Category Archives: Arcade

Retro Games convention in Stockholm!

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This weekend in Stockholm was really awesome and totally surpassed my already high expectations :D After attending a book release and having an awesome after party at an arcade on Friday I spent Saturday at a retro game convention called simply Retro Games :) This is the third year in a row that Retro Games is being held, and I’ve missed it the previous years due to so many other conventions taking place this time of year here in Sweden. Also Stockholm is kind of far away for me.. but this time I was determined to check it out, and boy am I glad I did! :D

Retro Games Stockholm

I was there already when they started setting up, so I could get some nice pictures of all the arcades. I’ve heard that the Retro Games convention is more focused on gaming than the buying or selling of retro games, and this was kind of true. The venue was smaller than a lot of the other retro game conventions, but the ratio of sellers contra arcades were different here. THERE WERE SO MANY ARCADE MACHINES!  In the main room with the vendors there were 7 various candy cabs, both newer and older ones, containing great shmups set to free play ^_^ I just think these Japanese cabinets are so beautiful <3 Sorry for the picture spamming below, but DAMN they’re just all so pretty! XD

Atomiswave arcade green buttons
100 Yen
START
Bullet hell shmup on arcade
Arcade candy cabs
New Astro City arcade
Sega New Net City joystick
Shmups on arcade
Shmups on arcade
Orange arcade joystick
Bullet hell shmup on arcade
Astro City 2 arcade
New Astro City arcade
Atomiswave arcade green joystick
Sega New Net City
Bullet hell shmup on arcade
Atomiswave arcade cabinet
Green arcade buttons and joystick
Black arcade joystick
Japanese arcade cabinets
Japanese shmup on Atomiswave arcade
Black arcade joystick
Japanese shmup on New Net City arcade
Yellow arcade joystick
Sammy Atomiswave arcade
Shmup on New Astro City arcade
Black arcade panel
playing shmups

Then there were even more arcades in the other room! Old classics such as Space Invaders, Defender, Tempest, Pole Position, Centipede, Missile Command, Asteroids, Robotron 2084 and also a few that I wasn’t as familiar with like Battlezone, Space Firebird and Space Duel. Missile Command is really hard in my opinion.. but I really enjoy Tempest, Asteroids and Robotron 2084! Also Battlzone was really interesting with different controls ^_^

Vintage arcades
Battlezone arcade cabinet
Battlezone arcade cabinet
Battlezone arcade cabinet
Centipede arcade cabinet
Centipede arcade cabinet
Centipede arcade cabinet
Centipede arcade cabinet
Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet
Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet
Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet
Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet
Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet
Tempest arcade cabinet
Tempest arcade cabinet
Tempest arcade cabinet
Tempest arcade cabinet
Tempest arcade cabinet
Space Invaders arcade cabinet
Asteroids arcade cabinet
Asteroids arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Defender arcade cabinet
Pole Position arcade cabinet
Pole Position arcade cabinet
Pole Position arcade cabinet
Pole Position arcade cabinet
Missile Command arcade cabinet
Missile Command arcade cabinet
Space Firebird arcade cabinet
Space Firebird arcade cabinet
Space Firebird arcade cabinet
Space Duel arcade cabinet
Space Duel arcade cabinet
Space Duel arcade cabinet
Space Duel arcade cabinet
Vintage arcade cabinets

There were of course still a lot of great sellers there to show off some awesome goods! This time I took the train up to Stockholm though so I had to restrict myself from buying the whole place XD I didn’t buy more than I could carry ^_^ But I had so much fun talking to friends that were there and meeting internet acquaintances and new people as well! I barely had time to browse through everything that was being sold XD

Mixed games
Talking SMD
Sven666 selling some really good games!
Super Famicom games
R-Type 3 SNES VS SFC
Ghoul Patrol on SNES!
Anders and Michaels old school table
Atari 400
Amiga games
Atari 130XE
ZX Spectrum games
Horrible CDi games XD
So many games!
Arcade joysticks
Kristin finding l00t
Anders selling vintage games
NES games
Arcade parts
Saturn and Playstation games
Svensk Videospelsutveckling (Swedish game development)
Svensk Videospelsutveckling (Swedish game development)
Martin selling his book with Thomas
Athletic World and Earth Bound repros
Boxed NES
stuff
Buttons
Browsing
Flashback and modded Gameboy
Cassettes
Cyberbots Saturn
Cyberbots Saturn
Game & Watch Donkey Kong Hockey
Hats
Motaro selling loads of retro games
MSX games
Neo Geo games
Söders Spel & Skivhandel
Neo Geo MVS 120 in 1
NES and arcade stick
Part and pieces
Anton showing off a Perfect Dark Soundtrack on vinyl
Perfect Dark Soundtrack vinyl

