Retrospelsmässan 2018

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 :)

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

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

Compaq Presario 5226 PC

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…

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

Sega Genesis Boogerman A pick and flick adventure

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 ^_^

RSM loot – Gleylancer and other Mega Drive beauties :)

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 :)

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

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.

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..

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

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 ^_^

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 >_<

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.

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..

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

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.

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..

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

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

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.

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…

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

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

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

Retrospelsmässan RSM 2017

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!

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

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!

Retro Gaming Events & Conventions in Sweden

A lot of people have asked me if I know a place where you can find a calendar of all the Retro Gaming related events and conventions in Sweden, I don’t, but I can make one! ^_^ I’ve made a short calendar on the right side of the page, but also this page where I’ll update as soon as I find out about new conventions or events that are retro game related! If you know or hear about any events feel free to drop a comment and I’ll add it to the list :D

Upcoming retro game events & conventions in Sweden:

Retro Game Events Sweden

2018

MAY 26th
Göteborg
RETROSPELSMÄSSAN
Sweden’s largest retro gaming convention. Loads of games for sale, games to be played (both arcade and console), competitions like the Swedish Championships of Super Mario and other events.
See posts from previous Retrospelsmässan >>

SEPTEMBER 1st
Malmö
RETROSPELSFESTIVALEN
A retro gaming festival (convention) in the southern part of Sweden.  Loads of games for sale, games to be played (both arcade and console), and usually some fun competitions and events.
See posts from previous Retrospelsfestivalen >>

