The Ultimate Retro Gaming Organ
By · CommentsOMG check out this guys organ…
1.6 million views!!
I was sat in a friends house showing him this video and he said all of a sudden he was back in the local arcade (Luck Strike in St Helens) that isn’t there anymore playing Pac Land 
I thought I was a retro gaming geek but this guy takes it too another level.
Seriously…what a genius, watch the video, shut your eyes and be prepare to be taken back to your youth.
Question: how the hell do you wire an 8 bit sound chip into a big organ like this.
Answers on a postcard, no email we’re retro here.
The Atari 400, 800, XL & XE Range
By · CommentsI must confess that i am a great admirer of Atari and what they have achieved over the years. With the era of cartridge gaming, consoles starting to slowly fade i.e. the 2600, 5200 and the 7800. Atari along with other major companies introduced a completely new platform of gaming in the form of home computers. The Atari 400 & 800 were just two systems that came from a large range of 8-bit computers created by Atari and released in 1979.
My first contact with these machines was in the early 80′s, at the time I was an avid Commodore 64 user but i can clearly remember being pleasantly surprised when i was introduced to Atari 800 and the 800 XL were i saw that the system’s features were quite comparable to that of the Commodore 64. Over the next few months it became apparent that there was quite a battle building between these two rival systems for superiority and there were really only a few key elements that separated them.
The Sega Master System
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In 1987, Sega brought us their third generation video game console in the form of the Sega Master System. This is one of those systems that it like purely for its simplicity, the pads are small basic, simple buttons. The console has two controller ports at the front for the pads and an off/on switch.
In total three version were released. The Master system I in Japan in 1987, the Sega Master System II in 1990 and the Master System III was released in Japan on Sunday, October 20, 1985.
The system fell straight in the firing line of the Nintendo Entertainment System and went down a similar path as Nintendo providing such add-ons as a Light Phaser Gun, varied controllers and even boasting 3D Glasses with an adapter card. With a library of some 318 games, what more could you ask for! Due to strong international support, the Master System became the second best selling Sega console with 13 million units being sold worldwide. I suppose that i why in 2009, the Master System was named the 20th best video game console of all time (out of 25) by the video gaming website IGN ( would have liked to have seen it a little higher ).
The Commodore 16
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The Commodore 16 home computer was another of Jack Trammels creations. To be honest it was not one of his greatest ventures by any means, but still it was made by Commodore computers and released in 1984. The system came in a starter pack which consisted of a Commodore 16 computer, a 1531 cassette player and an Introduction to Basic part 1 that was on 2 cassettes as the basic language was made easier to use than that of the Vic 20 and the C64. The Commodore 16 was mainly known by users as the C16 and the system was one of three computers in its family, with its bread-bin style casing and a keyboard similar to the Vic 20 & C64, but in different colours. That is where the similarities end.
On the Commodore 16s release I didn’t know much about the system and its hardware. However I still seriously wanted to own one when it made its appearance in the local high street stores, mainly because the C16 arrived after the C64 so I assumed it would exceed the C64′s capabilities and it would automatically be a far superior system (nothing wrong in wishful thinking ). After a bit of research I abandoned the idea of buying a C16 and it wasn’t until a few years back when i found a fairly nice boxed system to add to my collection. . .
The Sega Dreamcast
By · Comments(Pictures & video to follow)
The Sega Dreamcast is a video game console which was released in Europe on the 14 October 1999 and was to be the successor to the Sega Saturn console. It was also the first entry in the sixth generation of video gaming consoles, released before its contemporaries such as Sony’s PlayStation 2, Microsoft’s Xbox andNintendo’s GameCube.
Dreamcast sales grew 156.5% from July 23rd 2000 to September 30th 2000 putting Sega ahead ofnintendo and the Nintendo 64 in that period. In the United States alone, a record 300,000 units had been pre-ordered and Sega sold 500,000 consoles in just two weeks (including 225,132 sold on the first 24 hours which became a video game record).
