Retrospelsmässan 2018

May 30, 2018 by stopXwhispering

This Saturday me and my Geeky Gals went to Scandinavia’s largest retro gaming convention, Retrospelsmässan in Gothenburg! Like last year we got to host a Tetris competition in Super Tetris 3 for Super Famicom, and this year we also held a tournament in GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 :D You can read more about the competitions on Geeky Gals blog, meanwhile here’s some pics the convention :)

People at Restrospelsmässan 2018

Finals in Golden Eye 007 at RSM 2018

Tetris competition runner up and winner at RSM 2018

You can always bring your own controller to the competitions

People at RSM 2018

RSM 2018 Tetris finals

Winners Golden Eye Competition RSM 2018

Since I left my little girl at home with her dad I couldn’t stay at the convention much longer than the duration of the contests we hosted, but I did get a few minutes to quickly scour the market XD Also I had made a few deals beforehand ^_^ I am really pleased with all the items that came home with me :D First of all I got 4 more Tetris games for the Tetris collection!! One was a gift from Sonefors <3 the other three I bought from my friend Kralleman :) The three I bought are a bit rare to come by here in Sweden, one is a prototype of Tetris Attack for the Super Nintendo. It reads SNS-AYLE on the label and I think it’s either North or South American. The other two are games I already have as well but from different regions, one is the NES classic Tetris but the Asian version, this one has a beautiful light grey cartridge <3 The other is a Brasilian Tetris 2 for Nintendo NES. From Sonefors I got a PC CD-rom big box version of The Next Tetris :D I am happy to have also brought home an old PC that I bought a while back from my friend Nesfrk, he has been fixing it for me so I hope it works now, if it does I have SO MANY PC CD-ROM Tetris games to try out :D :D

Tetris Attack Prototype SNS-AYLE

NES Tetris Asian Version and Tetris 2 Brasilian

NES Tetris Asian Version light grey cartridge

Tetris Asian version for NES light grey cartridge

The Next Tetris PC CD-ROM Atari

Here’s the cool vintage PC that Nesfrk brought to me at the convention, it is clever since the screen is mounted on top of the computer so it doesn’t consume as much space <3

I also found a few Philips Videopac games! (Or Magnavox Odyssey as it was called in North America) They all had some sweet boxart, and Blobbers was apparently quite rare, but the best one is definitely Hot Love! XD It has been my latest focus in my collecting to find Erotic games for various retro video game systems! :D I just find it so fascinating and funny, especially when it’s really shitty graphics! XD Hot Love for Magnavox Odyssey 2 even came with a free condom!! LOL Unfortunately though Turtles had the wrong game inside, Turtles is number 49 in the series, but inside I found cartridge 52 which is a game called Killer Bees, so now I have to start searching for the Killer Bees box and a loose cartridge no. 49…

Erotic Series Magnavox Odyssey 2 Hot Love!

Philips Videopac – Magnavox Odyssey Hot Love condom

Philips Videopac Blobbers complete

Philips Videopac 12 Take The Money and Run & 49 Turtles

Lastly I also found a Sega Genesis game that I’ve had my eye on many times. Boogerman A Pick and Flick Adventure! Now I came across it at a cheap price and in really minty condition ^_^ Thanks to MSX at Butik Mackapär for always selling such cool games! I also recently acquired a Genesis so I can play it too! :D

I wish I had more time to explore the rest of the convention, but I’ll have to do that next year :) Then my daughter can come with me as well :D I’m still really happy with my findings in such a short amount of time ^_^

l00t from Retrospelsfestivalen 2017!

September 16, 2017 by stopXwhispering

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 ^_^

Tetris – NES Yapon rental case

Tetris – NES Yapon rental case back

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!

Little Red Hood – NES Sachen

Little Red Hood NES

Little Red Hood

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..

NES Sachen games

Lucky Bingo – NES Sachen

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

Frostbite – Atari 2600

Plaque Attack – Atari 2600

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!

