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!

Retro Gathering VCE – The Loot!

It has taken some time to sort, clean and photograph all of the 138 games I bought at Retro Gathering Vintage Computer Edition last weekend, but finally, here they are! :D I will go through them system by system ^_^

Retro Gathering VCE 2016 loot

Atari ST

The first thing I bought at the convention was an Atari 1040 ST, I already had one game for it back home, and it was in nice condition, and cheap, so I couldn’t refuse ^_^ I also picked up a few games for it. I have never played on an Atari ST before, so I’m looking forward to trying it out! :D If anyone has any suggestions of exclusive games for the system that are a must have, then please let me know :) So far I only have 5 games for it, the ones I found this weekend were Deathbringer, Gauntlet III, Future Dreams and Captive.

Atari Lynx

To continue on the Atari trail, I also found a few additions to my Atari Lynx collection from Spel & Sånt :D Not particularly exciting titles, but they were in pretty nice condition :) I do however enjoy the game of Shanghai, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what the Slime World port on Lynx looks like! :D

Atari 2600

I’m always on the lookout for Atari 2600 games as well, but this year there were hardly any :/ I found one guy who had like 5 cartridges, crappy games in shitty condition, but he still wanted a lot for them! I bargained a bit and bought one, just to come home with at least one 2600 game >_> I got Super-Ferrari…

Atari 2600 Super-Ferrari

Commodore 64 – 5 1/4 Floppy disk games

Moving on to Commodore, I’ve had a 5 1/4 floppy disk game for the C64 for a while, and nothing to play it on :( But this weekend I found a new in box Ocean floppy disk drive for the C64! :D It was a bit pricey.. but I really needed one since I also bought even more floppy disk games this weekend ^__^ I got the classic text-based adventures of Zork 1-3, and at the very end of the day I got a good deal on a pretty cool adventure game called Infidel. The cool thing about it is the packaging and contents! Inside are handwritten letters and maps and stuff, it’s really well made ^_^ I have a friend that I think will really enjoy trying this game out ;D Apart from that I had bought a whole moving box full of old Amiga and Commodore games from my friend Likilato beforehand and I picked it up on this weekend since he was going to Retro Gathering too :) In this package were quite a lot of C64 floppy disk games as well ^_^ Some games that I’m quite happy with are T2 Terminator Judgement Day, Robocop, Space Harrier II and Weird Dreams, they all look pretty cool ^_^ Then there were also a few less fun games, I’m not quite sure what Operation Market Garden is, but it doesn’t sound fun, and the last three: Europe Ablaze, Russia The Great War in the East and Halls of Montezuma I’m pretty sure are some kind of edutainment games for learning history >_<

Commodore 64 – Cassette games

I found a few cassette games for the C64 as well. I got Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker from Japon, and Slap Fight for the ZX Spectrum. Pontus from Japon also tried to sell Last Ninja 2 to me, fortunately I didn’t buy it!! Because inside the big cardboard box of things I had bought from Likilato earlier contained not one but TWO copies of that exact game XD I had bought the package weeks before and didn’t remember everything that was in it.. but I’m just happy I’m not possessing three copies right now at least ;D The other C64 cassette games from Likilato were Last Ninja 3, Superman the Game, Ghostbusters II, Mr. Heli, Platoon, Speedball, Silent Service, Starglider and The Hunt for Red October.

Commodore VIC 20

Going back in time a bit we have the Commodore VIC 20, I got one of these last year and I’m still trying to expand my library of games for the system. I found a few VIC 20 cassettes on Retro Gathering this time on Mikael Holm’s table (he always has the coolest stuff!) ^_^ I know there’s two copies of Panic for VIC 20, but I couldn’t choose which one to go for, since they are DIFFERENT! It’s weird, since they are released by the same company, but one has a black spine, and the cassettes inside are different colors as well! O_o These were all dirt cheap though so I just picked them all up :) Except the two games called Vicolumn and Blue Star, these two were new releases for the system and cost a bit more, but it’s always interesting to see what people develop now for these old systems! Doodle Bug, Space Scramble, Cosmiads and Alpha Blaster all sound cool!

