Ajax TV Game – a super sleek pong console

January 4, 2016 by stopXwhispering

I’ve been on the look out for Pong machines recently, mainly to train my skills before the yearly Swedish Championships of Pong that takes place each year at Retrogathering ^_^ I’ve been attempting to compete since 2014, but haven’t had anything to train on except my Philips Odyssey 2001, which has a quite different feeling than the original Atari Pong console. While scouting for an Atari Pong, like the ones they use in the competition I stumbled upon this beauty on eBay! It was so cheap and yet beautiful that I couldn’t help but buy it ^_^

I’ve never heard of the Ajax TV Games before, it’s from the UK, or at least that’s where I bought it from. It was complete, the box is a bit tattered but the console is in excellent condition! Shining white! It’s also so stylish and well designed! It can run on batteries or a power adaptor (which wasn’t included), and all the outputs for antenna and other chords plus the battery container is hidden behind a sleek compartment where you could also store the controllers, because they’re so tiny! Just look at this beauty ^_^

“Most exciting…fascinating home video games ever built
for your family.”

Ajax TV Games TG-621 in box

Ajax TV Games console box side

Ajax TV Games system box side

Ajax TV Game system

Ajax TV game chord compartment

Ajax TV Game with controllers

Ajax TV Game controller

The controllers really are tiny, one of the controllers is a liiiittle bit slower to turn than the other, but they both work fine. I tried it out for the first time today :)

The machine itself has loads of settings! You can turn the sound on and off, it comes straight from the system and is basically just beeps for when the ball hits the paddle. You can change angles between +-20°/40° or just +-20°, I guess this is how the ball will fly when it hits the edge of a paddle. There’s also two different speeds, H and L, High and Low I guess. You can choose between Auto serve or Manual and you can also set the bat size (the size of the paddle) between L and S, Large and Small.

Apart from this there’s 4 various game modes to choose from, Tennis, Hockey, Handball or Practice mode :)

This sucker takes no less than 6 C batteries to play!!!! Hahaha ^_^ I need to get an adaptor…

When I first tried finding the channel I had trouble. Two of my TVs refused to find it. The second one scrolled through a tuning that looked perfect, but refused to stop there, if I forced it to stop there it went bad again.. and whenever it did stop everything on the screen was warped like I was seeing double.. Eventually I got it working on the third TV though, luckily I have many TVs ;D

Here are the four variations of Pong that can be played on the Ajax TV Game :) I find Tennis to be the most fun one. Handball was kind of different though, I’ve never seen it before on a Pong machine. You take turns on hitting the ball, it gets a bit confusing to see which one is you or who’s turn it is. If the wrong paddle tries to hit it the ball just goes straight through. I would call this squash.. not handball.. XD

I didn’t have anyone to battle with so it was my left hand VS my right hand! (I’m right handed), but I recorded some gameplay of the Ajax TV Game, the first video is a game of Tennis on slow setting, and I was amazed at which hand came out victorious! It was hard focusing on turning the wheel in mirrored ways since I had it in two different hands XD The second video is of first Tennis on high speed and then some Hockey and Handball so anyone who’s interested can see how those look as well :) It was extremely difficult just controlling the paddle with one thumb!

The Ajax TV game system is a great addition to the collection! So pretty and works like a charm! Now I just need to find myself the original Pong console! ^_^

Game Room updated!

December 16, 2015 by stopXwhispering

A lot has been happening this year, both outside the game room and inside! I have gotten myself another arcade machine, a Blast City from Sega. It’s fitted with a 4-slot Neo Geo MVS board, so I have yet another way to play all the MVS games I’ve bought instead of using the converter in my AES. I made room for the candy cab in the game room, and this lead to a bit of re-arranging for it to fit. I’ve also increased the amount of gaming stations, with more TV’s! :D So many TV’s!! There’s a total of 20 in the room right now ^_^

I have updated my video game collection page on here, but here’s most of the new pictures as well! :) The collection keeps growing :D

Heidi stopXwhispering’s Retro Game Room

Blast City arcade

Blast City Arcade with Neo Geo

Jeff Minter Games

Virtual Boy etc

Sega & Nintendo

PC engine games

Heidi stopXwhispering’s Retro Game Room setup

Heidi stopXwhispering’s Retro Game Room

Game & Watch Donkey Kong etc

Pacman

Castlevania Collection

Game & Watch, Zelda etc

I’ve been visiting a lot of gaming conventions this year, which also means acquiring a lot of new retro games ;D I will hopefully have some time this christmas to update the various libraries with scans on the site and perhaps add some new ones :) Meanwhile I am always on instagram posting retro game related stuff whenever I’m gaming or whatever ^_^ Feel free to follow me on there > @retro_gaming

Don’t forget to check out my other site www.geekygals.net where me and my gals post all types of nerdy things! The latest post was about a retro gaming competition I hosted for the first Geeky Gals Gathering which was very successful, we had a lot of fun! ^_^

..and even more Sega games =D

March 16, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Today I got more games!

