l00t from Retrospelsfestivalen 2017!

Even though I just spent a few hours at the retro game convention Retrospelsfestivalen this year, I still managed to pick up a couple of games for various systems ^_^

First of all, I’m super happy to have such good friends in the retro community that thinks of me when they find an unusual edition of Tetris :D Thanks Andreas for finding it for me ^_^ Retro Bit Bros had this Swedish Yapon rental edition of Tetris for the NES for sale and they put it aside for me :) It’s a beauty! A great addition to my Tetris collection ^_^

At their table I also found two Sachen games that I’ve never encountered in the wild before. I had to get Little Red Hood and try it for myself. I’ve only seen a brief video of it from AVGN back in the day. It was even worse than I had expected XD Horrible game mechanics and I couldn’t even get past the first stage. I collected cash enough to buy all the things in the store but none of them did anything useful or permanent, and I found a key in one instance but I didn’t find anything to open with it.. so eventually I just gave up!

Lucky Bingo was supposed to have some half-naked ladies in it I was told, but I couldn’t find any.. :(  instead it was the most boring gameplay I’ve ever encountered! It’s basically just a digital slot machine, put in money, pull the lever, and push again to stop. Completely boring >_< Unfortunately I couldn’t get it running on my Retron 5 so I couldn’t record any gameplay..

Retro Bit Bros also had a few Atari 2600 games, and I had to get these two! Such amazing artwork on the covers :D Frostbite wasn’t very exciting, you just jumped back and forth over what I think was supposed to be ice-blocks in a river. Plaque Attack however was way better! You’re a toothpaste tube inside a mouth shooting at food and candy that try to attack the teeth! A fun shooter where you fight off hamburgers, french fries, hot dogs, ice cream and lots of other tooth-enemies XD

I picked up a newly made Game Boy game by a small Swedish developer crew called Team Lamp Oil. It’s a puzzle game with falling blocks containing rope and bombs which you have to get to match so that you can clear the board when the fire block appears :) It was fun!

At the convention I found two Super Famicom games that looked like fun. I thought that Super Chinese World was a platformer because it looked like it on the back, but it had a lot of RPG-elements that I really despise >_< The actual battles though were platforming action, but it was soooo slooooow and the hit detection was really awful, so I do not recommend this title..

The other Super Famicom game was Astro Go! Go! This was a racing game, kind of like F-Zero.  I tried out two different characters and different tracks, but it was a bit difficult, and it probably would have been a lot more fun if it had a 2-player VS mode. Otherwise the graphics were nice, and the controls were sharp :)

I found a Sega Mega Drive game as well which has a really badass cover! Bloodshot is a first-person shooter kind of like Wolfenstein 3D but more futuristic. Compared to Wolfenstein on Super Famicom it’s a bit more difficult to steer since you don’t have the L and R buttons to sidestep on the Sega controller. But it works, and it’s ok in single player. It has a 2-player VS mode though that I’m eager to try out with a friend :)

I got a boxing game called Heavyweight Champ for the Sega Master System. It was cheap and it was lame XD I’m probably gonna use it for the finals sometime on Retro Rumble though! It’s probably more fun in 2-player mode than versus the AI…

Darius Plus for PC Engine was another purchase, I love the PC Engine and shmups ^_^ This wasn’t the best one in the series though.. but it was decent :) The thing I didn’t like was the power up system and that it was a bit slow for my taste.

Last but not least was Kokotoni Wilf, such a weird name! And an obscure cover.. I tried to get it running on my C64, but it didn’t want to finish loading.. I will give it another try some day, sometimes the old computer just doesn’t wanna play with you XD

l00t from Retro Games Stockholm!

Since I went to Stockholm by train this time for the Retro Games convention I wasn’t able to buy more than I could carry, but once I got home I realised I had at least 35 games and also a new system with me home XD It was mainly games on cassette tapes though, and they don’t take up as much space ;D

Let’s start with the system. A few weeks ago I acquired a game from Zeela that I had previously seen at Retro Gathering, I mainly wanted to have it because of the cover. It’s called Softporn Adventure, and it’s made by On-Line Systems, which later turned into Sierra Online. The game is the predecessor to Leisure Suit Larry, but without graphics, it’s a text-based adventure. On the cover from left to right in the hot tub are Diane Siegel, On-Line’s production manager; Susan Davis, On-Line’s bookkeeper, Rick Chipman, an actual waiter from a local restaurant and Roberta Williams, famous for games like the King’s Quest series etc :)

Once I got the game though I just really wanted to be able to play it, and especially I want my friend Gabbi to be able to play it, because she’s totally into text-based adventures and she reaaaallly wanted to try this game when she saw it at Retro Gathering XD So I’m working on getting a setup for it to work :) At Retro Games I bought an Atari 400 from Michael Berglund, unfortunately he didn’t have the floppy disk drive, so I’m still looking for one of those.. but the Atari 400 computer he had for sale was apparently quite rare, since it was a Swedish version with a Swedish keyboard :) Either way, I can at least play some cartridge games that I got with the systems meanwhile, until I find a floppy drive ^_^

Most of the cassettes I bought this time were for ZX Spectrum, and a few Commodore 64 ones. One VIC 20 game slipped in and also one that I discovered was for MSX! O_o I actually have an MSX that I just haven’t blogged about yet, got it not too long ago, but unfortunately I don’t have a cassette tape deck for it yet :/ I guess that’s next on my list together with the floppy drive for Atari 400 ^_^

I’m really happy to have found the other two Horace games that were officially released for the ZX Spectrum, because I really really love Horace Goes Skiing! I’m hoping these ones will be just as good ;D I also got a bunch of other ZX Spectrum games, some that are text-based adventures for Gabbi to try when she visits, and some I just bought for the name or the artwork :) Transylvanian Tower looks rad! :D

When it comes to these old cassettes I mainly just buy them based on the name of the games or just looking at the artwork. I got six Commodore 64 cassettes :) The Official Father Christmas will be my go-to game this holiday XD

I got a few games for other systems. I bought Neo Drift Out from Sol, I now also owe him a game night at my place with freshly bakes scones because I got such a good price on it XD I bought Yie Ar Kung-Fu together with a 3DS game called Dream Trigger from Peter at Arkadbutiken. I found one Japanese Sega Mega Drive game I didn’t previously have together with some C64 games from Söders Spel & Skivhandel and I bought Martin Lindell & Thomas Sunhede’s newly released book “Svensk Videospelsutveckling“. Martin also had some promo games, so I grabbed Castlevania for my Castlevania Collection, and I got Pac-Man World 2 and Space Race with it ^_^ Thanks Martin!

I recently purchased an arcade cabinet from a friend (I’m up to 4 arcades now!) and it was a bit of a rare one, I’ll make a blog post about it soon :) I’ve gotten to know another collector in Sweden who knows a lot about this particular cabinet and when I showed him pics of mine he told me that one of the buttons wasn’t original. He apparently had a spare original part and was kind enough to give it to me ^_^ Thank you so much Pinge! <3 Also when I was talking to Peter from Arkadbutiken and he found out that I had a Blast City cabinet, he gave me the manual for it ^_^ Thanks a bunch Peter! <3

I’m really happy with my l00t, and that I managed to bring it all home on the train XD The Retro Games convention was a blast, and I can’t wait for the next convention to get to hang out with all these awesome people again! :D Now I’m off to play some Atari 400 ^_^

Retro Gathering L00t part I

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…

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

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

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 ^_^

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 ^_^

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..

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.

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!

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 ^_^

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 ^_^

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!