Retrospelsfestivalen 2017!

September 10, 2017 by stopXwhispering

Last weekend I visited Retrospelsfestivalen in Malmö. A retro gaming convention in the south of Sweden that is now running for the fourth year in a row. This year they had changed the venue to a place called Inkonst. I really liked this new venue, they had used the stage downstairs for the marketplace which was awesome. So many retro games for sale, awesome sellers and tidy tables filled with retro gaming goodness ^_^

Games for sale

N644 games

Boxed Game Boys

So much SNES

Famicom

NES games

Mr. Gimmick

Lots of retro games

Sachen games

My little Pony and games

PC Engine and Game Boys

N64 controllers

NES games

Nintendo64

Retrospelsmässan at RSF

Quartex table of retro games

SFC

Retro Bit Bros selling games and merch

SNES and GBA

SNES games

Super Famicom

The market

Japanspel

Apart from games you could as usual also find a lot of retro gaming merchandise, artwork and crafts :)

Buying retro games

Pappas Pärlor bead art

Turtles riding a dino

Pappas Pärlor

Games and merch

Knitted beanies from bleepwear

Pappas Pärlor flowers

Sluskafan art

Table filled with games and merch

Upstairs there was a large area decorated with various console demo kiosks and arcade machines that were set to free play. They also had a demo corner surrounding the small stage where the competitions were held. Unfortunately I didn’t have the energy to stick around all day (I’m over 7 months pregnant right now), so I missed all the competitions and the lectures that were being held :( It was all really nicely set up though, and well organised :)

Super Mario Bros

Arcade gaming

Arcades

Candy cabs

Blast City

Donkey Kong Cocktail table

Gaming corner

GBA demo stand

Metal Slug

Ms pacman

Move

Start Game

MS Pacman arcade

N64

Playstation demo stands

PS2 demostand

The arcade

Scene

Sega Saturn demo stand

Retro Gaming

Scattered around the place were small personal collections on display, like Final Fantasy and Game & Watch :)

Final Fantasy Collection

Game & Watch

Game & Watch collection

I had a great time at Retrospelsfestivalen and I’m already looking forward to next years convention! It’s always great to get to meet all the friends I’ve gotten to know in the retro gaming world of Sweden ^_^ And of course I bought some cool stuff as well ;D I’ll make a post of that soon! Meanwhile, check out Geeky Gals post from the convention to read more about a cool game called Wünderling that was being showcased at Retrospelsmässan :D

Retro Games convention in Stockholm!

November 1, 2016 by stopXwhispering

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

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

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

Centipede arcade cabinet

Robotron 2084 arcade cabinet

Tempest arcade cabinet

Space Invaders arcade cabinet

Asteroids arcade cabinet

Defender arcade cabinet

Pole Position arcade cabinet

Missile Command arcade cabinet

Space Firebird 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)

Martin selling his book with Thomas

Athletic World and Earth Bound repros

Boxed NES

stuff

Buttons

Browsing

Flashback and modded Gameboy

Cassettes

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

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 on arcade

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

Book release at Stockholm’s Game Museum

October 31, 2016 by stopXwhispering

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

Martin Lindell - Author of Svensk Videospelsutveckling

One of the authors – Martin Lindell

Thomas "Sol" Sunhede, Elsa Karin Boestad-Nilsson and 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

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 screenshot 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

Final Fantasy VII moving art

Gameboy sprites decorating the walls of Stockholm's game museum

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

Pacman cocktail able 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 on arcade

Groove coaster and Reflect Beat arcades

Japanese arcades at HEY Stockholm

Pop n’ Music 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

October 6, 2016 by stopXwhispering

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

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

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 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

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!!!

October 4, 2016 by stopXwhispering

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

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

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

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

Sord computer

Sordisen Magazine

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

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

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

Retro Rumble – Bachelor party edition XD

July 23, 2016 by stopXwhispering

Two weeks ago I threw a Retro Rumble game night for a friend of a friends bachelor party XD

11 guys competed in various retro games, starting off with Soldier Blade for PC Engine. What’s really funny is that each and every new contestant beat the previous highscore XD Talk about competition!

Soldier Blade – PC Engine

Soldier Blade – PC Engine

Soldier Blade – PC Engine

After that we went old school and they got to compete in some Race on Philips Videopac G7200 ^_^ This was much harder for the guys, but a few of them managed to get some decent scores :)

Race on Philips Videopac G7200

Old school consoles

Old school gaming

They also got to compete in Kato-chan & Ken-chan on PC Engine, original Tetris on NES and Super Monaco GP on Sega Mega Drive :)

Retro Rumble - PC Engine Kato-chan & Ken-chan

Kato-chan & Ken-chan – PC Engine

Competing in Super Monaco GP on Sega Mega Drive

Playing Tetris on NES

Meanwhile the entire retro game room was open for business, I had games on on every single TV. The guys really enjoyed Chou Aniki on Sega Saturn, such an absurd game! I just want everyone to experience it XD They also played some Neo Geo AES, some Atari 2600, Virtual Boy, Mr. Gimmick on Famicom and lots of other games and systems when they were not competing ^_^

Retro Rumble – Bachelor party edition

Chou Aniki on Sega Saturn

Playing Neo Geo AES

Playing Sega Saturn

Retro Rumble Bachelor party edition

Playing Atari 2600

NAM 1975 on Neo Geo AES

Playing Virtual Boy

After this it was time for the semi-finals where 4 competitors got to battle it out in a few different Super Famicom games. These games were VS Collection, Harapeko Bakka and Sugoi Hebereke ^_^

Vibben, who they threw the bachelor party for, luckily made it onto the finals as well :) Here they got to play Combat on Atari 2600, Choco Vader Contactee on arcade (really absurd japanese mini-games) and finally competing in highest score on co-op Tetris on NES, the Tengen version ^_^