Retrospelsmässan 2015

This weekend was awesome!! I left on friday with my Geeky Gals to Gothenburg and met up with a bunch of friends and new acquaintances in the retro gaming community :)

geekygals-roadtrip-to-rsm

On saturday morning we went to Retrospelsmässan! Sweden’s largest yearly retro gaming convention! This year I had a press pass so I could enter beforehand and get some nice pictures of everything they had set up ^_^ They had used a larger portion of the facility this year, more tables with things for sale, a whole corner for indie games, a live podcast being streamed, a bigger area for retro gaming with 60-70 consoles and old computers setup for people to try out and arcades, pinball machines, collections and art on display. There’s just so much going on at RSM! :D

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First let’s talk about the gaming experience at RSM! There were a couple of indie developers showcasing their new games. I tried out Alwa’s Awakening which was inspired by the NES. Very cute and the graphics were beautifully made, controlling the character was a bit slow though, I prefer faster platforming games such as mario, this one was slower than Megaman.. They had some nice elements in it though, you could spawn a brick or a bubble to make you reach certain places or get past obstacles. It was just a demo though, I got through it without dying, they promised to make it harder by the time it gets released ;D Hopefully we’ll see it released on Wii U soon, I’m also hoping for an Xbox One release, they would look into that ^_^

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I also tried out a game called 1993 Space Machine! This game felt more like a finished product and it was a lot of fun! A horizontal sidescrolling shooter which looked kind of futuristic but still felt old school ^_^ That’s probably because it was actually MADE back in 1993! But isn’t released until now. It was difficult! They also had a keyboardist integrating music live into the game, this was a really cool thing to experience :D I doubt that they’ll ship the game with a dude that plays keyboard with it though ;D haha! They’re looking at releasing the game on Steam and Xbox One! :D So yay!!

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There were two other indie games showcasing, I did however not get the chance to try them out. They looked cool though ^_^ They were called The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human (brilliant name ;D) and else.heartbreak.

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During the whole day they had retro gaming competitions and speedruns going on at Retrospelsmässan. We we’re so occupied with everything that we completely missed the Bomberman tournament, and when we tried to sign up for Super Mario it was too late >_< I did however compete in Asteroids on Arcade and guess what?!? I came in second place!! :D :D

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There were so many consoles and systems to be played all over RSM! It’s almost overwhelming :D Just look at all these beauties!

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The first one here I’ve never even seen! Adonbolagen AB is apparently a Swedish company and in the bottom it says Aleph, it’s so retro!! :D

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I really want an Amiga CD32 myself!! The controllers are just so cool ^__^
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This cabinet is just so cute! Comic Game! haha ^_^
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I love how colorful the cartridges are for this Arcadia 2001 console! :D Never heard of this one before either ^_^
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This one’s also weird-looking :D It’s called a Bondwell, never even heard of! ^__^
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Here’s a display stand for Coleco Vision! So awesomely cool! ^__^
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This one looks so futuristic! :D Love it ^__^ Commodore CBM Model 8032
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This Pong Hockey machine is the prettiest pong machine I’ve ever seen! Bright red and beautiful! ^__^ WANT!!!
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I really want a Mattel Intellivision! I have had games for it almost since I began collecting, but never had the hardware to play it on >_<
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I really need an MSX as well, one that can play the only Castlevania game I’m missing, the MSX one ;D 
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And what the hell is a PCFX?! Apparently it’s made by NEC, the people who made the PC Engine!! :D I’m intrigued ^__^
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I don’t know what the hell this one is, but damn it’s cool! I love retro things that are brown, orange or yellow, even better when all the colors are combined ;D haha (edit: I found out that it’s an Atari 400!)
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I need this Sega SG-1000 as well! It’s so cute ^__^
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I was on the lookout all day for a ZX Spectrum but couldn’t find one, except for this demo one. I really want the black one with a tiny rainbow in the corner, it’s so cuuute ^^ 
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Here’s a Videopac 7200, looks pretty rad huh? ;D The cartridges have handles! So smart ^___^
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And here’s the Videopac G7000 ^__^ Now I’ve showed off the systems I found different and cool, they had all the regular ones as well of course, NES, SNES, SMD, SMS, Famicom, Atari etc…
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And here’s some of the arcades and pinball machines you could play ^__^
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Apart from all the gaming there were also shitloads of games, consoles and merchandise for sale! :D I found so many things that I wanted!! I was mainly on the hunt for an Atari Lynx and a ZX Spectrum though, but it’s really hard not to get sucked into buying everything else that shines in pretty bright colours ;D You could find games from the 70’s up to the early 2000’s. There were of course a lot of NES, SNES and N64, but you could also find Sega Master System and Mega Drive, and loads of old vintage stuff like Commodore and Amiga. Below is a system called Alice! So cute ^__^

