Tag Archives: Arcade

Retrospelsmässan 2013 – Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition

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Yesterday I went to Gothenburg with my friend NinjaBrite to attend Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition ‘Retrospelsmässan‘. This is the 4th year in a row that they’re hosting this exhibition and I think it’s a GREAT initiative! I was there 2 years ago as well, last year I missed though since I was in Japan. It has grown immensely in these past years, and it will probably be even bigger next year. The amount of people who came was way more than they had anticipated, even though they had hired larger facilities people were still quieing for hours to get in! I myself had to que about 4 hours (arriving at 12, two hours after they opened). It was ok though, since Nintendo was hosting a Streetpass competition everybody had brought their 3DS and so did we, so we kept busy ^_^ And also met some awesome cosplayers, like Pixelninja dressed up as Megaman :)

megaman

que
This year on the exhibition they had all the old consoles displayed and connected to TVs so you could try everything out, everything from old Pong consoles and Odyssey 2001 to the Atari Jaguar and everything Nintendo and Sega of course. They also had a corner for speedruns where you could watch some of Sweden’s fastest gamers ;D They had a Doom LAN, Cosplay competitions, arcade and pinball corner, game competitions and stands with companies and people selling retro gaming stuff and of course games! :D

Videopac Computer displayed at Retrospelsmässan 2013 Pong
pinball
smb competition
arcade

Of course I had to pick up some games ^_^ I was looking for one game in particular, which was Starship Hector, but I’ll write more about that in a later post, that’s a looong story ^^ But I found it at this exhibition! And I also found Ninja Kid, Power Blade, Castle of Dragon, The Krion Conquest and James Bond JR. All were NTSC NES and I didn’t previously have them! (I am proud of myself that I brought a PDF of my collection in my phone, because I always tend to buy doubles unintentionally when attending places like this)… ;D
So here’s a little photo shoot I had of my latest pickups ^_^
Ninja Kid_800
Power blade_800
Castle of Dragon_800
The Krion Conquest_800
Starship Hector_800
James Bond JR_800

Magician Lord for Neo Geo

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Clearing games on the Neo Geo X Gold isn’t really too hard. Simulating an arcade game where you would have unlimited coins basically gives you unlimited continues. You just have to be persistent and not give up half-way through, and that’s what I did yesterday for about an hour ^_^ I managed to clear Magician Lord on the NeoGeo X Gold. I did however use A LOT of continues!
Neo Geo Magician Lord - continue screen

Magician Lord is a side-scrolling platform game starring the wizard Elta. You only have 2 in health unless you pick up orbs that gives you more powers, you might even transform into other creatures. For example a 2-legged dragon-man spitting fire, or a ninja throwing swirling sticks :) but when you get hurt  you turn back into your magician self, with a big wizard hat. The various forms are: Dragon Warrior, Waterman, Poseidon, Shinobi, Samurai and Raijin, all with various abilities. I did however not find orbs to try them all out. Before the last boss you get to choose whichever form you would like to use. I choose Raijin but lost the power after about half a second ;D haha
Neo Geo Magician Lord - different forms

Neo Geo Magician Lord - Dragon form

Some stages are quite tricky since you have various paths to take and only one leads to the boss. Once you find a grey carved stone with a figure in it you find the first stage of the boss. It’s always a smaller creature to take out, once you’ve cleared him/her you will get warped up to the main boss for each stage. This is usually something larger but in my opinion easier to beat (easier to dodge). Before you encounter the big boss at the end of each stage you will get a warning from the main bad guy. These are hilarious since they are voiced! I put together a video clip of all the cutscenes before the bosses, check it out!

Sometimes hoards of enemies jump you, and you will die several times in the same spot before being able to move forward, however one nice thing is that if you die or even have to use a continue every single enemy you have taken out will still be dead (except for a few constantly re-spawning enemies) and you will begin at the exact same spot where you died.
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Hoard of frogs

The music of Magician Lord wasn’t very impressive, quite boring and repetitive. The graphics were ok though. There was a lot of variation in sceneries and also enemies. Here’s all the bosses:
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Bos 1.2
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Boss 2.2
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Boss 3.2
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Boss 4.2
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Boss 6.2
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Boss 7.2

After you’ve beaten the first seven stages and their bosses you will encounter every single mini-boss again, in a row, then you will get to the final boss.
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Final Boss

And then it’s The End
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Ending

One of the stage names really cracked me up! Hahaha.. “Anderground“, I wonder if it’s a typo or if that’s what it’s called.. ;D Judging from the cutscenes with the bad voiceovers it’s probably a mistake..
Neo Geo Magician Lord - Anderground LOL

Neo Geo Magician Lord - Game Over

NINJA BASEBALL BATMAN!!!

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I have it, a Korean version anyway of both the first game and apparently a sequel, it just recently arrived from ebay <3 I’m just waiting for my new computer to arrive so that I can play it. It would have been a lot cooler to find an actual arcade machine with the game though.. well I’ll just have to keep an eye out for that on Ebay ;D

Trip to New York

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In December I went to the U.S of A with my boyfriend. We first went to New York for a week and then down to Miami Beach for another week. In New York I found two game stores which had a bunch of exciting retro games! However, it was in general extremely pricey..

The first store was awesome, however a bit disorganised. I didn’t wanna take any pics inside cause there was this bald rude looking man behind the counter, but they had like EVERYTHING. It didn’t look very Retro going up the stairs, however they had mainly Atari and NES stuff ^_^ My boyfriend got bored quickly though and wanted to leave =(

The second store we found was so awesome! They had everything so tidy and neatly displayed, but everything was behind glass and even more over prized =( They had a bunch of stuff I wanted to buy, like Donkey Kong Game & Watch! But it was too expensive.. I’ll just have to Ebay it instead…

While in Miami we decided to look up some vintage arcades where they might still have some of the old classics like Pacman and stuff. My nifty friend Gaston googled a bunch of places that might have the retro arcade machines close by, one of them had appeared in the documentary “Chasing ghosts beyond the arcade” (Youtube it, it’s an interesting documentary). So we rented a car to get to the places, a big-ass-mother-f*cking-jeep. I’ve never driven a bigger car, and it was scary as hell to drive on the american highways among all the other big-ass cars  (and I HAD to drive since I was the only one with a licence).

The first place we went to had no vintage stuff at all, and not many games at all.. The guys stopped to shoot some Terminators for a while, and after that we left.

The second one was way out in nowhere, called Gameroom Superstore and was the one that I think was part of the documentary. It had been a place for restoring and selling old arcade machines. It was however closed, even though the signs were still outside, apparently for several years according to the neighbours that we asked… it was sad. The place still had their website online.. they should shut that thing down! It’s misleading >_<

People had even vandalised the text on the door to the Gameroom Superstore. “This is not a coin operation gameroom” was now “This is not in operation gay room” … So after having driven for hours back and forth we went back to Miami Beach.
It really felt like chasing ghosts.. there were no vintage arcade machines to be found anywhere. The closest thing we came to that was an old pinball machine in a bar in Miami, but it’s not the same =´(

Apart from the lack of vintage gaming experiences the trip to the US of A was a lot of fun with family and friends <3