These are all my babies

Here all the hardware I have at home, missing from the pictures are an Amiga 1081 monitor and an Amiga external disk drive with led counter.

Its not a huge haul, I'll show the software another time..(knackered from humping this lot around.)

All machine non console machines are stock bar a Happy drive, nice items in the pics, a Amiga Action Replay, an AVG cart, an SD-Max, the Syss Check 2.2 and the amazing 1541 Utimate ++.

Consoles first..(almost all modded)



Atari next..



And lastly the Commodores

The A1200 has 8meg and floating point add on with internal 500meg drive. There's also an 8853 monitor there, most seen are 8852's..Basically like an 8852 but no composite and I think a slightly better res...I think?



Small edit:I did miss out one other thing, a 20" Ferguson CRT TV, for the slightly bigger screen when playing Snes etc, always try and play on CRT, no matter how wonderful the specs on TV's these days I still find the transistor switching time is still prone to both lag and screen blur on fast stuff.

Hope you like

 

Bloody lovely kit there, Paul.

A real treat to see so many wonderful console, Atari and Commodore machines all looking in great nick and maxed out to the max, in some cases, with quality add-ons and enhancements.

Am I right in thinking this is more than just a visual treat for our mince pies and that you MIGHT be selling some of this gear, fella?

Whatever, I wish you well - it's a great collection and I know you get a lot of pleasure from a lot of this great gaming gear which represents the best of what the retro (and modern) gamer can enjoy.

If some of this does end up on the marketplace, I equally wish for a really good price and also a really good quality acquisition for the buyer.

Great set-ups, fella - you should be proud of your "babies"!

 

There part of me that says trim the herd but the market is dead, also my 800 (my thing of beauty) had a broken spacebar but I just noticed the area of the case just after the spacebar but before it goes under the machine has a big crack there too...

I may get rid of one of the 64's and I might be tempted to lose the A500 Amiga BUT because its yellowed I'd have to drop the price which sort of makes it pointless. As generous as I am I can't really give it away (talking in general) and its got a very old link directly to me as it was Bob's brothers and there's boring history there but if his brother could see where it is now (he died years ago) he would hit the roof.

Thanks for the kind comments Baz, as it stands its just for show, I was going to show it on the Zoom feed but as usual my night was changed

i will of course offer here IF I do decide to get rid of some stuff but at the mo ITS ALL MINE!!!!

 

Very nice. My console and Atari 8-bit collection is comparable to yours over all (not counting the 1200XL you'll get one day!). You take the lead with your Commodore machines, I would have been to your state in my collection, if I still had the ST's, Falcon and Lazer 128 (Apple IIc clone) machines that were stolen from storage. Obviously with Atari bolstering my collection instead of Commodore, but Falcon aside, these days, after having owned a version of the Commodore machines, however briefly (months at least), I'd rather have the C64's and Amiga's than the ST's and Lazer.

On the console side, I have everything you have (not all set-up yet, still not enough room) except the Nintendo machines and whatever the hell that thing is on top of your SNES! Instead I've got an Atari VCS, Bally Arcade, 3DO and Jaguar&CD unit. I had 2 PS3 briefly, recently, that were given to me. I refurbished them and gave one away and sold the other. They just aren't interesting for me, I only have the PS2's to play PS1 games with the texture filtering on for more N64-like graphics, aside from the PS1 games I can play on my Dreamcast with the Bleemcast beta, since it improve the resolution too. I'm happy with my Xbox's, and ever since it became Xbox vs. Sony is like Coke vs. Pepsi, you decide which one you prefer, but this time based on the exclusive library as 90% if the games will be on both systems and comparable. Otherwise I'm an Xbox guy because my younger brother is an Xbox guy and he gives me his old ones...otherwise I could just as easily be a Sony guy, but I see little use for both beyond PS1 games. Since I have the PS2 I do, of course have a couple exclusives. My PS1's are just back-ups for PS1 games, should my PS2's go down. My full size PS2 is already in the junk-heap, but my PS2-mini is working and I have two other's for parts.