Retro Games has three years in a row held the Swedish Championships of Pac-Man at the convention. I’ve never played Pac-Man on arcade but thought I might as well try it out. I actually managed to get the 6th highest score and made it to the take-outs! :D Then I lost XD

Pac-Man arcade cabinets
Pac-Man arcade cabinets
Pac-Man
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man arcade cabinet
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Blomman hosting the convention
Awesome gaming tattoo on Pac-Man contestant ^_^
Barklund knowing all the tricks in Pac-Man SM
Ghost and Pac-man
Pac-Man arcade cabinet
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man arcade cabinet
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man on arcade
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Pac-Man Swedish Championships
Such pretty, such heavy XD
Pac-Man and the champion lurking behind it

Retro Games is definitely not the biggest retro gaming convention in Sweden, but it has a nice mix of both playing retro games and buying them, and also of course a really nice lineup of people attending it! :D I will definitely try to go back next year ^_^

Sven666 at Retro Games convention Stockholm
Retro Games convention Stockholm
Retro Games convention Stockholm
Retro Games convention Stockholm
Retro Games convention Stockholm
Retro Games convention Stockholm

Book release at Stockholm’s Game Museum

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This weekend I went up to Stockholm for a convention, but I was also invited to attend a book release on Friday night. Martin Lindell and Thomas Sunhede has done loads of research and conducted 150 interviews to write a book about the history of Swedish game development, it’s called Svensk Videospelsutveckling.

Sweden has always been a country with people taking a big interest in learning new technologies. A lot of games are made in Sweden, games like Minecraft, Battlefield and Candy Crush Saga just to name a few big ones. This book goes through the entire history of Swedish game development though, from the 50s through to the 90s, before we had Minecraft and were playing around with ABC, C64 and other computers ^_^

A lot of famous people in the Swedish gaming scene attended the book release, some of which I knew from before, and some that I got to know ^_^ Many of them are featured in the book, like Elsa-Karin Boestad-Nilsson who programmed a war-simulator at FOA (Swedish defence forces research agency). I met Tobias Bjarneby for the first time, he’s been a video game journalist since the early 90s and runs a few magazines like the Swedish Level. I also bumped into Thomas Arnroth again, such a sweet guy, and he has just won Tidskriftspriset 2016 for being an awesome journalist! ^_^ Congratulations Thomas :)

I also talked a lot to Michael Berglund who I’ve met through Retro Gathering, he used to make games for the ZX Spectrum under the name Xenon Software! Next to him in the picture is the founder of DICE.  In the last picture is Per Jemtå who made games for the ABC 80, and Robert Kreese who I’ve met through various conventions, he’s been making music for Atari ST games and his latest musical creation is for the new game Alwa’s Awakening that is available on Steam, I’ve tried it at several conventions and it’s such a cool little 8bit adventure game with crazy NEStalgia! :D There were loads of other people there as well, it was a blast talking to everybody ^_^

Svensk Videospelsutveckling by Martin Lindell & Thomas Sunhede
One of the authors – Martin Lindell
Authors Thomas “Sol” Sunhede and Martin Lindell with Elsa Karin Boestad-Nilsson
Tobias Bjarneby and me :)
Marcus Nyström and Michael Berglund
Thomas Arnroth, Tobias Bjarneby and Martin Lindell
Per Jemtå and Robert Kreese

~Last 5 photos are taken by Martin Lindell 

The book release was hosted at the newly founded game museum called Stockholms Spelmuseum. Tobias Bjarneby is also behind the creation of this museum :)

The museum was very modern and tidy, a lot of cool consoles and games were on display. Things all the way back from Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 to newer systems like Sega Saturn and Neo Geo AES. There was even a Magnavox Odyssey! I need one of those..  They also had a display of a complete NES SCN collection owned by Lirod, SCN is the mark on all the Nintendo 8-bit games released in Scandinavia by Bergsala.