Life of the dreamcast started in 1997 when the president of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar set out a sort of challenge between two in house teams competing to develope a new console to succeed the ageing Sega Saturn. Team one was headed by Hideki Sato who was a Sega hardware engineer and team two was a skunkworks group headed by Tatsuo Yamamoto whom was an IBM researcher.
The Magnavox Odyssey ITL200- The Holy Grail
By · CommentsWell, what can i say, this is t
he big one. I believe the Odyssey to be the Holy Grail of retro systems as i hope many of you will agree and that has got to be a must for any serious collector. The Magnavox Odyssey or Magnavox Odyssey ITL200 to use its proper title was the world’s first home video game console. This console has to be the cream of my collection or should i say consoles due to me being lucky enough to source a run 1 and a run 2 model. I will explain these differences further into the post.
The Magnavox Odyssey was the brainchild of Ralph Baer who had started designing the system around 1966. It was over the next two years due to Ralphs commitment, perceveirance and determination he eventually had a working prototype that was finally finished in 1968.
The system was then first demonstrated on May 24, 1972 and later released in August of tha
t year, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by some three years.
The magnavox was a pretty basic machine with simple components, it was so simple that it even run batteries. As for the game play that was also quite basic as well.
The age of ‘Aquarius’
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Does anybody remember this discrete little number, the ‘Mattel Aquarius’? This was one of those computers that never really made any waves in the computer market. However, it still needs some recognition in the world of retro-gaming history as it was released within that era when early computers and games started to get interesting and some of the great retro games machines started to emerge like to Commodore VIC 20 and the Texas Instruments ti-99 4a. But like everything in life being finely balanced, Ying and Yang, good & bad etc, the Mattel Aquarius unfortunately falls within the latter region.
Internally two systems were manufactured. These were known as ‘Checkers‘ and ‘Chess‘; Chess being the more sophisticated machine. Mattel contracted for these to become the Aquarius and Aquarius II, respectively.
In 1982 Mattel Electronics first announced the Aquarius and Mattel returned to their roots calling upon the the Hong Kong based company Radofin to manufacture the system. Surprisingly, this was the same company who had previously manufactured their Intellivision consoles back in 1979.
The Atari 520ST and various models. . .
By · CommentsThe Atari 520st was offi
cially launched to us by the Atari Corporation in January 1985 at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The letters “ST” stands for “Sixteen/Thirty-two“, which refers to the Motorola 68000′s 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals.
Other machines that arrived at a similar time were the Apple Macintosh and the main contender being the Commodore Amiga. Although the Amiga had custom processors which gave it the edge in the games and video market, the Atari ST was generally cheaper, had a slightly faster CPU, and had a high-resolution monochrome display mode, ideal for business and CAD.
The Atari ST was also to be the first home computer with integrated MIDI support. Thanks to this unique feature the system enjoyed great success for running music-sequencer software and also more importantly as a controller of musical instruments among amateurs and professionals alike.
The members of the ST family are listed below, in rough chronological order:
- 520ST
- original model with 512 kB RAM.
- 130ST
- intended to be a 128 kB variant. Announced at the 1985 CES alongside the 520ST but never produced.
- 520ST+
- early 520STs with 1 MB of RAM, but without floppy disk
The Fantastic Colecovision Console . . .
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The ColecoVision has to be one of the greatest gaming consoles made. It is up there in my top ten mainly due to a number of classic games that were ported to the system. I can clearly remember thinking at the time that the ColecoVision was quite a powerful machine and it really was like playing arcade games with arcade graphics and sound on a console.
Released to us in August 1982, the ColecoVision was to be ‘Coleco Industries‘ first gaming console made from the second generation of home video gaming systems.
The system was initially released with the game Donkey Kong and a cataloge of twelve launch titles, with an additional ten games announced for 1982, approximately 145 titles in total were published as ROM cartridges for the system between 1982 and 1984.
The system came about due to the owner of coleco industries, Mel Gershman. In the Seventies, coleco had mainly been producing a range of both childrens games, toys and electronic games (remember the Cabbage Patch Kids lol).
With the video gaming market thriving and vasts amounts of money to be made, greshman desperately wanted a piece of the action by coleco creating a competitive video games console of their own.