Sorry, I was a Sega man aside from Atari back in the day, not Nintendo, I always dismiss Nintendo as an option except the Nintendo 64, but I hated it's controllers. And even though I have no favorites these days, Nintendo just never had my kind of gaming libraries to buy the systems when I could get so much more of what I wanted on Atari, Sega, Sony and Xbox.

You have an impressive Nintendo console collection there though, but where is the N64?!?

 

I never clicked with the N64, well not enough to buy one. It lacked shooters, where the PSX had Einhander etc etc the N64 had a Gunhead variant that was so so. It did have the incredible Super Mario 64 and Zelda which are normally enough to warrant a purchase of a console alone but it just felt quality light for me. I'm not saying it was that but for me it felt that way. Oddly enough it was the same with the PS2, I got one around the time of the Xbox and sold it soon after because of the massive repetition of titles between the two but was offered a wonderful swap with someone on the sector where he got a Lynx in carry case with loads of games with some other stuff and I got the PS2 with some stuff. It was nice to see some of the Sony only stuff on it which put a huge smile on my face so maybe if an N64 comes along I might grab it.

As I always say, I go where the good games are and Super Mario 64 in emulation is very nice but to have it on a real machine on a crt would be ace. Depends on the price of the machine and the software...

The thing on top of the Snes is a Super Wildcard, classed as a developers tool when in fact it was just a piracy tool where you load games via 3.5 disk drive on its side, I've modded it to take a Gotek and load off a usb stick but I also built a microcontroller USB loader that runs off a python script so I can send stuff to it from the USB to the parallel port that you can't see on its rear.

I keep on thinking about a PS3 purely for the Sony only stuff but again it would only be if the price was good or I managed a swap, like most people there's stuff I want but its based on what is spare in the cash side which isn't great so I sit and look at what if offers vs the cash and 9 out 10 times the purchase just isn't worth it. I also have to factor in my health and pain, are the games going to be big old levels with only a save point at the start, if yes then I can't really play them as the pain is so intense after not many minutes I have to stop. So annoying..

There's a few things in life I'd change if I could go back, one would be my work drive, I always gave 101%, it got me great money but it was hard on the old body, after falling off the roof amongst pushing and pushing myself I ended up like I am now, I really wish I'd taken it easier now as it affects the things I class as fun making them NOT fun.

I'll put up my software collection on pics, even us old ex pirates buy games, same with DVD and Blu Rays, I can get them just like everyone from the net but I respect the folks making them and buy stuff, they feed me, I feed them.

That just twigged me that I fort the Gameboy advance, the 2 3DS's and the Switch from the pics, damn, I knew I'd forgot something...Oh well, they are in my daughters room and that is a room where only she knows where stuff is, if there's a true definition of Chaos its her room. I don't get a look in on the switch at the moment, not sine I brought her Animal Crossing : New Horizons. 45.00 quid BUT with the lockdown its given her something to really get in to which is brilliant as the boredom is terrible for her.

Been having a C64 fix here in the last few days, was just watching the hidden demo for the game Trap, very War of the wolds and great music but not too long so I get neck ache

That itself reminds me of the great use of emulators, save states, where I used to play like others for hours, even days I'm stuff now but if I have a long game then its emulator time and when the pain gets too much I save the state, a wonderful relief for me but nothing beats the real machine, I'm just grateful I have a choice.

Look up the old Wild Card, very handy back in the day to just see if a game was worth the buy, I had the spare money then and even spent 88.00 on an import Japanese Starfox on its release (trade price), wish I still had all my carts...Sigh..

 

I have Einhander for the PS1! Great game! It is one of the titles that works very well with the Bleemcast emulator for the Dreamcast, so I play it with enhanced graphics that way. I like emulation, on consoles, just not big on emulating on the PC. I've thought about modding the Xbox original, but most of the stuff to mod it for is already available on the DC, like the 8 and 16-bit emulators. The only console I have a hankering for right now is a Sega Saturn.