Amiga 500 on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Famicom on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Games and consoles on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
NES collection on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Games and consoles on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Complete NES Collection on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Magnavox Odyssey on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Games and consoles on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Complete NES SCN collection on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Cloud from FFVII
Games and consoles on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Games and consoles on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Handhelds on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Amiibos at Stockholms Gaming museum
Handhelds on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Vectrex on display at Stockholms game museum
Life sized Snake from Metal Gear
Early Pong variant from Nintendo on display at Stockholms game museum
Sega Saturn on display at Stockholms game museum
Neo Geo AES on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
TV Game 6 by Nintendo on display at Stockholms game museum
Vintage Mario!
Handhelds on display at Stockholms Gaming museum
Boxed NES on display at Stockholm’s Game Museum
Stockholms Spelmuseum

They also had some cool references on the walls and information about various game developers and gaming history. I thought it was pretty cool to see the now and then screenshots that were framed on the wall. Adventure games from old text-based Zork to the new adventures of Lara Croft in Tomb Rider, or the comparison of an old soccer game to today’s verison of Fifa, and GTA compared to a really old basic racing game.

Adventure games – Then & now
Racing games – Then & now
Sports games – Then & now

There was also loads of video game art covering the walls of the museum. Art pieces that really stood out was the embroidered screenshots from famous games by Per Fhager, and the beautiful moving background screenshots from various games on digital displays. I also really liked the silhouettes of game characters that were on the windows, can you recognize them all? ;D

Embroidered art inspired by video games by Per Fhager
Embroidered art inspired by video games by Per Fhager
SNK VS Capcom moving art
Embroidered art inspired by video games by Per Fhager
Embroidered art inspired by video games by Per Fhager
Final Fantasy VII moving art
Gaming art at Stockholm’s game museum
Mr. Miyamoto
Video game art at Stockholm’s game museum
Game character silhouettes at Stockholm’s Gaming Museum
Shop at Stockholm’s game musum

Of course they also had games set up that you could play :D Some arcades, like original Pac-man, consoles and also some newer things like Virtual Reality!

Pacman Arcade at Stockholm’s game museum
Games to play at Stockholm’s gaming museum
Modern games at Stockholm’s game museum
Pacman cocktail able arcade at Stockholm’s game museum
Virtual Reality at Stockholm’s game museum
Arcades at Stockholm’s game museum

After the book launch party I tagged along with a bunch of friends to the ROQ bar in Stockholm, where the HEY Arcade is located. It was way bigger than I had expected! So many arcade machines, two rooms filled! One of which I completely missed the first evening, but I went back there again on Saturday night ^_^ I finally got to try out Tetris Grand Masters (the third one)! And I also played a lot of Taiko no Tatsujin (the huge Japanese drum game) and Pop n’ Music. I also tried out a weird Japanese game with various minigames based on buttonmashing the correct colors, it was a lot of fun! What was the most fun though was getting to hang out with all my retro gaming friends from all over Sweden that I basically only get to see during these occasions ^_^

At this place they also had a bunch of Pinball machines and you could also play billiards (or is it pool? I never knew the difference).. great place! I will definitely go back the next time I visit Stockholm ^_^ Best part is that they have so many music and rhythm arcade machines, the ones you usually only see in Japan, SO MUCH FUN! :D

Taiko no Tatsujin
Martin playing Taiko no Tatsujin
Arcades at HEY Stockholm
Shmups in a row
Deathsmiles on arcade
Friends playing shmups
Ghosts n Goblins on Arcade
Groove coaster and Reflect Beat arcades
Japanese arcades at HEY Stockholm
Pop n’ Music arcade
Mr. Driller on arcade
Mr. Driller on arcade
Japanese arcade with mini games
Taunt the Kittens in weird japanese arcade XD
One of the two rooms at HEY arcade Stockholm
NEO GEO Windjammers
Tetris Grand Masters 3
Jubeat arcade
Thomas “Sol” Sunhede playing Jubeat at HEY
Hudson Button-Mashing-Measurer that Kralleman brought for us to play with :D
Arcades at HEY Stockholm
Star Wars Racing
Racing arcade machine
Pinball

I will hopefully get another blog post done tomorrow with all the pics from the Retro Games convention I attended on Saturday ^_^ Stay tuned!

