locate my very first Plus/4 game purchase. At the time it was the most I’d spent on a computer  and was one of the Five-Star Game bundles  which included Blagger, Pogo Pete, Ghost Town, Tom Thumb and Defence 16. I remember most of them being pretty terrible, but seeing those game covers again sure brought back a lot of memories for me.

Chris also has a nic  collection of hardware including Ram packs, custom cartridges, SID cartridges, Eprom Burners and addon mods as well as a nice collection of replacement chips.

I counted about 20 Datasette units. I guess you can never have enough!

 

Why oh why didn’t Commodore choose the Grey/White colour combination on all their hardware? It’s so much better looking than the Beige used on the C64 & Vic-20. Just look at how nice those peripherals look in high tech grey. Loving the 1551 and  no RetroBrite required

I’ve mentioned before, but many thanks again to Chris for donating a Commodore C116 to Retro Computer Museum.

 

Boxed Commodore’s.

I’ve always had, and always will have a soft spot for the Commodore Plus/4 and so you can probably imagine my reaction when I saw all this lot! A superb collection and many thanks to Chris for allowing us the opportunity to have a good browse around over the weekend.

Retro Gaming Weekend at Derby – Sunday.

Back in Derbyshire for day two of retro gaming and a more gentle start to the day compared to yesterday. After meeting up with chaps and chatting over a morning coffee, we fired up the machines and awaited our visitors.

During the morning I got to take another look at batch of Atari Jaguar games and one in particular was really fun to play. It was a Pinball game called – Ruiner.

Two tables are on offer which span over two or three screen. This is the first table and is based around 1950 cold war era of nuclear war and Defcon shenanigans. Plenty to shoot for to keep you entertained and some brilliant spot FX. Gameplay is a little slower that most pinball games but somehow this makes it more of fun to aim the ball.

The second table is similar to Dungeons and Dragons and again, rather fun to play. I did, however, prefer the first table and it’s this one that I’d really like to play more of in the future.

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There was also some pretty impressive Commodore hardware on show to and we were treated to a look at the SID chip addon board for the Commodore Plus/4 (have added one of these to my list to Santa!) and literally jaw dropping demonstrations of a Commodore 128D (a very nice machine in itself) which has outfitted with a SuperCPU expansion board.

A stock Commodore 64 runs at about 1 Mhz, so imagine multiplying this by 20 times and you’ve got one powerful machine which is technically faster than the Amiga . That’s what the SuperCPU does and with game like Driller which you probably know runs at about one frame per seconds on a standard c64, now runs just like a modern FPS game at +30 frames per second….fullscreen!

C128 in C64 mode…how much RAM!

In addition, it’s owner, and event co-host Shaun was able to demo some of the software specifically designed to show off the capabilities of a fully pimped C64/C128 including games like awesome-ness that is Metal Dust.

Never thought I see a C64/C128 running a game that looked so impressive, using the full colour pallette with so many objects and scrolling sprites, huge textured rocks, awesome soundtracks and digitised speech all running without flicker or hiccup. Note the FD-2000 Floppy Drive. This was one hellava setup!

I tried to capture Metal Dust on my camera but the monitor sync refresh was producing way too many lines on the recording so here’s a. Youtube video of the game in action.

The SuperCPU is a highly sought after item and can easily fetch up to £2000 so my research leads me to believe. It certainly a piece of Commodore tech that i won’t be owning but rather generously, Shaun has offered to loan his setup for our next RCM event! I can’t wait to take another closer look at it and sample some of the games that have been modified to take advantage of the hardware, such as Stunt Car Racer, Test Drive and Castle Master.

Shaun also demonstrating to Andy, few program tips like this simply three line code on the C64 to produce a very impressive maze display.

I also spent a lot of the BBC Master today, especially some of the arcade ports and was quite amazed at the quality on the ol’ Beeb. Galaxians, Joust and Moon Cresta were particularly fun and on the pin sharp image of the Cub monitor they looked even better.

