retro

The venerable Ars Technica has coverage of a new official Pac-Man release to celebrate Pac's 30th birthday; Pac-Man Battle Royale. Ars wites:

The gameplay change is pulled off with some slightly tweaked mechanics. A level map is empty at the start of the round, only becoming randomly populated with dots and power pellets after a short time. Any player that grabs a power pellet temporarily doubles in size, affecting Pac-Man's speed and range of attack—get eaten by a powered-up Pac-Man and you’re out for the round.

Count me in!

This gorgeous case by Jeffrey Stephenson is beautifully crafted in cherry wood and aluminium for a look that is as timeless as it is stunning. Taking its inspiration from the Thermaltake Level 10 this houses a tiny Pico-ITX board, hard drive, slimline DVD and power supply. The VIA P820 Pico-ITX powering this is capable of full speed 1080p video playback.

Be sure to read through the build log to see the skill that went into this build.

Last weekend I acquired my first (and possibly only) arcade cabinet. It appears to be a custom cabinet (i.e. not the original manufacturer's cabinet) from the early 1980s.

Uniwar S looks like a conversion of the Galaxians PCB, and has very similar gameplay. It is not a particularly well known game and is probaly not especially collectable. Nonetheless, I will be trying to restore the original PCB and monitor if possible. I will also be doing a MAME conversion, but hope to run them both in the same cabinet. The game is from Irem, the company that later released Moon Patrol and R-Type which are two of my favourite arcade games.

Links:

• KLOV (Killer List of Videogames) Game information
• VAPS (Video Arcade Preservation Society) collector info
• Solarfox's Uniwar S info page
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Up until the late 1990s PC Computer cases were typically rectangular, beige objects where the colour was dictated more by the quality of cheap recycled plastic from which they were manufactured than by choice or design. In the late 1990s to early 2000s some PC enthusiasts, many of them Gamers, began Case Modding - "spicing up" their PC cases with lights, windows and paintwork to reflect their personalities and interests in much the same way as car enthusiasts have been modifying their cars since the early days of hot-rodding in the 1930s.

Case mods are often bright and gaudy, festooned with lights and high-gloss paintwork, but increasingly there are beautifully conceived and executed, even elegant, case mods by talented and professional designers.

In 2001 VIA Technologies introduced the Mini-ITX form-factor motherboard; a tiny 17cm x 17cm board with onboard CPU and minimal cooling requirements. This has opened avenues for case modders to build PC into smaller and more unusual enclosures than ever before. The case mods I showcase here combine these tiny mini- or pico-ITX boards with classic PC from computing history. Here are my picks for the best retro case mods:

(Read more)

While searching for something completely unrelated, I stumpled upon one of the most egregious sins against the natural world since the invention of fire. On the otherwise excellent Binary Zone Interactive I found the Specadore 64.

When is a Commodore 64 not a Commodore 64? When it's a ZX Specadore 64! So how the blazes did this all come about then? Well, I've had my trusty C64C for MANY years now - in fact, it was bought brand new way back in 1987 I think! Unfortunately over time the keyboard changed colour from a vibrant light grey/cream colour to a horrible yellow mess. So I decided to give it a fresh new coat of paint. As I rather like the colour scheme of the original Sinclair ZX Spectrum I thought I'd paint up my C64C in ZX Spectrum style colours!

Shame on you Jason Mackenzie!