Retro Gathering L00t part I

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It takes time going through, cleaning, testing and taking pictures of 105 games, a few consoles and other things.. that’s how much I came home with after this years Retro Gathering XD Anyway, let’s get to it! I mainly focused on cartridge based games this year, I found a whole bin full of cheap Atari 2600 games to start with ^_^ In the bottom were even some boxed ones :D I tried all these ones out tonight and some that stood out was Planeten Patrouilie and Sub Scan, these were fun and intuitive :) Fatal Run was also interesting, it had the most advanced tunes I’ve heard in an Atari 2600 game so far! Unfortunately it only played the music when you got Game Over XD Superman was probably one of the worst Atari 2600 games I’ve played.. I didn’t even understand what the hell I was supposed to do…

Atari 2600
Human Cannonball, Wüstenschlacht and Sorcerer – Atari 2600
Racquetball and Arilock – Atari 2600
Fatal Run – Atari 2600
Gangster Ruine – Atari 2600
Planeten Patrouilie – Atari 2600
Midnight Magic – Atari 2600
Sub Scan – Atari 2600
Superman – Atari 2600

I found these two little handhelds that were super cute! I love how “Hero and Princess” is such a total rip-off from Donkey Kong Game & Watch, it’s even dual screen! XD And the gorilla looks totally derpy XD

Grandstand handheld
Hero and Princess handheld
Hero and Princess handheld

I finally got myself the Zapper for Famicom! It’s so funny how this one actually looks just like a regular gun, while we had to have the “kids-version” XD

Famicom Zapper Revolver
Famicom Zapper Revolver
Famicom Zapper Revolver
Famicom Zapper Revolver

I managed to extend my Tetris collection a bit, but not with a game.. a music LP and an old ad! My friend Marcus sold it to me and he also had a few other cool EP’s with video game reference :) I also bought a cute Dreamcast game from him called PenPen ^_^

Doctor Spin Tetris LP
Tetris ad
Space Invaders EP
Ms. Pac-Man EP
PenPen – Dreamcast

After getting to know a lot of other retro gamers online I tend to usually have some deals waiting for me once I meet up with these friends at a convention :) Anders was kind enough to sell me a Video Computer VC4000 game which I didn’t previously have. I just got into this system thanks to an old high school teacher that found this system in his attic XD I also met the guy behind arkadbutiken.se on instagram who had a PCB with Hatris for me :D Can’t wait to try this one out, the arcade version must be so much better than the Famicom one ^_^

32 Invaders – Video Computer VC4000
Hatris PCB

One of the things I bought from Zeela was this really cute little Pong clone called Las Vegas Super Color Teve-Spiel :D I tried it out tonight and it was fun, I didn’t see the colors though because apparently the TV was black and white XD I’ll try it with another TV next time… what I really liked about this Pong version is that the joysticks also go horizontally, so it actually resembles Tennis even more :) You can run back and forth and not only up and down XD It has SO MANY BUTTONS on it though! I had to read the instructions just to figure out what they were all for..

Boxed Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips
Complete Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips
Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips
Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips
Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips
Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel Joystick
Las Vegas Super Color Tele-Spiel by Philips

I also bought a bunch of games from Zeela, he has such good prices on old cassettes that it’s hard to resist XD So many pretty covers! I also got some extra memory for my VIC-20, which is probably the reason why I haven’t gotten more than half of the games to work on it so far XD He was also kind enough to dig out a few Jeff Minter games! Hell Gate and Gridrunner ^_^ I also picked up some Amiga games.

Rockman, Cosmic Fire Birds and Critters – VIC-20
Alien Blitz, Outworld and The Alien – VIC-20
Hell Gate and Gridrunner by Jeff Minter – C64
Vic Rescue, Anirog Krazy Kong and Galaxions – VIC-20
Vic Scramble, Chopper and Skips Action Biker Clumpsy Colin – VIC-20 and C64
Vixen 16k RAM for VIC-20
Overkill – Amiga 1200
The Killing Game Show – Amiga 500

I also found a bunch of Videopac G7000 games that I was lacking ^_^ Some I bought from my new found retro gaming friend Jack :) Thanks for bringing them for me!