Also, I’ve never played Thrust on the BBC before and have to say, it’s one of the nicest versions I’ve played to date..even if the controls were a bit odd.

I also spent quite a bit of time on Andy’s Amiga 1200 which has a rather daper 68030 board with 32mb ram, a 4GB CF HDD and plenty WHDLoad funtastic software.

A great afternoon on Sensible Soccer, Chaos Engine, Deluxe Galaga to get the wrists aching and then Pinball Fantasies high score tournament to give them a rest again

Dear Santa, please can I have some Ram for my A1200 please?

We also though it would be run to play on the Nintendo Virtual Boy until our eyes began to bled and them immediately moved on to bright whites on MB Vectrex. I’m glad I wasn’t driving straight until later…the shapes burnt on to my eyeballs were taking time to dissipate

Lots of ‘woo’s ‘ and probably a bit of drooling from Dr Phu and Max in the corner, what’s going on?

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Mmm, Commodore C128D in the nude….purdy!

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Whilst Andy pumped out some classic SID chiptunes on the C64, I had one last go on Turmoil on the Vic-20 before waving the last visitor goodbye and we set about dismantling everything and moving it down to our parked cars. We were a little short on hands compared to Saturday but we still managed to get everything pack up quite quickly and into three cars plus my MPV.

Thanking our hosts Chris & Shaun for a great weekend, we made the journey back to HQ and thanks to entering the ‘shortest route’ on my Satnav, i took the harrowing route through twisty, narrow country roads with not a street light in sight. A fun drive when you’re lugging 20 odd TV’s and crates of retro gear!

After the ‘rally stage’ and back at HQ, we unpacked and got everything set up again ready for some European visitors who were attending the museum the next day.

Wary but content, we said our goodbyes and headed home.

That was one helluva great gaming weekend and one that also raised a nice amount for charity too. Chris is looking to do this again on a six month basis and I for one will be back again.

The retro gaming doesn’t stop there though as we have our own members weekend event coming up in two weeks time and is always a laugh when the admins, volunteers and RCM members get together. Better get my Dreamcast out, I’ve got some practising to do!

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Retro Gaming Weekend at Derby – Saturday

Phew, a very looooong day today but one that has seen many, many laughs and a whole bunch of retro gaming goodness with friends old and new.

A cold, dark, wet and very  early start for the RCM admins as we needed to meet up at HQ early enough to pack up around 30 computers/consoles, associated games, attachments and monitors, transport them all to the event in Derbyshire and have anything set up  before the doors opened at 10am.

We must be getting good at this after all these years as we soon had everything organised, loaded up and ready to roll within record time. Who says bloke’s aren’t organised!….o.k, I got slightly lost on the way to the venue because I’d forgotten the postcode

We were met on arrival by our hosts Chris Snowden & Shaun Bebbington and got stuck into to setting up the three rooms with everyone’s favourite gaming gear.

Yet another TV for the pile Jim.

 

In this room we had the MB Vectrex, C64, ZX81, Atari 2600, PC Engine, Amiga 1200, Commodore 64GS, Atari 800, Nintendo Gamecube…

…and not forgetting the VIC-20

Into one of the areas linking the next room we had the BBC Master, Nintendo N64 and a Sega Megadrive/Sega CD setup and Karls Everdrive SD cart playing a rather funky looking port of Angry Birds…on a Megadrive!

I didn’t get chance to take a good look at this today but will certainly be giving it a try when I’m back there tomorrow.

The next room housed an Xbox 360, Nintendo Virtual Boy (was being a bit stubborn at the beginning due to a loose mains cable but we managed to get it going in the end), various  hand held electronic games, SNES, NES, Sony PSX, Atari Jaguar and Chris’ iCade with Mame and various emus.

Finally, we had one of the smaller rooms housing a Sega Dreamcast, PS2 with twin steering wheel setup (I rather enjoyed a spot of 2-up rally action with Jim this afternoon), Amstrad CPC 664 and a Sega Master System.