Rope & Bombs – Game Boy

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..

Super Chinese World – Super Famicom

Super Chinese World Super Famicom

Super Chinese World

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 :)

Astro Go! Go! – Super Famicom

Astro Go! Go!

Astro Go! Go! – Super Famicom

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 :)

Bloodshot – Sega Mega Drive

Bloodshot Sega Mega Drive

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…

Heavyweight Champ – Sega Master System

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

Darius Plus – PC Engine

Kokotoni Wilf – C64

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

HE-MAN video games collection

August 1, 2017 by stopXwhispering

There’s always a few things that you find particularly cool, that are extra entertaining or that you just hold a strong nostalgic value too. I always enjoyed Tetris games and the Castlevania games so I have of course always collected games in those series when I see them :) Another one of these series that I find particularly interesting is He-Man! I loved the animated He-Man series when I was a kid back in the 80s ^_^ GE MIG KRAFTEN GRÅSKULL!!! (yes I watched the dubbed Swedish versions of Masters of the Universe XD).

It wasn’t until recently that I encountered a video game based on He-Man, and it just never struck me that games based on the popular show might have been made back then! So I started researching (= scour eBay for He-Man video games ^_^). The first one I got was He-Man for the Mattel Intellivision. This one has some pretty awesome 80’s style cover art :D

Masters of the Universe The Power of He-Man – Intellivision

Masters of the Universe The Power of He-Man back – Intellivision

It was also the first game I tried out with my ‘new’ Intellivision that I acquired not too long ago. Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man is actually a pretty good game, even though the graphics are pretty basic. It varies between two types of stages, you start off with flying in He-Man’s wind raider to pursue Skeletor. After you clear that stage it turns into top-down action where you have to block projectiles from Skeletor and dodge other enemies to reach Skeletor and swing your sword ^_^

After this I discovered a few other He-Man games, like Masters of the Universe the Movie and Masters of the Universe The Arcade Game both for ZX Spectrum

Masters of the Universe the Movie – ZX Spectrum

Masters of the Universe the Movie ZX Spectrum

Masters of the Universe the Movie back – ZX Spectrum

I tried out the He-Man game based on the horrible movie from 1987 starring Dolph Lundgren XD It wasn’t very good.. I was just walking around looking for the correct way and trying to find some shit.. it was boring, and I never reached the type of gameplay that was displayed on the back of the cover :/

I tried to get Masters of the Universe the Arcade Game to work, but unfortunately I only got it to load the intro scene and then it got stuck :(

Masters of the Universe The Arcade Game – ZX Spectrum

The Arcade Game He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in the Ilearth Stone back – ZX Spectrum

Masters of the Universe The Arcade Game ZX Spectrum

ZX Spectrum loading

Masters of the Universe The Arcade Game screenshot

The next He-Man game I bought was for the Playstation 2. I actually haven’t tried Masters of the Universe He-Man: Defender of Grayskull out yet. It looks like a 3D adventure and the further you get from 2D the less interested I usually am in a game XD but I’ll get around to trying it eventually ^_^

Masters of the Universe He-man Defender of Grayskull – PS2

Masters of the Universe He-man Defender of Grayskull back – PS2

At this point I had heard of another He-Man game that I saw a bunch of loose cartridges for on eBay, but never a complete game in box.. This game was Masters of the Universe He-Man: The Power of Grayskull for Game Boy Advance. A few weeks ago it finally popped up though, from somewhere in the US, and I bought it after bargaining a bit with the seller regarding shipping etc. Today it arrived in the mail ^_^

Masters of the Universe He-Man Power of Grayskull – GBA

Masters of the Universe He-Man Power of Grayskull back – GBA

I played it for a bit today and it looks good, but the constant tutorials from Orco were a bit frustrating, let me figure stuff out myself! Or at least turn to the manual if I’m clueless.. I hate it when they force the manual on you through the gameplay >_< Also the controls are a bit slow and clunky, my left hand got a bit tired and soar after just one stage because of all the diagonal steering in this isometric environment.. Since the game is so slow it’s also hard to avoid getting hurt.. I gave up at the second stage when reaching the boss and getting Game Over…

It was an extremely frustrating and tedious game. Also it’s based on the new series and not the cool 80’s one ;D

And this was the worst.. XD

I can break stuff??!