Here’s the lot of Sega Mega Drive games, and one Sega Master System game:

Chakan, DJ Boy, Fantasia, Greendog, Last Battle, Rambo III, Rolling Thunder 2, Taz in Escape from Mars & Double Dragon.

I tried all the games briefly and got stuck playing a few of them. First off Fantasia which was really hard compared to other Mickey Mouse games like Castle of Illusions (looove that game!!!). You start off with a few shots (represented by the magic hat at the bottom) and they disappear immediately! Even if you die you don’t have new shots, you will have to collect them through a random magic book that comes flying (if you can catch it, Mickey is really slooow..) and even then you just get two shots. So you basically just have to avoid all the dangers by jumping, which is not easy since there’s enemies everywhere…

I made it to the second stage and then I gave up… >_<

Rolling Thunder 2 was nice, much like Rolling Thunder 1 that I have on Famicom and NES (where it’s called Code Name: Viper).

You can choose between playing as the male or female character, Albatross and Leila.

It wasn’t too hard if you took it slow and figured out where all the enemies came from, but you can’t rush through the game. One hit kills you. And you can’t jump and shoot, which is really annoying. It was the same in Rolling Thunder 1, but in the NES version (Code Name: Viper) they changed it so that you could jump and change directions and shoot while in the air.

I will try to finish this game later, I just managed to get to lvl 2 in my first attempt.

Then I played Last Battle.. and the first thing that greets you is a bunch of scrolling text. The Story. And it never ends…

It even scrolls just a little bit too fast so that it makes it hard to read, and you will miss a few rows here and there. What were they thinking?!

At least they made a nice title screen after the story…

Then there’s the gameplay.. it’s stiff… and slow.. and the enemies are easy, they die from just touching your toe.

The stages are really short and at the end you meet some person that tells you something and your character responds:

What?!?!?!?!?

Seriously?!?!?!?! Who wrote this???!

And after a 2 stages I must have taken a wrong turn on the map cause I ended up at some boss that I could hardly even get close to and that killed me in a few blows….

One life, that’s all you get! ò_ó

Chakan was really cool though, great story and nicely told, with music, images and good writing (compared to the shitty Last Battle way of doing things…)

Awesome…. ^^

So I tried out the four stages I could find in the room, and I couldn’t beat them. This game is really hard.. there’s flying enemies coming at you from all directions and almost unbeatable beasts on every stage. It was a good game though. I will have to practice and try it again.

This stage was unbearable! Flying shit and fishes everywhere and everything drains the life of this so-called “immortal” Chakan character >_<

If there is any game you would like to see more of just let me know and I’ll make a longer review if I can ^_^

My Sega Collection

March 15, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Thought I’d share what is in my Collection of Sega right now. They’re in alphabetical order just taken down from the shelves (except for Castlevania on Sega Mega Drive at the end, since it has it’s place among my Castlevania collection) ;D

There are a few carts and one Mega CD game, but I didn’t bother to take a photo of that ;D

I also just bought more Mega Drive games that hasn’t arrived yet, but I’ll post a picture when I get them ^_^

And this is what my Retro video game room looks like:

I’ll try to go through all my Atari, NES and Famicom games and everything else eventually with detailed pics like the Sega collection.

This is my Castlevania shelf and below that I have the space shooters and various other Famicom games and my Metroid darling (there’s a Japanese version in mint condition of Super Metroid in the back corner, hard to see). At the bottom you can spot parts of the Atari collection.

Here is my shelf of stuff I like and other stuff that just couldn’t find a place somewhere else ^_^ I love Bucky O’Hare for NES, and Binary Land (Famicom), Mega Man X and my mint Mario Bros for Atari 2600, that one always baffle people ^^

And another shelf with my Virtual Boy games and and stuff.

Sega Mega Drive games received!

March 14, 2012 by stopXwhispering

I was E-baying a few days ago and found some interesting titles through one seller, and I just ended up buying a few extra since I was gonna pay shipping anyway…

So here’s what I got by mail today:

Battle Squadron, Skeleton Krew, Phantom 2040 and Wings of Wor.

I had recently lost an auction with Skeleton Krew so this was the game I was actually out looking for. It’s a really cool platform shooter or as they call it on the back cover “outeRAGEous blastfest!!!”.

It really does have some cool effects to it that are not usually seen in Mega Drive/Genesis titles. It kind of felt a bit like the advanced SNES games.