SEPTEMBER 29th
Västerås
RETRO GATHERING
Retro gathering is a pure retro game and vintage computer convention, the longest running one in Sweden. Here you can find anything from old C64 and Spectrum to Nintendo and PS2
See posts from previous Retro Gatherings >>

~~~

Events that will most likely come back next year:

RETROSPELSMÄSSAN, Gothenburg
Sweden’s largest retro gaming convention. Loads of games for sale, games to be played (both arcade and console), competitions like the Swedish Championships of Super Mario and other events.
See posts from previous Retrospelsmässan >>

RETROSPELSFESTIVALEN, Malmö
A retro gaming festival (convention) in the southern part of Sweden.  Loads of games for sale, games to be played (both arcade and console), and usually some fun competitions and events.
See posts from previous Retrospelsfestivalen >>

RETRO GAMES, Stockholm
A retro gaming convention in the capital of Sweden with a lot of focus on arcade games. Loads of arcades are displayed there for you to try out. There’s also a market section and competitions, like the Swedish championships of Pac-Man.
See posts from previous Retro Games >>

COMICCON, Stockholm
COMICCON, Malmö
COMICCON, Copenhagen
NORDSKEN, Skellefteå
RETROSPELMARKNAD, Vetlanda

 

Apart from these events there’s of course a lot of permanent retro game inspired places to visit, I will fill up the list below with places that are worth a visit for any retro game enthusiast ^_^

STOCKHOLMS SPELMUSEUM, Stockholm
A video game museum filled with history of video games, and also playable games, both arcades and consoles :) See some pics from it here >>

HEY ARCADE @ Roq bar, Stockholm
An extensive arcade with loads of machines, everything from classic shmups to the great rhythm and music arcades from Japan ^_^ Read about my visit here >>

CAFÉ PÅ BIT, Skellefteå
A really cute café filled with retro games and some arcades that you can pay to play and retro games that you can buy ^_^ Read about my visit here >>

MACKAPÄR, Gothenburg
A vintage retro store containing everything from cool furniture and accessories to obscure retro video games :D

SPEL & SÅNT, Norrtälje
A video game store that also holds loads of retro games

RSM loot part III – TEH Games!!

So  here’s the final part of my RSM loot! All the games!! :D Apart from the Atari Lynx games that I mentioned in the first post..

I got quite a lot of C64 games since these were cheap ^_^ Scramble Spirits, Pac-Mania and Cosmic Causeway were really pretty big boxes ^_^ Scramble is always fun! Pac-Mania looked like a cool 3D version of Pac-Man, I’m sure I have it for other systems already but it’s always fun to try out various ports ^_^ Never heard of Cosmic Causeway but I love the artwork! On the screenshots it kind of looks like some kind of Space Harrier game ^_^

C64-Scramble-Spirits-PacMania-Cosmic-Causeway

I also found these 4 big boxes, I’m hoping this C64 JAWS is better than the NES version ;D Killer Ring looks to be some kind of shooter, Terry’s Adventure was just cheap and I loved the tacky James Bond montage on the 007 License to Kill cover ^_^

C64-Jaws-Killer-Ring-James-Bond

These C64 boxes were a bit different! Frost Byte and Kong Strikes Back were in soft plastic, the screenshots and artwork intrigued me ^_^ Creatures had a really pretty cover! It’s a paper box, and it looks like an amazing side-scrolling platform adventure ^_^

C64-Frost-Byte-Creatures-Kong-Strikes-Back

I also got Wibstars, Chuckie Egg (a classic that I actually didn’t have before), Herobotix and a Christmas Collection containing 6 games. Herobotix had such a cool name and an awesome robot on the cover! :D Had to get it ^_^ The Christmas Collection contained a game I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time now! I bought Exolon on Amiga 500 a while back and it never worked, the seller kept sending me new floppy disks but none would load :( So hopefully this cassette will and I’ll at least get to see what type of game it is! :D

C64-Herobotix-Chuckie-Egg-Wibstars

I got a few PC Engine titles as well. There weren’t a lot of PC Engine stuff at RSM, but I did find these three titles that I didn’t previously have, pretty cheap ^_^ Master of Monsters, Ballistix and Babel.

PC-Engine-Babel-Ballistix-Master-of-Monsters

I bought an expensive N64 title, Paper Mario! I have never played any of the Paper Mario games and everyone tells me they’re good. I’ve recently found out that they’re kind of RPG games as well.. which I don’t like >_< So I have no clue what I will think of it.. I guess I’ll just have to try it out and see for myself ^^

N64-Paper-Mario

There were more japanese stuff at RSM, and I found some Sega Saturn games :D Pretty nice titles I think as well :) Vampire Hunter, Bubble Symphony & Saturn Bomberman Fight :D

Sega-Saturn-Vampire-Hunter-Bubble-Sympony-Bomberman

Another system I got a few games for was Playstation 1. Both Puchi Carat and Parappa the Rapper were cheap :) I’ve actually never played Parappa the Rapper, I have a Playstation 2 version, but it was Japanese so I didn’t have a system to play it on until recently when I got a modded one. Haven’t gotten around to trying it yet though.. Now I will though ^_^

Playstation-Puchi-Carat-Parappa-the-Rapper

I’m extremely happy to have found a Neo Geo AES game that was affordable and NOT a fighting game!! :D I found this game called Puzzled ^_^ It’s quite fun and very challenging! It’s falling Tetris pieces that you need to put in place to remove the obstacles that is keeping your ship captured at the bottom. Once the ship is freed you clear the stage. I love puzzle game like this! :D It’s also in really nice condition ^_^

Neo-Geo-AES-Puzzled Neo-Geo-Puzzled-complete

I also found some NES games, there were LOADS of NES games for sale at RSM, but I didn’t dig too deep into all the piles. I found these two that I didn’t previously own and was curious to try out ^_^ Tom & Jerry and… Barbie! haha