There was also, various Commodore C16/Plus 4 hardware set up from Chris  humongous collection. All in all i think that there was something here for everyone and so with the doors opened and a few eager retro gamers ready to get going, we had a coffee and got cracking.

As the event was being held on the outskirts of Derby City centre and only a stones throw away from where Core Design had their   office, I thought ‘When in Rome’, I’d re-play some of the games they produced including Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, Chuck Rock and the AGA-Tastic Banshee. The latter is  a game I didn’t really play a great deal when it first came out but had since rediscovered it a few years again. It’s certainly one of the finest looking Schmups on the Amiga.

 

A good start to the day

I don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere remotely close to the type of scores that Jackie was racking up on Drop Zone on the Atari.  A real pro in action! Note the cartridge in the the C64GS…it’s a  port of the classic C16 version of Kickstart.

Max was kind enough to show me his (wip) port of Cosmic Ark to the C64. Damn well addictive, can’t wait to see the finished results.

Well, my score on Mayhem on the ZX81 is improving, but my 51 is no match for Stu’s 65. The challenge has been set for tomorrow

After lunch and getting to know a few other folk that arrived this morning and then the now obligatory Soul Caliber tournament  on the Sega Dreamcast. I was also looking at some of the emulators running on the DC, and noted the how well they ran from CD and in particular with VGA box, how crisp they looked. Mental note to investigate further on my own setup.

Checking out some homebrew games for sale. Mmm Commodore games!

Andy sampling a bit of Commodore Plus/4 homebrew gaming with Adventures In Time

Impressive (but unfortunately not complete) this next game plays and looks very similar to Amalyte on the C64 and has an amazing  soundtrack thanks to the use of the SID chip addon cart that Chris has for his Plus/4. I forget the name of the game (X3no, Xe3o?) so I’ll take another look tomorrow and capture some footage.

One system that I don’t really play a lot on is the Atari Jaguar. Apart from the odd game of Tempest, I rarely sit down to explore some of it’s other titles and RCM has got quite a few so I thought I’d take a look at some of them this afternoon. I was certainly impressed by Power Drive Rally, Cybermorph and the conversion of Syndicate so that’s another note to take a closer look into the Jag.

More homebrew and I spotted a few new cartridges for the C64/C64GS including one of my favourites, the truly bonkers –  Quod Init Exit. <see previos blog post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/c64-homebrew-quod-init-exit/

That pretty much wraps it up for day one. As always, bags of fun when the RCM chaps get together and nice to meet and chat with a  few new people. Bring on day two!

Oh and one last thing..Beam Rider on the ZX81 – That little black box continues to surprise.

Awesome-ness!

Game on.

A busy few weeks at work including a rather long evening in one of our server rooms so not had much free time for posting and the odd  game of late. Thankfully,  Angry Birds:Star Wars & Robotron 2084 on the Atari 7800  has gone some way to restoring downtime equilibrium.

Hopefully, all will be made up this weekend with a full two days of classic gaming at an event called Retro Derby G N G.  The Retro Computer Museum will be supplying a number of  computers and consoles so it’ll be an early start at HQ on Saturday to transport our gear over to the venue. Should be damn fun and if you happen to be in the Derby area, check out the details on the Facebook page and pop along.

http://www.facebook.com/events/181476701988145/

We’re planning on running a 8/16 bit retro event in Derby during November. The event will be aimed at raising funds for cancer charity’s and having loads of fun. The venue is very close to Derby city centre and can accommodate around 30 machines and up to approximately sixty people. I’ve recently permanently moved my Commodore 16 collection to the venue. We have three large rooms with projectors and screens which will be great for multiplayer games. It won’t be limited to just one brand of retro machines as we’d love to see many others too.

At the moment were getting a feeling for numbers and interest in the event. I’d love it to be successful so we can raise funds for the decided charity’s and have an amazing weekend. The weekend that’s been pencilled in is the 17th & 18th November. Everyone is welcome.

