Show Game – Play:Expo 2014

So I’ve mentioned ‘the show game’ moniker in a previous post. It’s that one game I’ll discover/rediscover at a retro gaming event which I find myself returning too throughout the event so much so that it become synonymous with the event itself.

For Play:Expo 2014, the computer game I’ve picked as my show game is a fairly modern release on the Commodore 64.

Blitz 3000

(here played on Jason Kelk’s ‘Old School Gaming’ pimped C64 (which you can read about here – http://jasonkelk.me.uk/ )

I loved Blitz on the Vic-20, a game I played over and over again back then and still load up from time to time on my Vic. It’s very simple yet this updated C64 version was so much fun and messes with your mind. ‘One more go’ it kept calling!

Out of fuel and steadily descending –  can your bombing skills clear a path so you can land without crashing into Mrs and Mrs Xenomorphs new domed kitchen extension?

 

and because Play:Expo is Pinball heaven, my Pinball showgame is…….hmmm, this is quite a tough. I did play an awful amount of time on Bally’s Fathom purely because I adore the table art….

80’s pinball art rocks!

 

….and likewise on Gottliebs Robo-War and TX-Sector for their sci-fi  artwork, fast gameplay and uber cool cyclon-esq robotic voices.

 

But because of the fun a few of us had playing mini competitions, my Pinball show game has to be –

Black Knight 2000

I’m a bit of a fan of the original Black Knight table and I also play a heck of a lot of its digital counterpart on my iPad courtesy of the Pinball Arcade app. Black Knight 2000 is a much faster game and retains some of the features from original including the useful Magna save to keep you out of trouble on the right hand lane. Completing a rapid succession of  fast loops is a real buzz but pales in comparison to  lighting King’s Ransom –  multiball madness!

 

 

Play:Expo – Manchester 2014

We had an absolute blast in Manchester last weekend and Play:Expo just keeps getting bigger and better with each year passing. There was so much to see and do at this year’s event and a welcome distraction  between mammoth rounds of pinball and arcade stick waggling.

Here’s a selection of photos i’d taken.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

Arcade heaven at Play:Expo

This weekend it’s the big one….well, in retro gaming terms that is rather than Skynet finally getting his or her way. Play:Expo is just a day away and in a few hours myself and my good lady will be driving to Manchester for a day of R&R (and shopping) prior getting ones game on from Saturday morning.

The list ‘stuff’ at this years event is just staggering – Check out all this lot –

http://www.playexpo.net/whats-on/

But it’s this particular setup video that’s got me really excited now.

 

So hopefully, a good weekend all round and am looking forward to meeting up with old friends, having a few laughs and of course, enjoying the odd game or two.

More Commodore CD32 emulation fun.

The guys at http://unofficial-cd32-ports.blogspot.co.uk/ rounded off their month long release of CD32 conversions a few days ago with one motherload of a compilation containing a whopping 160 Amiga games. You’d be hard pressed to find something fun to play with this lot and kudos for wrapping it all up into a  neat little graphical menu. Even into October, ‘encore’ releases are coming out daily and their penultimate release today will be keeping me in very good company throughout the darkening nights.

Stunt Car Racer, one of  the many Amiga titles I’ll never tire of and am really looking forward to racing around those new tracks. One of these days, I’m going to link a couple of my Amiga’s together and invite a few friends around for an evening of ‘friendly’ racing.

…but just going back to the 160 game compilation for a moment, it was whilst I was having a blast playing  Joust did I realise how many people, each with their projects have come together, unknowingly to create what I have on screen that I’m waving my stick at (well pad) and grinning ear to ear.

Here’s Joust, the rather funtastic Atari ST version of the Williams Electronics classic hit. Except, this one has been converted to run on the Commodore Amiga by http://meynaf.free.fr/pr/ and then converted again last month to run on the CD32…..which I have running on my Netbook  thanks to the everyone behind the WinUAE project….connected to and controlled with an original CD32 gamepad thanks to Retronic Design.   – Mind numbing, awesome-ness stuff but if I have to think about it any further I might need to go and have a lie down and I haven’t got time for that, there’s Ostrich prodding to be done…..erm!

My MAME cabinet gets a PC upgrade.

So I’m off work this week finishing off the last room in the house and after applying the last coat of paint on the ceilings yesterday, it was time to do the walls today.  With the first coat completed and little else to be done until it dries, I sloped off to the geek den for a spot of fun. Today, I’m changing out my ageing PC which I currently have in my MAME cabinet for something with a bit more clout. I’ve been working this upgrade during the evenings as well as collecting all of the  relevant  bits and bobs and configuring a few more emulators that I wanted to add to my cabinet – namely, AAE for better vector game emulation, NEO GEO, Sega Model 2, Daphne, a few pinball tables via Future Pinball (for the time being) and ParaJVE for Vectrex emulation……because as you know, the Vectrex is cool.

Processor wise, there’s enough here to upgrade my current emulator frontend – MameWah to the media rich Hyperspin and  have all that eye candy artwork whooshing about.

I’ve also upgraded my Mame set from good old trusty .098 to a more recent .151.

I must say, Hyperspin certainly does look incredibly nice when running on a cabinet.  I’m still on the fence between all this gloss though and a simple gamelist/snapshot static screen but I’ll run with it for a while and see how it goes. I’ve also noticed that my iPac keyboard encoder’s shift function appears to have disappeared in this version of  MAME and so some of my keyboard mapping is a little off. Nothing that can easily be sorted out though.

Here’s a quick looksee so far although apologises for the camera wobble….Amidar seemed the perfect game choice after all this painting 🙂