8 Baseball – Videopac
9 Computer Programmer – Videopac
30 Battlefield – Videopac
10 Golf – Videopac
19 Catch the ball – Videopac
14 Gunfighter – Videopac

Some other things I found were a Case Boy that Söders Spel & Skivhandel thought would look great in my Castlevania collection because of the Castlevania screenshot on the box :D I also bought a reproduction of Trip World, mainly so I can play the game.. I’m probably never gonna spend that much money on the original.. I also got some cheap Famicom pirates, I thought they were quite funny since they read “4 in 1”, then “39 in 1” and finally “1000000000 in 1”!!! I’m skeptical to whether it actually contains that many XD Apart from this I picked up a bunch of other games, like Hao-Kun no Fushigi na Tabi for Famicom Disk System, Slider and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Game Gear, Puzzle Figher II on Game Boy Advance, Cobra Command on NES, Puyo Puyo on N-Gage, a hombrew game called Photon for MSX a few other games and I also got two ZX Spectrum games for free ^_^

Game Boy Case Boy
Game Boy Case Boy
Trip World – Game Boy
Photon – MSX
Famicom Pirates
Slider & Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – Game Gear
Hao-Kun no Fushigi na Tabi – Famicom Disk System
Horace goes skiing and Space Resque – ZX Spectrum
Puyo Puyo – Nokia N-Gage
Cobra Command – NES
Puzzle Fighter II – Game Boy Advance
Paper Boy 2 – SNES
Joe Montana II Sports Talk Football – Sega Mega Drive
General Knowledge for Dummies – DS

There’s not a lot of Japanese games at this Swedish convention, but I did manage to find a few. I found some cheap PC Engine games I didn’t already have, and also Super Darius which cost a bit more. I also bought some Japanese Sega Mega Drive games from my friend Karl ^_^ And I found some really nice Super Famicom games! :D Yoshi’s Cookie, Yoshi’s Island and Super Bomberman 3 which completed my Super Bomberman set ^_^

Yoshi’s Island – Super Famicom
Momotarou Densetsu – PC Engine
Quackshot – Sega Mega Drive
Yoshi’s Cookie – Super Famicom
World of Illusion – Sega Mega Drive
Super Darius – PC Engine CD-ROM
Super Bomberman 3 – Super Famicom
Street Smart – Sega Mega Drive
Maniac Pro Wrestling – PC Engine
Pro Tennis World Court – PC Engine

Now this wasn’t the entire loot.. I’m saving some of the best parts ;D I’ll be back soon with part II of the l00t!

Retro Gathering 2016 was awesome!!!

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Last Friday I drove up to Västerås to attend Retro Gathering on Saturday, my favorite Retro Game convention in Sweden ^_^ Retrospelsmässan is also really nice, but as a retro game buyer there’s just more variation at Retro Gathering :) You can find everything from vintage computers, Atari and Commodore to newer PS2 and 3DS games. There have been more newer games lately compared to the first couple of years that I started attending, I hope they don’t take over though, because I love that there’s a place I can go to find these old obscure computers and consoles! I mainly focus on old cartridges and cassettes when I’m at Retro Gathering. Nintendo and Sega I can find at all the other retro game conventions in Sweden anyway.

So this year I was also asked to host an exhibit of my Castlevania collection, so I was there an hour earlier to set it up. People seemed to like it, but there were also a lot of visitors that asked me where it was. My cabinet had been hidden behind a roll-up behind the scene where they hosted the competitions, which was a shame… but people who looked found it anyway :) For those that missed it, this is what it looked like:

Castlevania Collection
Castlevania Collection
Castlevania Collection
Castlevania Collection
Castlevania Collection

The first thing I spotted was a boxed Colecovision that Japon was selling. I snagged it right away, with a bunch of games and a steering wheel controller ^_^ Pontus and Jan at Japon are really nice and gave me a good deal on it :)

Pontus at Japon

I love visiting Zeela’s table, it’s always filled with obscure and colorful things :) He also had a really fun rarity, Softporn Adventure by On-Line systems! On-Line systems later became Sierra, and on the picture of the “sexy” cover are executives and writers from the company, to the right is Roberta Williams, famous video game designer, writer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line who created for example the King’s Quest series :) This is the game that later became Leisure Suit Larry. Such a cool piece of history! I would have bought it if it wasn’t so expensive XD Also I’m not that into text-based adventures… ;D

Softporn Adventures – On-Line Systems
Softporn Adventures – On-Line Systems

Apart from this he showed me the TRS-80, a computer that I had bought from him a while back that I got delivered here ^_^ I needed one to play my Tandy Tetris game! It’s apparently some kind of Tandy computer.. It was in really nice condition though ^_^ Original box, and I got both a boxed joystick and a big box full of games with it! :D

Ready to hook up!
Tandy TRS-80
Tandy games
Boxed Tandy games

He also had a bunch of other cool stuff ^_^ Like Strip Poker and Centrefold Squares for Atari ST, I bought these for a friend who had been looking all over the place for Atari ST games XD He AND his girlfriend were thrilled and couldn’t wait to play it!! Haha!