I’ll take a few photos and upload on my return.

 

 

 

Mini Star Wars Arcade Cabinet at Play:Expo 2012

One of the highlights for me was seeing and getting chance to play on Dave Brown’s miniature replica arcade machines. The Star Wars upright forms part of Dave’s collection which also includes  Donkey Kong and Defender bartop machines as well as a twin joystick emulation centre control type thingie which was connected to a projector and was bags of fun…so much so that I’m seriously thinking about building my own.

However, back to the Star Wars cab. This thing is truly awesome and is completely scratch built by Dave to resemble the original Atari upright cabinet albeit in about half scale.

A a thing of beauty!

The workmanship on the molding around the screen is fantastic and perfectly detailed just like the original. You can see that a lot of work has gone into this.

Inside the mini cabinet houses a PC which is running Mame to play both Star Wars and Empire Strikes roms back on to the 7″ screen.

The decision to include a full size reproduction yoke control was a good move as it ensures that both games play really well. I think I got a few laughs whilst playing this at the weekend as I was wearing my X-Wing Rogue Squadron T-Shirt at the time

Lock S-Foils into attack position, StiGGy Five standing by…etc etc.

Here’s a quick video of someone playing it on Saturday and then me having a go one handed whilst I filmed and played Empire Strikes back.

If anyone has any more details on Dave’s cabinets and any build photographs I’d love to hear from you.

Play Expo 2012 – swag and goodies.

I’ve got one more day off work today and so I thought I’d take a look through the bag of goodies containing a few items I picked up from Play Expo.

As well as the Atari 2600 games and two homebrew Commodore C64 cartridges I mentioned in my last post I also picked up a small batch of early copies of Edge magazine. These include some the issues written at the time of the launch the 3DO, PSX and Saturn consoles or the release of a now retro classic game. The others I picked up contained articles of interest like this issue with a cover feature about Llamasoft and a indepth interview with Jeff Minter.

Free to all visitors of Play Expo was this rather cool event program which has been designed in the style of a tabloid newspaper At the time I only glanced at it but now back home I can appreciate how much work has gone into it. There’s some really great content here and such a great idea for a program design.

I also picked up issue 3 (and the early issue zero) of Retro Fusion, an independent retro gaming magazine produced by Chris Wilkins (Boyo). One of those great scene magazines written by fans for fans and produced to a very high quality.

I was rather chuffed to see that one of my own photographs appears in the magazine (the one on page 20 with Ocean Software guys Mark Jones, Gary Bracey and Jim Bagley) and as thanks, Chris personalised my copy with his signature. Mark Jones was also next to me and signed my copy too. As a fan of his work from early ZX Spectrum games, this really made my day!

You can read more about Retro Fusion and order a printed copy yourself (or digital version if you prefer) right here – http://www.retrofusion.me.uk/

So with these and a couple of issues of Amiga Future (and not forgetting the latest issue of Retro Gamer Magazine) that’s me sorted for magazines for a week or two.

I haven’t tried them yet but am looking forward to testing the new connection leads I picked up from the Tech-Shack. I brought one for my BBC model B and another for my Sega Megadrive/Master System. Each provide Scart/Composite as opposed to naff RF so I look forward to a much better picture on my TV. They also had a flyer for Commodore SD2iEC devices and a new MMC internal storage device for ZX Spectrum +3. There’s no details on the website yet, but i’ll try to get some more info on these. What is interesting is the low prices!

Amongst the flyers and info cards, one in particular caught my eye and is about a rather interesting Indiegogo project to build a UK based classic arcade hall in the UK. Sounds like fun? Head on over to www.epicarcadeproject.com for details.