Pick up the shiny objects you say…

I was wondering what those things did..

I just saw that with my own eyes.. but thanks for pointing it out..

No shit Sherlock!

Oh so that’s what that’s for…

Really?!?

Now there is one more He-Man game that I know of, and I went to eBay to check on the current status of it right now for this piece. I usually only see the occasional loose cartridge of the He-Man game for the Atari 2600, but for the first time there was a complete copy! In super nice condition! So I had to buy it :D Now I can’t wait for it to arrive ^_^ Here’s the eBay pics of it:

Masters of the Universe The Power of He-Man for Atari 2600

Masters of the Universe The Power of He-Man back for Atari 2600

Can’t wait for it to arrive ^_^ The gameplay looks totally different from the Intellivision version, based on the pictures on the cover :)

Do you like He-Man? Do you know of any more He-Man video games out there that I might have missed? :)

RSM loot – Gleylancer and other Mega Drive beauties :)

July 1, 2017 by stopXwhispering

This year at Retrospelsmässan I actually had a table shared with my friend Cleareyes where I spent half the time selling some of my doubles. I also spent time on the Tetris competition that I was hosting, so I didn’t get much time to shop around. There were LOADS of games for sale this year! I wish I had more time to scour through everything! But I did manage to find a few cool things :)

NES games

Atari 2600 games

ZX Spectrum games

More games

He-man!

Retro games for sale

First up are some really nice Japanese Sega Mega Drive games! The Swedish Pong champion, Barkis, was selling off his personal collection. I managed to score Gleylancer, Splatterhouse Part 3 and Awesome Possum! I also got Rastan Saga II and Shijou Saidai no Soukoban which I had no clue what they were but I was hoping they were playable XD

Gleylancer – Sega Mega Drive

Awesome Possum – Sega Mega Drive

Shijou Saidai no Soukoban – Sega Mega Drive

Splatterhouse Part 3 – Sega Mega Drive

Rastan Saga II – Sega Mega Drive

Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer is an awesome shoot-em-up. It’s quite pricey and I didn’t think I would ever find a copy that I’d be willing to pay the price for. But together with these other games I made a good deal :) It’s a pretty good shmup! It has nice graphics, varied stages, power-ups and various settings for your side-guns. It was fairly easy, but once you die you loose your power-ups and side-guns which make it a bit more challenging.

Gleylancer Sega Mega Drive

Side-guns in Gleylancer

Gleylancer intro

Gleylancer ship

Gleylancer Stage 1

Gleylancer Stage 1 Boss

Gleylancer Stage 2 Boss

Gleylancer Stage 3 lasers

Awesome Possum is a classic platformer, unfortunately not as awesome as I had hoped >_< You could basically just jump around, and Mr. Possum was very difficult to control. It didn’t feel like you could steer him to where you wanted to go. And the story was a bit lame.. you have to run around the rain forest and collect trash to save the environment, and stop robots from cutting down the trees.. in between stages you got a quiz, felt like you were back in elementary school XD A poorly produced game if you ask me..

Awesome Possum Sega Mega Drive

Awesome Possum save the rainforest!