Gakken TV-Boy
Zeela’s table
First laptop from Ericsson ///
Bentley Compuvision
Deluxe Strip Poker back
Deluxe Strip Poker
GX4000 – Amstrad home console
Centrefold Squares
Centrefold Squares back
M5 CGL Home computer

There were so many games for sale, and retro game related stuff ^_^ Spel & Sånt had brought some Virtual Boy rarities, they had the three games that I am missing! But they were darn expensive >_< Another seller had setup Zelda on CDi for whoever wanted to try it out XD The creators of Alwa’s Awakening were also there displaying their game which is almost done now, it will be released on Steam :)

Coleco Vision and Vectrex
Retro Game arts
Famicom
Games for sale
Atari 2600
Game Boy
NES
Virtual Boy gems
Sega Master System
Cheap retro games
Games for sale
So much Batman!
Zelda on CDI on display for whoever wants to try it
Cartridges for sale
Games for sale
Games for sale
Alwa’s Awakening
Jumpman Junior

My friends Nathalie and Andreas from up north were also there, and they were selling some of their games. Nathalie tried to sell me a weird DS game, and Andreas wanted me to upgrade my version of Tetris 2 to a mint copy XD I did end up buying Paperboy 2 from them though ^_^ Andreas is a pixel-perfectionist and he had some upscaler connected on display with Super Mario Bro 3, I don’t like when the picture is perfect and the scanlines are too obvious ;P I prefer it the original way with an old CRT and a bit of a glitchy pic XD

Nathalie & Andreas
Good sales pitch by Nathalie ^_^
but no thanks XD
I already have this Tetris game XD
Super Mario Bros 3
Too much scanlines XD

I finally got around to buying the game Photon that has been under development and on display for years at these conventions ^_^ It’s still not finished, but I bought an early version of it :) I also got to talk a bit to the man behind it who told me a bit about the Sord and the community around it :) Apparently there was a club back in the day that released a magazine here in Sweden called “Sordisen”, he had a few issues for sale. He also showed me a few different versions of the system. I almost went and bought one from Zeela, but then again, I don’t have any games for it yet.. so I think it’ll have to wait.

Photon
Photon
Sord computer
Sordisen Magazine
Sord M5 Pro
Sord M5 Pro
Sord M5 Pro

I competed in the yearly Swedish Championships of Pong this year as well :) I won the first take out but lost to my second opponent.. I haven’t been practicing enough, or rather, I haven’t been practicing at all XD I need to get my husband to start playing it with me!! The champion can be seen in the video below, damn that’s an intense Pong game!

Swedish Championships of Pong
Pong championships

As usual they also had a bunch of games and systems set up so people could try them out :) I saw an Intellivision there which reminded me that a seller had promised me from the previous Retro Gathering to bring me one, when I found him though he had already sold it to someone else :((( Hopefully he can set me up with another one.. I have so many Intellivison games and no Intellivisions to play them on XD

Games set up to play
Commodore VIC-20
Commodore C64
Amiga
Coleco Vision
MSX
Texas Instruments
Atari 800
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Videopac Computer G7000
Fairlight on ZX Spectrum
Crew setting up the games before opening
Intellivision
Colour Genie
Atari 1040 ST
Atari 2600 & NES
Vectrex
Amiga CD32
Sega Master System
Sega Mega Drive, SNES & N64

They also had some other exhibitors, one collection of Sonic games and one of Handic for the VIC 20 :)

Sonic Collection
Sonic Collection
Sonic Collection
Sonic Collection
Handic Collection

One of the best things about going to retro game conventions though is all the people! I met so many old and new friends, and people are so friendly :D

Söders Spel & Skivhandel
Matt8bit
Andreas
Spel & Sånt
Vira & friend
Retrospelsfestivalen
Retroplay
Anders and people :)