 

Recently re softmodded the Xbox to update the mod, used to have a load of emulators on it but when the scene died and the guys moved on to the 360 then the emu's stopped getting updated so I went back to using on the PC. I borrowed my brothers Saturn and played Panzer Dragoon and Knights which I loved but I just never got one, was nothing at all wrong with it, it just never happened. Was well pleased when Dragoon Orta came out on the 360.

I love the quirky Japanese shooters so the PS1 was a great machine to have the only problem I had with shooters was when the DC came out and they started putting out those shooters when you got a zillion bullets at once coming at you, put me right off. Went back to Raiden Deluxe

On a side note, send me some of your sun over Matt, I want to retrobrite the machines

The Amiga 500 is basically orange (but still a damn sexy computer)

 

I'll see what I can't do about the sunshine. I know what you mean about the crazy Dreamcast shooters, it has a few solid ones, but I'm with you that most have a billion bullets flying and you'd have to be on some kind of stimulant drug and 20 years old to keep up! I have half dozen DC shooters I downloaded images of burned to CDR (with video compression so the GDR games fit on CDR. One is a multi-game disc called '4 Shooter for your Dreamcast' and I think one of them I find playable. Nothing like some good-old Raiden or Xevious to me. It is a genre that my other early "next-gen" consoles like the 3DO and Jaguar are sorely lacking in, especially the 3DO, at least the Jag has Raiden, Defender 2000, Protector and Total Carnage. The 3DO has a good one like Total Carnage, though both are man-based over-head shooters and not ship/plane based, called 'Captain Quazar' but I don't recall any 2D overhead or side-scrolling ship-based shooters on the 3DO...if there are they were so bland or bad I can't even remember them. I usually fire up the Dreamcast and run the Megadrive, Amiga emulator, or ST since I don't have all the shooters for both systems with the DC emulator, so some that aren't on my Amiga emulator disc I might have the ST versions on that emulator disc. Play the classics like 1942 and Xevious, etc.I need to see if there is a PC Engine emulator out for the DC, it has a lot of great shooters on it.

 

Me and Xevious were made for each other, fellas.

It was the very last coin-op in the arcades in our town where I regularly used to deposit my entire monthly teenage funds within said "bank".



I wonder if I'll EVER see em again?!

 

I'm as bad, used to go up to the mini arcade at Dalston junction and sit on the Asteroids machine, my reactions were a tad faster then, the old keep one rock and get the mini UFO was in full flow. JPI (John Paul Irvine) as initials all down the high score table. Happy times...

Always wanted a cocktail table top of it but those were the dreams of a poor kid

I was either in the arcade or down the chippy on the old fashioned pinball machine (no fancy LED readouts), me and my mate Ilker (Turkish lad) were proper masters of that machine, loads of free creds from the scores..

The nearest to that later on was Pinball Dreams on the Amiga

 

Have you ever tried the Bleemcast! beta for PS1 games @Paul Irvine ? You can download DC iso's of PS1 games that are ready-made with Bleamcast! beta and the PS1 game on the disk and just play them (games known to work well), or run the Bleemcast! Beta emulator on it's own and then put in the PS1 disc when told, some work some don't. Below is an example of what the DC can do for many PS1 games, even beyond the graphic filtering PS2's do for them. This is a zoom-in close-up of part of a screen-shot of the original PS1 and Bleemcast! enhanced, not full screen. They run at full-speed, with full sound, but FMV is garbled and needs to be skipped with the press of a button. That's 4x the resolution, upscaling from 320x240 to 640x480 interpolated, 3D filtered, anti-alaised, blah, blah, blah...

 

Brilliant, fellas.

I too used to do the "leave the last smallest asteroid" on screen then THRUST around the screen with my ship blasting the fek out of where you anticipated the UFOs would appear from with their trail of attacking fire.

I once had 18 ships lined up right across the top of the screen and just like you, Paul, used to hog the High Score tables.