Awesome Possum trees

Awesome Possum tree-killing robots

Mid-term Quiz in Awesome Possum

I have a few games in the Splatterhouse series, the second one for Sega Mega Drive, the one for PC Engine and Wanpaku Grafitti for the Famicom (although that one can hardly be counted as the same XD) and now I also got Splatterhouse Part 3 which I think was better than what I remember from both the 2nd one for Mega Drive and the PC Engine version. The controls were a bit smoother, it was more fluent. It wasn’t just a regular brainless beat ’em up where you can just button mash the attack button and get away with it. Even though Rick only had one attack button you still had to use timing and strategy to outsmart the enemies. You had to be on your toes a bit more than in usual beat ’em ups. I liked that about it :) But some rooms were ridiculous, like the flying hands or the books/objects’ room where stuff just came flying at you constantly, pushing you backwards with no way of you being able to attack them back.. super annoying.. I also ran out of time on the third stage, but nothing happened, I could just continue to look for the boss room until I found it and beat it o_O

Splatterhouse Part 3 Sega Mega Drive

Upper cut!

Groin punch!

Monster toss!

Jennifer smells of rot…

Bat smack!

Bear punch!

Disgusting annoying hands! >_<

Stages of face decomposition XD

This guy… >_<

Shijou Saidai no Soukoban was a puzzle game where you pushed blocks around to get them to the marked spots to clear a stage. The graphics/colour and overall look of it was kind of boring. I played a couple of stages but eventually got stuck and I don’t have patience for these kind of puzzle games. I prefer Tetris ^_^

Shijou Saidai no Soukoban Sega Mega Drive

Shijou Saidai no Soukoban stage 1

Shijou Saidai no Soukoban boxes

The final Japanese Mega Drive game I got was Rastan Saga II. Everybody has told me it’s the shittiest game ever. And sure, the character was a bit stiff, he looked silly and was badly animated, but I liked the colourful graphics, it was definitely not as bad as Sword of Sodan XD But yeah, after reaching the second stage boss I agree, it’s definitely not a good game. I wasn’t able to get a hit on Medusa without her hitting me like three times first >_<

Rastan Saga II Sega Mega Drive

Rastan Saga II Jump attack!

Rastan Saga II Swinging

Rastan Saga II First boss

Rastan Saga II Stage 2

Rastan Saga II Second boss

I picked up an original grey Nintendo Game Boy as well, mainly because it came in this funky carry case. I already have this carry case, but it’s my favourite, so now I have two :) I also got two games with it, Tetris and Motocross Maniacs, and it was a good deal.

Apart from that I picked up a few Game Boy titles: Star Saver, Migraine, Booby Boys, Volleyfire and Sanrio Carnival.

Nintendo Game boy with carry case

Nintendo Game Boy with case and games

Star Saver & Migraine – Game Boy

Booby Boys, Volleyfire, Sanrio Carnival – Game Boy

Migraine is a typ of puzzle game where you turn levers to steer a laser that pops bubbles. It was extremely boring and frustrating. The controls were slow and the stages had an annoying time limit..

Migraine Game Boy

Migraine stage 1

Migraine stage 2

The Adventures of Star Saver on the other hand is a great platforming shooter :) And the music is awesome!! I recommend trying this one out :D

The Adventures of Star Saver intro

The Adventures of Star Saver

The Adventures of Star Saver powerup

The Adventures of Star Saver boss

I thought Volleyfire would be a shmup as well, but not really. You’re only on one screen, facing an opponent and you have to shoot down his health by getting your shot in between the moving obstacles in the middle. It’s kind of like the old school Outlaw on Atari 2600, but with space ships.. boring.

Volleyfire Game Boy

Volleyfire stage 1

Volleyfire stage 2

Booby Boys is a top down platformer where your objective is to collect all items on a stage, find the key and enter the next stage. Your weapon is that you make traps for the enemies, dig a hole and they fall down, push it again to kill them when they’re stuck. It was so-so..