When the Boss appears he is hovering up and down and also sideways. It’s really well made, and they really manage to give a good three dimensional feeling to it. The controls are also smooth and easy once you get into them!

I only played through the first stage and saved the password, so I will make a longer review of this game later perhaps. =)

So after finding Skeleton Krew I browsed through the sellers other Sega titles looking for things I previously didn’t have, and looked up videos of the gameplay of the ones I found. I usually don’t buy Sega games without boxes, but after finding Wings of Wor and seeing the gameplay on youtube I had to have it!! And there were only cartridges of Wings of Wor on Ebay… I assumed it was rare..

I read a bit about it and found that the original Japanese version was called Gynoug, and there were complete Japanese versions of Gynoug on Ebay, however my Sega Mega Drive is PAL so I wouldn’t be able to play them.. So I figured that the Wings of War needed to be the PAL version. However, reading about it today on wikipedia it says that Wings of Wor was the north american version?! So I am now officially confused >_< Either way it worked when I played it on my Mega Drive.. (!)

I also briefly tried the other two games today to make sure they were in working condition. Phantom 2040 was horrible, no horrible doesn’t even describe it.. I will have to dedicate a whole angry post to it later, IF I will be able to put myself through playing it again >_<

And Battle Squadron was a mediocre shooter similar to many others. I will have to attempt it again though and perhaps I’ll grow fond of it, the back cover made it seem intriguing with Biotech Wingmen, Mutant Cybersnakes, Magno Strykers and MechnoGuardians! i didn’t get that far this time though.. Also it has the benefit of being 2 player. I love 2-player games so I can play simultaneously with friends ^_^

It seems like the Danish people have developed Battle Squadron, hooray for Scandinavia! ^_^

80’s gaming day!

February 12, 2012 by stopXwhispering

Had an 80’s saturday with my friend and we spent most part of the the day playing NES, SNES and Famicom games ^_^

We started off with some Caveman Games for NES, it’s kind of like Track & Field except it’s set in the stone age and you’re cavemen playing various sports that could have been set in that age, like fire starting, dino racing, mate tossing etc..

Mate tossing was quite entertaining ^^ It was kind of hard to figure out which buttons you were supposed to press for most of the sports though since we didn’t have a manual. However most of the games we figured out.. except fire starting >_< but it was a fun competitive game, containing just as much button mashing as Track & Field but more laughs! =)

We also tried playing some Toobin, a Tengen game for NES. It’s about a guy floating down rivers on a rubber ring, collecting power ups and avoiding obstacles such as twigs, crocodiles, fishermen and other enemies that occasionally shoot at you. It’s a fun game, we played through quite a lot of levels before quitting, like a jurassic level with dinosaurs lying around in the river, the Nile where egyptians where shooting at you and an ice level with penguins and icebergs! ^_^

“Game over, Dude!” :D

My friend also made it further in Time Lord than I ever did. Time Lord is an interesting game, where you play as a futuristic guy traveling through different epochs of time, like the middle ages around 1260 with knights and dragons and then 1800’s etc..

It’s tricky to figure out how to advance. On each stage you have to collect five orbs to continue time traveling, and to find the orbs you have to trigger certain things on each level and these are not always easy to find….

We also played Sunsoft’s Batman for NES, this is a great game =) Lots of different weapons and nice graphics.

I also forced my friend to try Punch Out since she’s never played it, she knocked out Glass Joe and then gave the german Von Kaiser a good match, but then she gave up.

I also got her to try 大迷路 (Dai Meiro) for Famicom. It’s a great game! You basically try to get to the end of a labyrinth, but first you have to find all the chests containing pieces of the key, when you have the key you can go to the exit. Now the hard part is that at every third step you take you loose a heart, so you can’t make a lot of mistakes or get lost. Also there is a map you can look at by pressing select, however this drains 3 of your hearts. So you just have to memorize the paths you took! I actually made it through 5 levels of this game, and I felt really proud ^_^ There are mini games you can find in the maze that can give you objects that help you along your way, however they cost a heart if you don’t succeed. It was Jeewario on Youtube who made me aware of this game, so I thank him for making his awesome videos of recommending famicom games! (you can watch it here).

After this we tried out some Mega Man for Game Boy briefly, mainly just to hear the awesome music! ^_^

LIKE SNAKE MAN!!! =D =D =D

And finally we were at the final event of the evening, the thing we had prepared for and looked forward to. Super Star Wars Trilogy for SNES!

I will make an entire post dedicated to the Super Star Wars game, since it did take us about 4-5 hours to beat it and I also have a lot of pictures. I speed-ran it this morning and finished it in 1 hour 40 minutes so I will also upload some videos after editing.. ^^