Gauntlet | Retro Video Gaming

This weekend I’ve been to Berlin with my friend NinjaBrite, we had a relaxing weekend with a lot of fun. One of the best things we experienced though was the Computerspielemuseum (Video Game Museum). It’s a permanent museum on Karl Marx Allee in central Berlin and it’s got a lot to offer!

They had loads of retro gaming consoles on display in pretty green boxes, all labeled with the name of the system. I photographed mainly all the ones I didn’t own, so I would remember what to look for next ;D There was only one game displayed in these green boxes, which was Atari’s E.T.! But there were lots of other games there that you could play in other areas.

They also had an arcade area with original old arcade cabinets that were free to play!! This was totally exciting for me since I’ve hardly ever gotten to play any arcade machines, except when I was in Japan. The coolest one was of course the original Pong arcade cabinet, and an old spacey green arcade cabinet with some kind of shooter. You only got the try these out on mondays though and we were there on a thursday :( but we got to play a lot of Donkey Kong, Space Invaders II, Frogger, Gauntlet, Asteroids and others ^^

There were a lot of cool things to see, read about and experience. For example they had 4 computers playing Ludo against eachother, a 5 player pong you could try out, a computer you could ask anything and another computer which was impossible to beat!

Immediately at the entrance there were life sized statues of famous characters such as Link from Zelda, Rayman, Jak & Daxter and Lara Croft ^_^

They also had a GIANT Atari Joystick! It was even working and hooked up to an Atari 2600 Junior and you could play Pacman with it ^_^ I of course had to try it out! It was difficult but worked well!

Another cool game we tried out was Rom Check Fail! This was a recently made game (don’t remember by who..) that was basically a bunch of old classic games merged together in one big glitch! Really hard but really fun to play ^^ One second you’re playing as Pacman in Mario world, the next your the Asteroids ship flying around in Hyrule haha ^_^

This was a GREAT museum! And I recommend anyone going to Berlin to go see it ^_^

Today I got 2 more packages in the mail, and they contained the rest of the Commodore 64 games I had ordered.

The games are Driller, Batman, Shao-Lins Road, Batalyx, Steg the Slug, Fantasy World Dizzy, Revenge II, Voidrunner, Turbo the Turtoise and Xevious/Gauntlet in a double pack.

Three of the games are Jeff Minter games. I’ve heard a lot about him and his software company Llamasoft, but I haven’t previously played many of his games, except for Attack of the Mutant Camels on a PC ROM a long time ago and Space Giraffe for XBLA. So I’m excited to try these ones out! :D The ones I got that were Jeff Minter games were Batalyx, Revenge II and Voidrunner.

I love how most of his games are psychedelic trips containing either Llamas, Goats, Camels, Giraffes or Sheep! The artwork is just brilliant! Just check out Voidrunner:

A Llama and a Sheep in spacesuits! :D

Shao-Lins road I’ve played before in Game Room (the XBLA virtual arcade simulator) and I’m really looking forward to trying it on the C64. The Game Room version though is based on the Arcade version, so it might be disappointing. We’ll just have to wait and see, but anything from Konami is usually kickass! :D

The Batman game seems to be based on the movie where Jack Nicholson plays the Joker. The box was a bit scruffed around the edges, but apart from that everything else is in great condition.

Here’s the other side of the Xevious box, which contains Gauntlet:

I haven’t heard of Driller before but apparently it contains “SOLID 3 Dimensional Landscapes like you’ve never seen before. Thanks to Freescape – it feels like you’re actually there“!! …..wow!

It’s in such nice condition, I suspect that the previous owner hardly played it.. that’s usually not a good sign ;D