Booby Boys Game Boy

Booby Boys Stage 1

Booby Boys screenshot

Sanrio Carnival was just like Columns! Except with the heads of Sanrio characters instead of gems XD You make matches of three horizontally, vertically and even diagonally. It was ok :) There’s a hard mode where the blocks just stick mid-air when you destroy a row, that was different O_o

Sanrio Carnival Game Boy

Sanrio Carnival screenshot

Sanrio Carnival difficult stage

I also found some PC Engine titles that I had been looking for, and some that I didn’t know I wanted XD I found Winds of Thunder which I have been looking for for quite some time, and PC Genjin 3 which is a great platforming series. Then I also bumped into a game called Lady Sword.. I had no clue what it was but it looked absurd so I had to get it XD

Winds of Thunder – PC Engine

PC Genjin 3 – PC Engine

Lady Sword – PC Engine

I got convinced to buy a boxed Super Famicom as well XD I already have 3.. but none of them are boxed and two of them are in really shitty condition. One is extremely yellowed, and the other one has been spray painted in silver, a really bad paint job at that.. So it was mainly because of the content that I picked it up. The console is complete and in really minty condition :) And it was a fair price.

Super Famicom boxed

Super Famicom controllers

Minty Super Famicom

The first and last thing I bought at the convention were Atari 2600 carts! I just love these, especially when they’re some weird bootlegs and stuff XD A lot of them are German and have some pretty funny names, like Raumroboter :) Spider Fighter is not in very pretty condition, but I recently bought a bootleg of it and realised it’s an amazing game so I wanted to try the original cartridge :) Phantompanzer I bought together with an Amiga CD32 game called Gloom. It’s been suggested to me before, I think it’s supposed to be an FPS game kind of like Doom…

Weltuntergang, My Way & Raumroboter – Atari 2600

Bobby Geht Heim & Phantompanzer – Atari 2600

Dschungel Boy & Pygmy – Atari 2600

Tele-games 14 & 5 – Atari 2600

Alien Force, Hoppy & Spider Fighter – Atari 2600

Gloom – Amiga CD32

At the end of the day I picked up some odd things over at Butik Mackapär. Markus always has some weird things and lots of Japanese goodies ^_^ I found a newly produced game for the Sega Dreamcast, it looked cute :) I also got a bunch of odd third party controllers. And some of the Atari 2600 games above were from him as well. He threw in an odd cartridge for the Sega Mega Drive, an Interceptor Specify Card.. I have no clue what it does XD

Alice’s Mom’s Rescue – Dreamcast

Interceptor Specify Card – Mega Drive

Third party controllers

Well this turned out to be a pretty long post XD There’s even a few more games I forgot to mention that I got at RSM, but this will have to do for now ^_^

Retrospelsmässan 2017

June 3, 2017 by stopXwhispering

This year we finally got to attend Retrospelsmässan again, Sweden’s largest retro gaming convention! Thanks to Sven666 and Quartex who revived the franchise :) It was a blast as always, and bigger than ever! They used a larger venue, and this year there were finally not a single issue regarding the queues! Good job guys! :D

I had a table shared with a my friend Cleareyes this year, where I sold off some of my doubles. I was also given the task of arranging a Tetris competition during the afternoon :) I had picked out a Tetris game and a way of competing that wouldn’t be too time consuming. I chose Super Tetris 3 for Super Famicom. In 2-player VS mode we had tryouts of 64 people that competed :) 32 remained, and then 16, then 8, then 4 and eventually just 2 people who battled for the title of RSM’s Tetris champion ^_^ I hardly managed to take any pics during the competition but I got to borrow some from my friend and also avid Tetris collector Daniel Engdahl :) Thanks!

Heidi stopXwhispering hosting Tetris competition

stopXwhispering hosting the Tetris competition

Tetris champion Johan Paradis

I got to play a versus game with the winner afterwards. First to 3 wins and he beat me by 3-2. I got distracted in the last match XD

Me and Johan battling in Tetris

Focused

Heidi stopXwhispering and the Tetris champion

Me with Johan Paradis, the Tetris champion

The convention was a blast, unfortunately I didn’t have time to explore all the tables and all the exhibitors as much as I would have liked. I spent most of the time talking to friends that I bumped into :) It’s such a great place for all of us nerds to gather and hang out ^_^ I’m already looking forward to Retrospelsmässan 2018!