NES-Tom-&-Jerry-Barbie

Tom & Jerry was a fun platformer, kind of hard though. You could only take three hits and there were so many things that would hurt you >_<

Tom-&-Jerry-NES-screenshot-start  Tom-&-Jerry-NES-screenshot

Barbie had extremely stiff controls and animations. It was extremely simple and stupid haha ^_^ And it got difficult only because of the stiff controls..

NES-Barbie-screenshot-5 NES-Barbie-screenshot-4  NES-Barbie-screenshot-3 NES-Barbie-screenshot-1  NES-Barbie-screenshot-2

I also got a really cool looking NES game called Defenders of Dynatron City! I had never encountered this one before! :D And I got a pretty good deal from KCL to by this minty complete game ^_^ The cover art is amazing!! The game was also pretty cool, but the hit detection was extremely off, which made it frustrating in the long run >_<

NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City

You can choose from 3 various main characters, and while in game you can change between another three companions. There’s 6 characters in total, Jet Headstrong, Radium Dog and Ms. Megawatt are the three main ones, out of these I prefer Ms. Megawatt ’cause she has the best and fastest attack ^_^ The three other characters you can always choose from in game are Toolbox, Monkey Kid and Buzzsaw girl. It’s got a pretty cool setup, you have to clear all the streets of the map from robot enemies, once you’ve cleared a stage the shops open up, they’re also filled with enemies, but once killed you can get an item. The item is either a clue, money, food for health or some item you can use. Once all streets are clear you’ll find a boss, when killed he takes you to the next stage, which is inside a mall where you can use the money to buy more items ^_^ It’s got a lot of depth and nice graphics with a lot of various locations but falls short on the horrible hit-detection..

NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-2 NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-Ms--Megawatt  NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-Radium-DogNES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-stage-1  NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-in-hostpitalNES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-inside-store  NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-ms-megawatt-inside-storeNES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-vs-dinasaourNES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-Toolbox  NES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-zeppelin-bossNES-Defenders-of-Dynatron-City-Ms-Buzzsaw

I only found one Famicom game that I didn’t already have. There wasn’t a lot of Famicom at RSM though. The one I found was Sanrio Carnival 2 with Hello Kitty ^_^ My friend Mattias also brought a Pachiottokun game for me which I didn’t have :) Thanks!

Famicom-Sanrio-Carnival-2-Pachiottokun 2

I found only one Sega Mega Drive game.. Granada, which is a japanese release. This was a cool tank shooter ^_^ I reached the first boss but he killed me >_<

Sega-Mega-Drive-Granada

SMD-Granada-screenshotSMD-Granada-screenshot-2  SMD-Granada-screenshot-game-over

And I got some Game Boy games, all japanese ones ^_^

Game-Boy-Games-2 Game-Boy-Games

Apart from all these games I got a few other goodies from various people or from the Asteroids competition I came in second place in ^_^

rsm-loot

I’m extremely happy with this years RSM! Had a great time! Met loads of nice people, bought massive amounts of cool retro gaming stuff and had a blast! :D

RSM loot part II – Pong consoles & VIC-20!

So here’s the second part of my loot from RSM (Retrospelsmässan)! As I stated in my previous post my entire haul was 6 systems and 60 games. Apart from my 2 Atari Lynx consoles I also got a Commodore Vic 20! I’ve never heard of this old computer before, at first sight I thought it was the Commodore 64, the edition that had brown keys, but after having hastily bought it someone told me later on that day that it was in fact an earlier Commodore system which did not play C64 games o_O It’s super pretty and complete with all cables and a cassette drive, I don’t have any games for it though :( :( So trying it out will have to wait…

Commodore-VIC-20-detail

I also found a boxed Palladium Tele-Match console. This is an old Pong clone from Germany. It was just so charming and cheap! So I couldn’t pass it up ;D Unfortunately it didn’t have a power cable so I haven’t been able to try it out yet..

Palladium-Tele-Match
Palladium-Pong-Console
Palladium-Box-Pong-clone

I also got another boxed old pong clone, this one is called Mark Color. The system is almost completely minty inside the box, with styrofoam inlays and everything ^_^ I really like the design of this old system ^_^ I also got two games with it, it appears that the game cartridges contain several games that you can choose from on the system. Unfortunately this one lacked a power cable as well so I haven’t tried out either… (click the images to enlarge)

And of course I found yet another Pong console clone (I think I’ve gone a bit nuts about Pong machines since I lost the competition at Retro Gathering last year ;D Need some practice!). This one is called TriStar TV Game – Programmable, and I think it’s super pretty ^__^ This one also has cartridges which seem to contain several different games, but no power cord >_< so I will have to wait to try this one out too.. :(

TriStar TV-Game Programmable

I find these old systems really charming :) What I really would want is that orginal Pong console though, like the hockey pong from RSM but brown or black ^_^

I’ll start working on my last post about my RSM loot now! This one will cover all the various games I picked up ^__^