One of the best freebies I picked up at the Expo was after chatting to a chap called Dan who is linked to the Vectrex Regeneration project. As you may know, I’m a huge Vectrex fan and this project aims to bring the Vectrex to the iPhone and iPad (Android to follow), complete with authentic Vectrex ‘buzz’, screen overlays and WOOT WOOT iCade support. All original Vectrex games will be included in the app as well as app packs that contain some of the harder to find homebrew releases. This is one app I’m eagerly awaiting and Dan hinted at a November release. Checkout the awesome project at http://www.vectrexregeneration.com/

We got chatting about all things Vectrex and I mentioned Dr Phu’s 21″ DIY Vectrex which he is very much keen to see. I’m sure we can set something up at RCM when Phu has it working again (see previous blog post – http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/wip-demo-of-dr-phus-homemade-21-vectrex/ ) Any-ho, admiring Dan’s Vectrex Regeneration Polo Shirt, he pulled out a spare from a pile in his backpack and gave me one. See me grin from ear to ear!

Hh

Play Expo 2012 – a damn fine classic gaming weekend.

We’ve just got back home, unpacked and catching up with web stuff after one outstanding weekend in Manchester at Play:Expo 2012…or alternatively, from my wife’s prospective, a damn fine shopping exhibition in Manchester

This years event has been the best that Replay Events have held for sure. O.k so it had its moments but I guess some of those where out of the organisers hands…but some weren’t. So before we get to the good stuff here’s the naff parts out of the way first.

Now, as the UK’s biggest gaming event, it’s bound to attract a huge number of attendees, especially when the focus is a 40-60 split between in favour of modern gaming. On that first day on Saturday morning, the queue outside was massive and stretched  the whole  length and way beyond  the equally massive Event Centre building. It continued  further still and way into the carpark in a giant ‘U’ shape. Apparently, some folk had started queueing as 8am even though the door weren’t supposed to open until 11am.

At 11am they didn’t open –  due to a technical hitch somewhere inside had  caused everything to be running a bit late and so the crowds grew even longer. Without any update  from the organisers messages started to travel from mouth to mouth along the lines of weary gamers.  Also it wasn’t apparent that there was different queues depending on if you had prebooked tickets and therefore access to the ‘fastlane’ (like myself) or to pay on the door. It would have been so much easier if there was a few members of staff mingling outside to advise attendees. We  queued for two long hours, but thankfully it didn’t rain and I would have been in the queue much longer if it wasn’t for a few familiar faces that let me join them further down the line. Suffice to say, we all had a laugh and probably one of the best queue’s I’ve been in

The second bit of bad news was that something had gone wrong with a contractor providing PA equipment  and as a result all of the talks & Q&A sessions had to be cancelled. This was not taken happily by many classic gamers who, like myself was really looking forward to these. At that time on Saturday, it wasn’t clear if the talks would resume on Sunday either. A damn shame but not disheartened as the sheer amount of retro stuff wall to wall was staggering.

First port of all, the arcade!

Dedicated cabs included -

Outrun

Afterburner

Space Harrier

Phoenix

1942

Star Wars

Return of the Jedi

Road Blasters

Karate Champ

Juno First (x2)

Red Baron

Pacman

Pucman

Robotron 2084 – Woo hoo!

Monaco GP

Super Hang On

Space Invaders

Super Chase HQ

Vendetta (four player!)

Hyper Sports

Stargate

Defender

Astro Blaster

Pac Land

Daytona

Final Lap

There was also rows of generic Jamma cabs playing games like R-Type, Bosconia, Kung-Fu Master, Klax, Wonderboy.

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…and after that lot, its on to four rows of Pinball machines. Way too many to list (or remember)  but some of the greats were here like the Pinbot series, Star Trek TNG, Twilight Zone, Tales of Arabian Nights, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Theatre of Magic….and my new rediscovered best friend Black Knight.

 

 

 

A really nice selection of Bally and Williams tables here as well as some of my favorites from Zacarria too…woo, wonder if they’ve got a spare coin door (and speaking to the Jamma+ guys, yes they do – am just awaiting an email!)

