Retro Games Party 5.5 - August 2013 Official Party Review and Video

 

Retro Games Party 5.5
They came, they saw, they played!

From all over the UK, 86 people descended upon Retro Games Party 5.5 on 31st August in Blackburn to play in total 48 video games, 4 pinballs, 1 Electro Mechanical gun game and relive an arcade experience never covered in the press any more.

Sure, we at Retro Games Party support public events like North East Retro Gaming, Revival and PlayExpo (2012) with the loan of machines but the media coverage has completely overlooked the arcade side of the retro gaming scene, instead concentrating all their sparse reviews on the pinball machines so our job is to re-raise the awareness of these classic bits of history.

We had worked very hard since our last party in April to expand the space available both for machines and visitors, fix machines that had presented problems following events, even rebuild new arrivals like Dig Dug and finally, in the last days leading up to this event, we were so happy that our Star Wars cockpit finally came to life.

Facebook has been lit up over the past few days following the party with feedback and, unlike the last few events, I managed to run around with my own camera and film what was going on.

This time we had more people from the pinball community due to our dedicated pinball room provided and maintained by Luke Wells of ArcadeUK as well as guests Melli, Bill and Matt Peakman who were winners of our competition run in conjunction with GamesYouLoved.

Chris Wilkins, RGP and Paul Hughes, 31/08/2013

Special Guests

Sometimes there’s a point comes up in doing these events that you’re really glad of a nice surprise and it’s nice when people bring people with them, Chris Wilkins of Revival Retro Events brought long time friend of his and equal retro enthusiast Paul Hughes (formerly of Ocean Software) who i’d been briefly in contact with a few years previous, having grown up with the Commodore 64 and most of Ocean’s games and then reading Paul’s site I can say it was an absolute pleasure to finally meet the man.  Anyone who ever loaded an Ocean game on the C64 from tape will know the loader – this was the guy that wrote it.  I’m not one for being a who-met-who but it’s nice to sometimes get a picture to remember things from.

Chris borrowed one of the rooms here at Retro Games Party HQ to perform an interview for a book he’s writing and I kind of barged in for a few minutes and got a bit of footage which is in the video.

Well behaved machines, well behaved players

I’m always constantly thankful that the machines live out the night, i’m not bothered if they fail the next day, at least everyone was able to play on them until they got switched off, this time fortunately everything behaved very well.  Even the newly refurbished Star Wars cockpit survived 8 hours of service, it has a few niggles to iron out like an intermittently disappearing left speaker and the control yoke wants some work doing but those are minor compared to the utter sweat poured over the monitor, game board and power supply for nearly a year by our friend Nad Parvez (aka Equites), we owe this man a huge thanks in his own right.

The only machine that we couldn’t keep working was Battlezone, it seemed to be suffering with heat related issues, normally we can work around those quite easily but because of where we had placed the machine and the volume of people, sadly we had to turn it off after a couple of hours.  It will go into the investigation pile as it had previously run for multiples of several hours.

Everyone who attends is always so pleasant to talk with, we have fans from older and younger generations who come and thankfully the old practice of slamming joysticks and control sticks about has ceased.

Below you’ll find the YouTube video but before you watch it, i’d like to say a huge thank you to the people that work behind the scenes with us to ensure the machines work and to help with the set-dressing side of it (moving the machines around, making sure we all have place to stand and talk, catering etc).

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrBtk0DDL2g

 

DECO Cassette System Conversion to Mr Do! - Part 3

Mr Do conversion takes a leap forward – out with the old, in with the new

In this instalment of our Mr Do dedicated conversion project, we rip out the old wiring on the cabinet, make some interesting discoveries inside, try to figure out what the original constructors were thinking and of course – have some fun doing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jav37-gdimw

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jav37-gdimw

Having obtained the manual for this machine, i’d had a peek inside before we got started.  The loom seemed to have been converted from the original into Electrocoin’s “unigame” pinout, an adaptor was discovered hanging off the end to convert UNIGAME to JAMMA – this is a bit of a find as it meant I wouldn’t have to make one for one of the Goliath machines at some other time.

Most of the wiring was simple to remove, just a few screws held the cable ties down and a lot of it came out.  The connector on the low voltage power supply (5v and 12v) was stuck on quite hard and needed a bit of engineering persuasion to part with it.

Along the way we make some observations and Mark finds a bit of humour in one of the parts (see end credits).

The whole teardown took about an hour, in the video it’s been cut to about fifteen.

RGP Visits Coral Island, Blackpool 2011 [Video]

A Trip To Coral Island in Blackpool – 2011

Coral Island is one of Blackpool’s iconic arcades, it’s been there certainly as long as I can remember.  I have very fond memories of spending a big chunk of my pocket money in there during the 1980′s when it was a video arcade game fans paradise.

Fast forward 30 years and I find myself in Blackpool on Friday 4th November 2011 just before Replay 2011, myself, my girlfriend and my brother decide to grab some fish & chips and have a look around the arcade.

