Pegged on SEGA's 60th anniversary, the company announced a tiny version of their Game Gear 8-bit handheld console first released in 1990. It will sell for 4,980 yen (US$50). From IGN:
The Game Gear Micro is currently only available to preorder in Japan and will launch on October 6th. At time of writing, there has been no news of a Western release for the device.
The console has a one-inch screen, and will arrive in four colour schemes, each with a different set of four games preloaded...
Game Gear Micro (Sega.com) Read the rest
ETA Prime reviewed a Raspberry Pi retro gaming kit that contains a Raspberry Pi 3B+, a case for the Pi, USB gamepad, power supply, 32GB Micro SD with 100+ licensed Atari Games, and an HDMI cable to connect to your television set or computer display. Read the rest
The RetroFlag GPi Case, which uses a Raspberry Pi Zero, looks very nice. In this video, MakeUseOf gives it a 9/10 score.
If the idea of making retro game players using Raspberry Pis appeals to you, I invite you to check out a book I co-wrote this year, called Raspberry Pi Retro Gaming: Build Consoles and Arcade Cabinets to Play Your Favorite Classic Games.
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This prototype Sony PlayStation, the result of a failed Sony and Nintendo collaboration in the early 1990s, sold Friday for $360,000 in a live online auction. Background here. While Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey was thought to have made the winning bid, the winner was actually Greg McLemore who made a fortune in the first dotcom gold rush as founder of Pets.com and Toys.com. McLemore is a an avid videogame collector and historian who runs the virtual International Arcade Museum. From Forbes:
According to a profile in Robb Report, money from those early dot-com ventures helped (McLemore) start a 20-year journey collecting video game memorabilia, from strength-testing machines of the 1880s, to prototypes of coin-operated mechanical horse rides in the 1920s, to the first commercially sold arcade game Computer Space from 1971...
I'm looking to not have this machine just buried in a closet somewhere," McLemore told Forbes, saying he wants to take his collection—which he estimates includes over 800 coin-operated machines and countless other smaller games, trade magazines and original art—and build out a permanent museum.
Working his way toward that prospect, he's beginning to develop exhibitions with outside partners to display the items, including an upcoming run with the University of Southern California Pacific Asia Museum in spring and summer 2021 illustrating Asian influence on the video game industry; the Nintendo PlayStation will be included.
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"Insert Coin" is a new documentary about Midway, the Chicago-based videogame developer that transformed the industry with Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and other coin-op classics. Director Joshua Tsui funded the film via this Kickstarter and will premiere at the SXSW Film Festival later this month. From the film description:
Eugene Jarvis, the creator of 80s classic videogames such as Defender and Robotron, returns to the industry in the 90s. In the process, he assembles a team that pioneers the concept of bringing live-action into videogames, kickstarting a new era in the arcades.
The technology mushrooms into massive hits such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam and soon the team begins to conquer the world. What began as a small tight-knit group begins to deal with success and eventually the rise of home consumer technology.
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Sam Makovech of Ars Technica reviews the 8Bitdo Zero 2 ([amazon_link asins='B081HML6MP' template='PriceLink' store='boingboing' marketplace='US' link_id='7a15fb11-3ba7-49a2-9bb4-d41d4776fee6'] on Amazon), an adorable gamepad controller you can use with a Switch, PC, or Mac. His overall impression of the meant-for-travel gamepad is favorable.
From Ars Technica:
To my pleasant surprise, 8BitDo starts this gamepad off with a crucial emphasis on its D-pad. At roughly the size of an American dime, this small D-pad is comparable to some of Nintendo's smallest takes, like you'd find on a GameCube controller or a Nintendo 3DS console. But unlike those offerings, 8BitDo allows its Zero 2's D-pad to protrude ever so slightly farther from its body. Pressing down on any edge of the D-pad offers a full 2mm of action, and this has a satisfying sense of travel when a thumb is in its depressed, rounded center—built for the sake of neatly rocking from left to right or up to down.
The D-pad's quality was borne out by my own feverish Tetris testing, which worked whether I rapidly tap-tap-tapped in one direction or pivoted to a crucial "up to fast-drop" maneuver in newer Tetris games. When I imagine various times that I might rely on the Zero 2 as a controlling option, I think about how a good D-pad is the primary differentiator from other on-the-go options, whether that's a spare Joy-Con turned sideways, a weak laptop's keyboard, or a phone's on-screen buttons. I'd rather play Tetris or Super Mario Bros. with my thumb on this D-pad than relying on those other options.
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In this video from Pi My Life Up you'll learn how to install and use software called RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi. RetroPie lets you emulate a bunch of different game platforms, like Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, and so on.
By the way, I co-wrote a book with Ryan Bates called Raspberry Pi Retro Gaming: Build Consoles and Arcade Cabinets to Play Your Favorite Classic Games, which has instructions for building a tabletop arcade machine. Read the rest
My 13-year-old son showed me this and we couldn't stop laughing. How dare Mario be so rude to his brother!
The 1989 TV series "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" starred wrestler Lou Albano as Mario, Danny Wells of "The Jeffersons" as Luigi, and Jeannie Elias as the voice of Princess Toadstool.
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Enjoy this 1983 television commercial advertising Centipede for the Atari 5200.
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Back in the early 2000s, cheap plug & play videogame consoles became ubiquitous. I remember spotting them for sale everywhere from toy stores to Walgreens. Self-contained systems, they integrated one or many games instead of allowing users to swap in cartridges or CDs. Today, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation shares the deep and geeky history of plug & play as a launching point for his research on the TV Guide Quizmaster, "something so rare it might not even exist." Below are a few bits from the thread. See the whole thing on Twitter!
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This outstanding 1982 TV commercial makes me want to play my son's collection of vintage Atari 2600 games. Except, of course, for Pac-Man.
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ETA Prime takes a look at the new Pocket Go from Bittboy. The $40 device emulates GBA, SNES, MD, SMS, PCE, NES, GBC, GB, NEOGEO, and more. Read the rest
MakeCode Arcade is a Scratch-like programming language for writing retro-style games. In this video, John Park shows how to make arpeggio music using MakeCode arcade. In the early days of video games, the existing technology didn't allow for chords, so arpeggios were a way to get the feel for a chord by playing all the individual notes in a chord as quickly as possible.
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AdaFruit recently announced the PyBadge and the PyBadge LC (Low Cost), a single board computer with a 1.8" 160x128 color display, buzzer-speaker, and 8 silicone-top buttons arrange for handheld gaming. The video above shows the PyBadge in a 3D printed case designed by Pedro Ruiz. Read the rest
Starting with a 1984 version of snooker (kind of like pool with more balls and smaller pockets) for the Commodore 64, Nostalgia Nerd shows how videogame versions of the game have evolved over the years. Even though the latest versions are hyperrealistic, I think the simple C64 version is the most appealing, but as Nostalgia Nerd points out, the physics and collision detection are laughable. Read the rest
ETA Prime reviewed the LDK Game, an open source handheld retro-game emulation console that can play games from Nintendo, Sega, and other retro-platforms. It costs $60. Read the rest
GB Studio' looks like a cool way to quickly build retro-games using visual scripting. You can play the games on a mobile phone, a Raspberry Pi, Itch.io, the web, or even a Gameboy. It's free and runs on OS X. Read the rest