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Here’s some PC Engine games and Sega Saturn :D Yes, I bought some stuff here ;D
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Beautiful old game boxes for Luxor ^_^
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So many vintage consoles and still boxed!! :D Spoiler alert!!! I bought two of these ;D Guess which??
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I looked at this old system, the handle on the left is to hold the console while steering with the right one, haha, the console IS the controller! :D awesome ^__^
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Here’s another colorful old Pong clone ^__^ Japan knows how to make things cute! 
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This is one out five known copies of a boxed Luxor in Sweden! coooool ^^
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Bead art jewelry!
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There were even Neo Geo games!! And yes, I came home with one ;D Not pictured though ^^
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You could find all kinds of systems boxed and pretty ^__^
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One of the developers behind Pier Solar was there to sell some re-printed copies :D 
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Amazing prints of retro gaming box arts ^^
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So many games!!! *drool*
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This Samus lamp is puuurdyyy!!! <3 
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KCL selling off his entire CiB NES collection ;D
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And more games… I don’t even feel like I had time to thoroughly check through all the tables! I think I even missed a few :(
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Pappas Pärlor was also in the house, selling his awesome retro gaming inspired perler bead artworks! :D
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All over the place you could spot cosplayers in amazing costumes inspired by games. Here are just a few of the ones I managed to catch on camera ^_^ You can check out more cosplay over at the Geeky Gals blog ^_^

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There were also loads of things to just look at and admire ^__^ Like Love Hultén’s amazing crafts, his R-Kaid-R MAME mini cabinets and a full scale arcade cabinet that you even got to play on ^__^
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And also loads of various collections of vintage games ^_^ Like handhelds, Swedish made retro games, Giana Sister, R-Type and lots of other things.
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I’ll make a separate post with all my pickups from the convention, however it will take a couple of more days just to go through it all ;D Stay tuned!

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Pixel K.A.F.E. in Malmö!

I visited Pixel K.A.F.E. for the first time on the day of the Sci-Fi World convention in Malmö last month. I’ve been wanting to visit it for quite some time, but it’s a bit far away for me so I haven’t been able to.. but it was just as good as I had imagined! If not better! :D Pixel K.A.F.E. is a restaurant / arcade where you can eat, have a coffee, play pinball, play arcades games, board games or even old retro games! The entire place is also decorated with wonderful retro gaming nostalgia :D …. and Darth Vader!

Pixel-K.A.F.E.---diner
Pixel-K.A.F.E.---BarPixel-K.A.F.E.---Darth-Vader-and-Zapper-lightsPixel-K.A.F.E.---art

My favorite part is all the original arcade cabinets! Especially the Atari Tetris arcade :D (sooo pretty and I loooove Tetris!) There are no other places around here in Sweden where you can find arcade cabinets like this and just play ^_^ Pixel K.A.F.E also. has a wide variety of arcades! There’s the retro games, the blast city cabs, the beautiful Mega cabinet, the Time Crisis cabinet with guns and also racing :) It almost feels like I’m back in the 80’s and 90’s!

Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Arcade-cabinets Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Arcade Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Atari-Tetris-Arcade Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Blast-City-Arcades Pixel-K.A.F.E.---arcade-gamesPixel-K.A.F.E.--Xmen arcade

There’s not only arcades, but also a whole room filled with six different pinball machines! :D I tried some of them out and came to the conclusion that I’m not particularly good at pinball ;D I prefer video games ^__^

Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Pinball

There are also old games and consoles on display all over the place! They’ve got an amazing Game & Watch collection and a bunch of other cool things to look at! Some stuff that I’ve never even seen! ;D

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Apart from arcades you can also pick games you want to play on the TV’s, there’s 4 of them set up around the place with couches, it’s really cozy ^_^ Or you could go battle your friends in some classic pong games on the Odyssey 2001 :D

Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Retro-Gaming Pixel-K.A.F.E.---Odyssey-2001

Apart from all of this awesomeness they also serve THE BEST BURGER I HAVE EVER EATEN!! Seriously! I am being serious ^__^ I’m a vegetarian and they’ve got both meat, vegetarian and vegan food, and they’re burgers are to die for! ^_^ If you’re ever around Malmö in Sweden you have GOT TO check this place out :D

Retrospelsmässan 2013 – Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition

Yesterday I went to Gothenburg with my friend NinjaBrite to attend Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition ‘Retrospelsmässan‘. This is the 4th year in a row that they’re hosting this exhibition and I think it’s a GREAT initiative! I was there 2 years ago as well, last year I missed though since I was in Japan. It has grown immensely in these past years, and it will probably be even bigger next year. The amount of people who came was way more than they had anticipated, even though they had hired larger facilities people were still quieing for hours to get in! I myself had to que about 4 hours (arriving at 12, two hours after they opened). It was ok though, since Nintendo was hosting a Streetpass competition everybody had brought their 3DS and so did we, so we kept busy ^_^ And also met some awesome cosplayers, like Pixelninja dressed up as Megaman :)

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This year on the exhibition they had all the old consoles displayed and connected to TVs so you could try everything out, everything from old Pong consoles and Odyssey 2001 to the Atari Jaguar and everything Nintendo and Sega of course. They also had a corner for speedruns where you could watch some of Sweden’s fastest gamers ;D They had a Doom LAN, Cosplay competitions, arcade and pinball corner, game competitions and stands with companies and people selling retro gaming stuff and of course games! :D

Videopac Computer displayed at Retrospelsmässan 2013 Pong
pinball
smb competition
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Of course I had to pick up some games ^_^ I was looking for one game in particular, which was Starship Hector, but I’ll write more about that in a later post, that’s a looong story ^^ But I found it at this exhibition! And I also found Ninja Kid, Power Blade, Castle of Dragon, The Krion Conquest and James Bond JR. All were NTSC NES and I didn’t previously have them! (I am proud of myself that I brought a PDF of my collection in my phone, because I always tend to buy doubles unintentionally when attending places like this)… ;D
So here’s a little photo shoot I had of my latest pickups ^_^
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Power blade_800
Castle of Dragon_800
The Krion Conquest_800
Starship Hector_800
James Bond JR_800

Pinball fantasies and some xbox

I was at a housewarming party on friday, and we had a lot of fun playing an old classic Pinball machine from 1976! It was Elton John’s Captain Fantastic! Haha..
First round we played I actually won, but I guess that was just beginner’s luck because every game after that I lost.. =(
I took some pictures of this beautiful machine: ^^

Or “Bally Capt. Fantastic”, look how silly Elton John was ^___^

I was player 2 ^_^ 43.180 point, however people later got up to around 70.000.. but I was proud since I had never even played on a real Pinball machine before. It was completely different from the pinballs on video games..and much harder!
          
“Feel them bumpers” and “Buzz them buzzers champ” ^_^

And tonight I’ve been finishing a game that I started a looong time ago with my friend Becky. It was Borderlands for Xbox 360, we had already finished the story mode and taken every achievement in the game except the two last ones for the final expansion pack. These were not hard in particular, however they take a long time to finish. It’s the Underdome expansion, and it’s basically just about killing off hordes of enemies. Each stage takes about 2-3 hours, and there was a total of 6 of them.. We only had two left, but never really took the time to finish them until today, so JIPPIE! Today we have maxed out the achievements for Borderlands (amazingly awesome game btw) ^_^
Borderlands massacre .. hehe