After the convention we went out and met up with a bunch of retro gamers, and we found Kralleman and PingeAhlin there who had missed the convention, but had been off on more exciting business! They had scored a bunch of old arcades and other rarities from a connection they had. I was lucky enough to get to go check out their loot :D They had gotten rare prototypes for the Videopac, old minty posters with ads for the Luxor computer, boxed Vectrexes, a Taito Space Invaders arcade cab and a Super Bug arcade with super mint manuals, a really old wooden arcade and an original Break Out arcade. The Break Out arcade had only been played on 64 times, which means it’s hardly been used more than factory testing. That’s pretty rad XD

Box of Videopac prototypes
Videopac prototypes 2-sided
Old luxor ad
Old luxor ad
Old luxor ad
Old luxor ad
Old luxor ad
Boxed Vectrexes
Taito Space Invaders arcade
Super Bug Arcade manual
Super old arcade
Old orange Break Out arcade from Atari

As you can probably figure, Retro Gathering has outdone themselves again and it was an awesome convention! I’ll go through my loot in a later post when I’ve gone through it all ;D

The Tetris Collection

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I’ve amassed quite an extensive Tetris collection by now. I always buy a Tetris game if I don’t already have it, and man! There’s a lot of Tetris games out there! Tetris is such a fun game, you never get tired of it, and I think it’s so exciting to try different versions :) So here they are! You can click the pictures to view them larger if you for example want to see the screenshots on the back of the box ^_^ I right now have 136 different video game versions (including 3 arcade games) of Tetris and 5 board games :) These picture below are already outdated and missing around 40+ games from the collection XD

All my Tetris video games
Tetris games
Playing Tetris with Tetris games
Tetris games

Atari Tetris Arcade

My most proudest Tetris game is definitely my dedicated Atari Tetris Arcade from 1988. It’s so much fun to play against friends ^_^ And it has the unique gameplay where you have objectives instead of just endless mode with increasing difficulty. You can read more about this one in my blog post about the Atari Tetris Arcade >>

Atari Tetris Arcade
Atari Tetris arcade
Atari Tetris arcade gameplay
Atari Tetris Arcade board
Atari Tetris Arcade buttons
Tetris arcade logo
Atari Tetris logo
Atari Tetris Arcade detail
Atari games logo
Runs on cash XD
Tetris Arcade objectives
Tetris Arcade objectives

Sega Tetris Arcade

My most recent Arcade pickup is the Sega Tetris PCB. This is not a Jamma standard, but fortunately I got an adaptor with it so I can play it on my Blast City cabinet :) It has these photorealistic pictures in the background, so awkward XD And when you die this disappointed monkey is disappointed in you… haha XD

Sega Tetris Arcade PCB closeup
Sega Tetris Arcade PCB
Sega Tetris PCB
Sega Tetris Arcade played on Blast City
Sega Tetris Arcade gameplay
Disappointed Monkey

Tetris Plus 2 Arcade

I also recently got a PCB of Sega Tetris that I can use with my Blast City arcade ^_^

Arcade PCB Tetris Plus 2
Tetris Plus 2 PCB
Tetris Plus 2 Arcade
Tetris Plus 2 Arcade PCB
Tetris Plus 2 Arcade gameplay

C64 Tetris

I have three different editions of the Tetris game on C64. The gameplay is the same, it looks like on the back of the big box one (it’s almost all in black and white), the screenshots on the back of the smaller one are taken from a different system. I also have the game on a floppy disk version instead of cassette :) This one is a bit more rare to find.

C64 – Tetris
C64 – Tetris back
C64 – Tetris big box
C64 – Tetris big box back
C64 floppy disk – Tetris
C64 floppy disk – Tetris back

ZX Spectrum Tetris

I recently got the ZX Spectrum version of Tetris on cassette tape as well. The packaging looks exactly the same as the C64 version, but the graphics are quite different because of the hardware. I recently found a Spanish version of Tetris for ZX Spectrum. I’ve also bought a copy of Welltris for ZX Spectrum. Since the colors are so different on this system I can’t wait to see what it looks like compare to the Atari ST version :D

ZX Spectrum – Tetris
ZX Spectrum – Tetris back
ZX Spectrum – Tetris
ZX Spectrum – Tetris back
ZX Spectrum – Welltris
PS2 – Tetris Worlds

Tandy CPC Tetris

Someone on Instagram showed me that there was a version of Tetris for the Tandy CPC, I don’t even know what that is!?! But I found a complete version of Tetris for it on eBay XD So now I have a Tandy game, but nothing to play it on >_< I’m hoping I’ll eventually bump into one.. I think it’s some old type of computer..