Sinclair ZX Spectrum, ZX81

Before moving on to consoles we have pickups from yet another old computer ^_^ I bought a few games for the ZX Spectrum, Pssst, Jet Pac and Cookie had such cool matching covers! Had to get them :) Then I also got Jet Pac with a different cover and 3D Starstrike, Split personalities, Pedro, Ghosts n’ Goblins and a program that came with the system called Horizons. I also found a Sinzlair ZX Interface 2 so I can play cartridge games on my 48k :D Now I just need to find some cartridge games >_> I also bought a ZX81 :D I’ve only known about this one for a little while, when I was looking for 3D Monster Maze and found out that it only came out on the ZX81. Now I have one! So now I just need to find 3D Monster Maze again >_< I missed out on the one eBay auction I’ve ever seen… >_<

Nintendo NES (+ Game & Watch and FDS)

I bought some NTSC NES games from Gaminggrannar and from some other sellers. I also got a Game & Watch Lifeboat from Söders Spel & Skivhandel and a random Famicom Disk System game with cats from Sven666 and another FDS game from my friend MXS :)

Sega Mega Drive

From my friend Karl I got a good deal and bought the sought after Japanese Sega Mega Drive shmup V-V (V five), I also got to buy most of his other Japanese Mega Drive titles since he wanted to get rid of them, it was mostly RPGs or strategy games, but I got such a good price that I couldn’t pass them up ^_^ I also found some PAL Mega Drive titles from other sellers, mainly sports games XD which I don’t particularly enjoy, but they were cheap! And some day me and Becki will have to have another Golf tournament ;D

Sega Master System

I also got a lot of Sega Master System games from various sellers. Mainly sports here as well, but I didn’t have them, and they were cheap ^_^

Sega Saturn & Playstation 2

Japon also managed to convince to bring home these two huge boxed Sega Saturn Arcade Racer controllers XD One PAL and one Japanese.. they told me that the controller was region free, so I sure hope they will both work with one console ;D In that case I might have another game to use in the next Retro Rumble competition for the finals ;D I also got two PS2 games with Megaman at a fair price from Anders :) They’re sealed.. but I might open them so I can play them!! ^_^

Amiga 500 / 1200

Now onto the biggest category of the day… Amiga! The big lot of games I had bought from Likilato contained A LOT of Amiga games :) I was happy to find Banshee in there, since MXS had recently told me it was a good game, it’s for the 1200 though so I have to find a place to plug that system in as well.. They’re so big and space-consuming! Loom has a beautiful cover, and I’ve seen it before, not quite sure what kind of game it is though, but I will find out :) There were a lot of other games that looked cool like Harlequin, Codename Hellfire, Wonderland, Super Stardust, Galdregons Domain etc. It’s gonna be fun to try them all out :D I wonder what kind of game Leather Goddesses of Phobos will turn out to be XD

That was all the loot for this time, now I have some gaming to do ^____^

Retro Gathering Vintage Computer Edition 2016

This weekend I drove all the way to Västerås to attend the first Retro Gathering convention of 2016, they’ve started hosting two conventions a year since it’s become so popular with retro games and vintage computers here in Sweden. This Retro Gathering they called VCE, because it was a Vintage Computer Edition, and damn! There were a LOT of vintage computers there ^_^ I think it scared off a few of the Nintendo-fanatics though, since there were a bit less visitors than usually, but still there were loads of people! :D

Retro Gathering VCE 2016

It’s so much fun going to these conventions, mainly to meet with all the friends you’ve gotten to know through the common interests and also, of course, to buy shitloads of games!! This year was no different for me.. I came home with a massive haul. I will make a separate post once I’ve gone through it all XD Here’s  picture of most of it stacked up in a couch! Just so you can get an idea ;D

Retro Gathering VCE 2016 loot

I also really enjoy seeing all these odd old machines, they always have more things like this at Retro Gathering than any of the other conventions here in Sweden. Most conventions are strongly focused around Nintendo.. so it’s nice to see something different ^_^ Some of the things they had brought in this time I had never even seen before! So many cool machines ^_^ There was an Apple Pippin for sale (or even two, one was boxed and new!), there was also an Iris Crimson that appeared in Jurassic Park, and a bunch of other cool machines. These are just a few of them! Do you recognize them all? ;D I sure didn’t!

Most of the computers there were for sale, I was really close to buying the T2100 with the beautiful monochrome orange screen, but once I returned to buy it it was already gone >_< For only $34! I also glanced at the Japanese Commodore 64 which was quite rare, with a few boxed cartridges! So beautiful ^_^ I did however buy some other systems, like the Atari ST 1040 and a ZX 81 ^_^ Apart from computers there were LOADS of games for sale, both Nintendo, Sega and lots of other stuff! Pappas Pärlor was also there to sell some of his awesome custom bead arts ^_^ Apart from this you could find almost anything at Retro Gathering VCE! I even saw a Vectrex 3D imager! It’s 3D-glasses for the Vectrex, and they were boxed with 2 games! Super rare and also super expensive >_<

I’m super happy with my weekend trip to Retro Gathering VCE 2016! I met so many nice people, had lots of fun and I’m looking forward to the next Retro Gathering this fall ^_^ I’m quite exhausted now though, and I will be busy with my haul for a while, testing all the new games! :D :D :D I will update shortly with everything that I bought ^_^

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 ^__^