Direct link: http://youtu.be/0xApX-d7rpw

While I accept that times have changed, naturally i’m a bit sad.  I remember where there used to stand rows of classic arcade games, particularly in Zaccaria cabinets.  Games such as Popeye, Konami’s Ping Pong, Hyper Sports all used to be beautifully lined up and seldom were they unoccupied.

Now, all the games that I remember are replaced with newer ones, at one pound a play compared to the ten pence from back then (that’s hyper inflation for you).

It’s not all bad news, to be fair, this was late on a Friday night and yet still there were plenty of people wandering about and it was nice to see the games being played.

Zaccaria Upright Cabinet in RGP Arcade

Coral Island at one point a few years ago had removed most, if not all of their video games.  Replacing them with pushers, redemption machines and of course, fruit machines surrounded by ropes and guarded with signs saying “18 only”.

Luckily they’ve seen the light and a few of the newer better games are there such as After Burner Climax and OutRun 2 Special Edition – although why it has dual steering i’m not sure.  Some fun games like Guitar Hero and Dancing Games were there as well, however, I only found one real “joystick” game which was Virtua Tennis.

While the place was clean and tidy, the machines could do with some maintenance, a number of dead screens were visible but of course, you don’t know whether they failed that day or 6 weeks ago.

I hope that eventually places like Coral Island, Mr T’s, Funland etc on the Golden Mile in Blackpool grab at least a few multi-game cabinets that will appeal to some of us retro heads.

Even though I have an arcade of my own full of the classics, you can’t beat going on a field trip to the seaside, eating street food and playing some credits on those games.

For more information about Coral Island, visit their website at: http://www.vrblackpool.co.uk/blackpool-virtual-tour/Coral-Island–Blackpool-Golden-Mile.html

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Mailbag #1 - Thanks to Beaps & Vic

Mailbag 1 – 30/03/2013

A quick video of some packages that arrived in the mailbag this week, their contents and what’s happening with them.  Many thanks to Brian (beaps) and Vic (VirtVic) for supplying these to me.

In this video I receive a CPS2 kick harness adaptor and a breadbin style Commodore 64 – also known as a Mk1.

The CPS2 adaptor is needed so that I can make a Street Fighter Zero 2 work with its additional six “kick” buttons (hence why it’s known as a kick harness) and the Commodore 64 Mk1 is to replace my C64C.  While there’s nothing wrong with the other one, i’ve wanted a proper working Mk1 for a while as I just think they look the part.  I always loved my C64 as a child.

The other reason is that the SID-II chip in the early commodore 64′s have a different filter system in them which allows sampled speech to play properly.  The later models had a different chip which either muffled or entirely prevented sampled sound playback.

The samples were achieved by continuously changing the volume setting which in the older chips would emanate a ‘click’ – play these clicks fast enough and you have actual sound.

It never ceased to amaze me that mailbag episodes are so popular, a number of other YouTube and bloggers produce videos about what turned up in their mail so I thought i’d follow suit but try and show some things working or lead to progress on other projects at the same time.

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RGP Arcade Access All Areas Tour - March 2013

After many months, much nagging, a lot of hard work and some sleepless nights, it was time to upload a video of the arcade room at RGP HQ.  This is just a short video walkaround of the place with all the machines switched on in their glory.  Some 32 machines pictured here all working including the concluded recent conversion/restoration/reproduction project – Mr Do!

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHdtnpNDvio

Machines featured here are (in no order): Juno First, Galaxian, Missile Storm, Zaccaria Puck-Man (Pac-Man), Zaccaria Invaders, Millipede (Euro Version), Mr Do (DECO Cassette System Conversion), Crazy Kong pt II, Namco Assault, Phoenix, 1942, Mr Do vs Unicorns (JAMMA cabinet), Williams Blackout, Zaccaria Moon Flight, 3 x Zaccaria Technoplay Universal Upright JAMMA cabs with Pac-Land, Bubble Bobble and Kung-Fu Master, Out Run, Super Hang On, After Burner, Space Harrier, 9 x Electrocoin Goliath JAMMA cabinet with Commando, Nemesis, Ghosts & Goblins, Bombjack, Frogger, Arkanoid, Salamander 2, Terra Cresta and Track & Field (switchable to Hyper Sports), a Star Wars cockpit (not currently operational), Pole Position, Road Blasters and finally Return Of The Jedi.

I also had a few computers out as well but weren’t powered up – BBC Micro Model B, Commodore 64 and an arcade supergun which had Side Arms by Capcom plugged into it.

Theres a dedicated videos page on the site where i’ll make sure all the videos are listed and organised somehow.

Please subscribe to the youtube channel and feel free to leave comments and suggestions below or on YouTube.  Check back soon for our events section, don’t be shy, come along and play the games – that’s what they’re there for.