Not only did John come up with a unique theme for an arcade cabinet, but he also went the extra mile literally "sculpting" custom pieces for his build.
There are two ways of looking at this:
1. Cool, that took a lot of time and dedication! Crafty students!
2. Dang, what a waste of time and dedication! Slacker students!
Students of the University of Fraser Valley spent (or wasted) two semesters creating this pixel-for-pixel perfect screenshot of Super Mario Bros 3 using 17,000 pushpins. I can appreciate it for the retro-gaming cool factor, but can't help thinking about what better, more creative projects could have come to fruition in that time.
Last month, I presented you with a review of a new product by Legacy Engineering Group - The Classic USB Joystick Controller. Although Curt and his team have been busy over-seeing the production of this excitingly new product, I was able to get him to take a few minutes to answer a few questions that fellow retro-gamers wanted to know about him, the company and the new product, that quite simply I haven't been able to put down.
Presenting the Fuzebox, an open source console kit that seems to be packing a lot of potential. The tiny console accepts Super Nintendo and NES controllers, uses an SD card for storage and plays games written in C (which can be developed using completely open-source tools on practically any platform). If the Fuzebox were to find a few open source game developers willing to play, I think this little baby could have a really bright future.
There have bene plenty of Asteroids clones over the years, but one of the most enjoyable ones that I can think of was Stardust back on the Amiga home computer. Last year Super Stardust HD made it's way to the PS3 and now it's the PSP's turn with this extremely fun looking port...
Lovers of giant pixels: start drooling now! Console modder Chris Koopa has done a very slick job of squeezing the guts of an Atari Flashback 2 (loaded with about 40 games) and 2600 cartridge slot into the shell of a Sega Game Gear. You can see the full specs and some juicy photos over on Chris's site.
For those interested, C_Mon has posted a nice list of 2600 mods over on Ben Heck's forums.
Street Fighter fans the world over have been waiting for this one since... er... well the last reincarnation of SFII, but it looks like they won't be disappointed here.Super SFII Turbo HD was released yesterday on Xbox 360 (via Live Marketplace) and Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network).Ryan Scott posted this review over at GameVideos...
If you’re like me, you’ve bought your share of retro game bundles for the P.C. or tested the emulator scene, only to be disappointed that the games you played in your youth are not as fun when playing with a keyboard or modern joypad. Even though I had bought various bundled packages, such as The Activision Anthology, or Atari 80 Games in One, these games would wind up gathering more dust than play time as I would head back over to my faithful 2600 to get my 8 bit fix. I had pretty much written off emulators like Stella or Z26 because the nostalgic fun factor wasn’t there for me. In my mind, it was either real hardware or nothing. This was until Curt Vendel of Legacy Engineering Group contacted us at Retroblast about a new product L.E.G. had for the retro-gamers out there.
News hit yesterday that Stern Pinball, Inc. has laid many of its line workers and several designers.
No official press release from Stern yet, but the internet groups are a buzzing with comments from various sources talking about the devastating news.
Does this signal the end of Pinball as we know it?
Sadly, with a good chunk of Stern's revenue coming from private collectors and the economy doing a headstand right now, it's probably a safe guess that Stern might be a casualty of these trying times.
Word is that Stern has been stockpiling machines for a few months now, so there certainly is an inventory to be sold, but if consumers can't afford to buy them, and operators aren't willing to place them the future is dark for Stern.
The devil in me hopes that Stern has a fire sale and liquidates their inventory at rock bottom prices. I could certainly use a new Batman Pin. The angel in me prays that we don't see a posting on some website a decade from now about some guy finding an entire warehouse of Stern pins all sitting there nestled away in their crates waiting to be played.
Best wishes to all those at Stern who's future is unknown.
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MAME Anyone? (0) by NintendoNerds
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