Tandy CPC Tetris The Soviet Challenge
Tandy CPC – Tetris
Tandy CPC – Tetris manual
Tandy CPC – Tetris Manual back
Tandy CPC – Tetris cartridge

Amiga Tetris

I’ve begun finding Tetris games on Amiga as well ^_^ So far I have three versions of Tetris, Tetris and Super Tetris that were released by Spectrum HoloByte (I love the box art on the first one :D) and one released by Infogrames. The Infogrames one I bought from an eBay seller in Australia, but I don’t think it’s an Australian copy, unless it was exported there since they are also a PAL region. Infogrames is French, and on the back of the game it has German, French and English language. I’ve never seen this box art before though. The last one is an Amiga cover disk with the game Tettrix on it! This was gifted to me from a friend :)

Amiga – Tetris
Amiga – Tetris back
Amiga – Super Tetris
Amiga – Super Tetris back
Amiga – Tetris
Amiga – Tetris back
Tettrix Amiga coverdisk

Atari ST Tetris

I recently got myself an Atari ST 1040, an so far I only have like 5 or 6 games for it, one of them is of course a Tetris game ^_^ This one is called Welltris and it’s like playing Tetris in a well :D Read my review of this game here >>

Atari ST – Welltris
Atari ST – Welltris back

X68000 Tetris

I haven’t got a Sharp X68000 computer/system yet, but I’ve so far gotten two games for the system, mainly for my two most collected game series: Tetris and Castlevania. It’s annoying not being able to play them, but hopefully I’ll find a Sharp X68000 one day…

X68000 – Tetris
X68000 – Tetris back

MSX Tetris

I actually have an MSX, I’m not sure wether it’s an MSX 1 or 2 though.. but I don’t have a disk drive or a tape deck for it.. so I can only play cartridge games on it so far.. unfortunately the red Tetris game is on floppy disk, the rare Korean one is however on cartridge :) It’s for the Korean version of MSX called Zemmix.

MSX – Tetris
MSX – Tetris back
MSX Zemmix – Tetris
MSX Zemmix – Tetris back

CDI Tetris

I also have a Tetris version for Philips CDi. Just bought myself a CDI last week, so I’ll be able to try it out now ^_^

CDI – Tetris
CDI – Tetris back

Famicom Tetris

Moving on to 8-bit Tetris we have a couple for the Famicom :D The BPS Tetris is by far my favorite, mainly because of the fucked up controls XD A fun challenge, and the Technotetris soundtrack is awesome! ^_^

Famicom – Tetris
Famicom – Tetris back
Famicom – Tetris 2 + Bombliss
Famicom – Tetris 2 + Bombliss back
Famicom – Tetris Flash
Famicom – Tetris Flash back

NES Tetris

I also have the NES versions that I’m aware of. Here my favorite is by far Tengen’s Tetris, since they have this awesome co-op mode that is incredibly fun! You either work really well together with a friend, or it’s a train wreck, or you start fighting about the score and try to work against each other XD The most recent addition is Dushlan, not an official Tetris game but a game very much “Tetris-like” by Mega Cat Studios.

NES – Tengen Tetris
NES – Tengen Tetris back
NES – Tetris
NES – Tetris back
NES – Tetris small box
NES – Tetris small box back
NES – Tetris 2
NES – Tetris 2 back
Dushlan NES
Dushlan NES back
White NES cartrdige Dushlan Tetris
NES Dushlan white Nintendo cartridge

Game Boy Tetris

Then there’s the handhelds! Tetris for Game Boy was a classic ^_^ But even more versions were released! I’m still missing Tetris 2 >_< But I’ll get it eventually! A recent addition is Tetris Attack which I didn’t know existed on Game Boy as well, it’s not really Tetris in my opinion, but since it’s called Tetris I’ll let it slip…

GB – Tetris
GB – Tetris back
GB – Tetris Flash
GB – Tetris Flash back
GB – Tetris Plus