 

The home console and computer area was chock full of everything 8bit and onwards including the humble Zx81 up to the Amiga, from Atari 2600 through to the Dreamcast. There was also plenty of handhelds to sample including early examples from the 70′s, Game and Watch and up to Gameboys, Lynx, Game Gear. It was also nice that every single machine had been duplicated in plenty giving everyone the opportunity  to sample old and future favourites. I particularly like the way that groups of consoles had been placed together based on game genres. For example you could sit on the fighting section and have everything from SF2 on the Snes, Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast, Virtua Fighter on the Saturn, Tekken on the PSX, Body Blows on the CD32, IK+ on the Amiga, Exploding Fist on the C64 etc etc

 

 

I did venture into the modern gaming area which was just massive. The Replay section was busy but that was nothing compared to the sheer number of teenage gamers.

Stopping by the watch two of the pro teams playing. What struck me was how incredibly rude and nasty each team was to each other. Back in retro land, it’s all rather friendly banter but the colourful language and abuse that they all threw at each other was certainly an eye opener. Is this what modern online gaming is like these days or were they all a bit too excited about playing for money prizes and full of sugar?

Not really my cup of tea so grabbing a coffee I headed back in to the land of beeps and blips and a long chin wag with old friends.

Here’s a few more photos -

The weird and wonderful Carnival area with real fruit based game controllers (i kid you not), laser retro games, a nice collection of Tomy Tronic games and a block game where someone has very cleverly created this.

 

Hanging with the Yak himself, Jeff Minter at his Llamasoft play area  and picking up some game tips for Goat Up and Minotron. He’s also porting his latest iOS games to Android so if you’ve been wanting to check these out, head over to http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/ for details. Gridrunner on the Samsung Galaxy was very nice.

I also sptopped by Amibay and Techshack and picked up a few bargains for my Amiga as well as golden Competition Pro joystick, a new composite lead for my BBC Micro (no more dodgy RF for me!) and a few back issues of Amiga Future Magazine.

I also stopped by to chat with the with the guys from http://www.rgcd.co.uk/ and ‘attempt’ to show off my skills on Death Ray Manta. They were also selling copies of their Commodore C64 homebrew cartridges at reduced prices so I added Soul Less and Jars Revenge to Canabalt and Fortress of Narzod.

 

Console Passion had some pristine boxed Vextrex games and I was sorely tempted to get one or two. Sadly they didn’t have the two titles I really want for my collection.

Nevermind, some of the boxed Atari 2600 games were only £4…bonus!

 

Sunday was much of the same thing except, better queue control which had us all in within 10 minutes, slightly fewer people in the Retro section so hours of Pinball for me and at last the talks and Q&A sessions where back on. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk with Mike Montgomery of Bitmap brothers  who  hinted at more iOS/Android ports of their classic games including Chaos Engine (everybody say Woooooooo!).

More random photos.

Event organiser Gordon Sinclair gets to play Kick Off on the Amiga with the games creator himself, Dino Dini.

 

Retro GT T-Shirt for sale. Loving the Bubble Bobble and grey Bomber/Bomblitz tshirt.

 

 

So…apart from those initial snags on Saturday morning (oh and the huge traffic jams we encountered on the drive up Friday night) Play:Expo was one damn fine weekend of classic gaming, It’ll be interesting to read on on various forums what other retro gamers thoughts are the ever expanding modern gaming areas. The  chaps who provided the arcades and pinballs are thinking about doing their own pure retro event. Let’s see what happens.

I’ve omitted a few items of interest from this post as I want to give them their own separate entry based on the fact that they are , truely awesome-Ness.

More Play:Expo stuff to follow.

Youtube videos are now being uploaded and this walkaround by Pinball News Videos gives you a great overview of what it was like being there. I even pop up at the 2:52 mark on Black Knight.

 

 

The big one Play:Expo.

This weekend, the UK’s biggest independent gaming expo is back for two days of gaming fun and as I missed last year am rather excited about attending again.

This year looks to be the biggest event that ReplayEvents have hosted and therefore have had to relocated to bigger premises in Manchester instead of at the Norbeck in Blackpool. This new location is perfect for us really as it a shorter journey and Mrs StiGGy is really looking forward to having the entire city to shop whilst I enjoy my ‘nerd-fest’ as she puts it.

This year also see a new format to previous expos and is an amalgamation of four gaming areas. Firstly we have Re.Play which is the main reason I’m going and comprises of 100′s of classic computers, consoles and handhelds all ready to be enjoyed by all. There’s also huge array of classic arcade machines, Jamma cabs and Pinball machines all set to free play and its said that this will be the largest collection of arcade machines in the UK since the heyday of the 80′s arcades…bring it on!

Next we have Now:Play which focuses on more modern gaming systems and exhibitions from the likes of EA, Konami and Nintendo who incidentally will be giving gamers a pre launch play on the new Wii U console. There’s also a stack of competitions and Q&A sessions with a host of developers from today’s game scene.

Next there’s Pro:Play which will host a series of competitions for professional gaming teams and individuals who can battle it out on a range of modern games for large cash prizes. I’m not much of a modern gamer myself but with so much going on I’ll definitely be stopping by to take a look.

Lastly we have CO:Play which is the events Cosplay section and appears to have grown from a small number of dedicated individuals a few year back to whole entourage of cosplay fans.

Getting back to the Re.Play, here’s some of the other stuff happening over the weekend.

Retail Outlets

AmigaKit – Amiga bargains galore!
The Attic Bug – Brand new sealed old stock of many classic games.
Bespoke Arcades – Hope to pick up some new Joys here.
Console Passion
RetroGT
Tech Shack

Independent Developers

Llamasoft – Nice to see that Jeff Minter will be attending again.
Utopian World of Sandwiches

Homebrew Gaming – This is my kind of place!

Oldschool Gaming
RGCD – Looking forward to seeing what homebrew C64 cartridges they have for sale.
Dave Brown’s Miniature Arcade Cabinets -

Check out that mini Star Wars cabinet…..must have a go!

Jim Bagley’s PacManicMinerMan
Spec Tank from Dylan Smith

Gaming Communities
Amibay
JAMMA+
Northern Lights Pinball
RetroCollect

Konami are celebrating 25 years of Metal Gear Solid and they’ll be an interactive exhibition allowing you to play every version from the MSX right up to the latest version on the PS3. I have to admit, shamefully it’s not a series I’m given must time to apart from on the NES and one I keep meaning to look at, especially the almighty PlayStation version.

Talks and Q&A sessions with -

MD of Bitmap Brother, producers of classics games such as Xenon, Speedball & Chaos Engines.

Mark Edmonson, Founder of Reflections Studios who was behind such classics as Shadow of the Beast, Ballistix and the Destruction Derby series.

‘The 30 year war:live’ – This ones going to be hilarious. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64, this live debate between a collection of famous coders may bring an end to argument that started in school grounds and play fields of my youth. Which is best, C64 or Speccy? I know which camp I’m firmly in, let’s see who’ll win!

They’ll also be a Q&S session with producers of the upcoming videogame documentary ‘Bedroom to Billions’. A kickstarter project I’ve been following with interest so it’s should be good fun to attend this one.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/78873

Replay usually have a few surprise guest too so I’m wondering if we’ll see Archer Maclean, Jon Hare and Ben Daglish again? Darren and Co. from Retro Gamer magazine are attending too.

There’s so much more news being released each day it’s going to be one hellava event.

..and of course, there’s the best bit about attending any retro gaming event, the chance to catch up and chat with friends from the retro gaming scene whilst enjoying a game or three.

A common concern amongst fellow retro gamers is that this event may have become TO big and what started off as a hobbiest event with Retro Reunited some four years ago <;see previous post http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/retro-reunited-09/>; which was such a great weekend, will be lost in the sea of corporate sponsorship and reduce it’s ‘retro’ heritage in favour of the latest gaming machines and games. Lets find out.

Check out the dedicated site for details including ticket information -

http://www.playexpo.net/

Maybe see you there?