I used to piss off others wanting/queueing to have a go so sometimes, after being on it for an hour or three, I'd just walk away and say "Help yourself!"

NB: in one of our arcades Asteroids was known as Planet and the guy who ran it only wanted 5p a go on it - vector graphics heaven!

#

 

I never knew Asteroids had versions called 'Planet.' A licensing thing? Clone? Pirated? For some reason Atari changed the name for the U.K. market back then? It's a small picture, but the artwork on the cabinet looks like Atari arcade style art.

 

Never tried Bleemcast Matt, I know of it but never used it..

Will try it later..

 

Just finished reading thru all posts above!
Ok - someone mentioned 'panzer dragoon'
Panzer dragoon saga on the saturn is by far one of my all time favourite games. I wish i hadn't of sold it.

And this 'bleemcast' sounds great. Will have to look on ebay for the emulator disc as i dont have a computer with cd drive.
That cooked itself few years back.

Ive run out of beer. Its traumatic.

Anyway hope all are well given the circumstances.

 

Dragoon is a joy to play and just as fun on the enhanced 360 version..

The Space Harrier true 3D arcade update looked like a direct rip of it...

Out of beer...SIr, how could you be so careless..

Keep safe old man....Best time to nip out for 'supplies' is after 9pm, hardly a single queue and at the moment, very few blooming kids (thankfully)

 

OK, I've got to get the 360 version. Is it a regular release or a 360 arcade release on Xbox live? I have also been planning on getting a Saturn again myself, I had one briefly about 15+ years ago, and my brother had one in the 90's when I had the Jaguar and 3DO and we used to play them all on weekends. I looked recently on ePay, and I was actually pleasantly surprised that prices hadn't sky-rocketed like Jaguar and 3DO systems and games have.

 

Although it does appear that Panzer Dragoon is selling, on average, for the same price as a Saturn console! ($80-120 w/shipping-US eBay) I'm sure one can download and burn images of it like most other retro consoles these days though. I will own the original,eventually, but in the meantime...

 

The best way to get into Bleemcast! these days, with the "general" beta version is to find disc images that include Bleem! and the game on the image, auto-load, because these are titles that work normally or mostly normally (sometimes soundtracks cut in and out or worse-Einhander is like this with it's soundtrack, but otherwise the game plays perfectly and so do sound effects) and, of course, all FMV is trashed, so you just push the button and skip it. But you can also get the Bleemcast! beta image seperately to try with original PSX releases too. I was recently playing the PSX game 'Apocolypse' with the voice acting of Bruce Willis, and this title, besides the FMV, runs fantastically and looks fantastic on the Bleemcast! Great game too.

Oh, yeah, one other thing about Bleemcast!; the 3 officialy released versions allow you to format a VMU in PSX form for saving games. The "general" beta version does not allow saving, so if it's a long game, like Apocolypse, make plenty of time for a binge-play or expect to leave the system on and paused overnight, and hope it doesn't crash!

Then there are the 3 officially released Bleemcast! versions that work perfectly for the three games they were fine-tooned for, including FMV. IIRC, Gran Tousrismo 2, Metal Gear Solid and Toshinden. You may find original, official Bleemcast! discs for sale or burn your own from images.

The only thing is that I did all of this about 10-15 years ago, and most of the sites I found this stuff are gone or something, so I'm attempting to refind this stuff myself, and see what I missed. If you can't find anything, as a fall-back last resort I can copy my CDR's and post the images of what I have. I have lots of PC titles made to run on the DC too, like Heretic and Quake 2 and Rise of the Triad, Doom, Doom II, etc.

The PS2 is great for improving the looks of PSX games, to make them look like N64 games at least, but where Bleemcast! works for PSX titles it makes them look as good as early Dreamcast titles!

 

Panzer Dragoon Orta is a full official release, as with almost every game there's places with the image files to burn but I think it also goes for semi sensible prices on the usual places unlike the Saturn original which is a license to print money.

Oh while I remember, be warned, quite a lot of the later images for 360 games cannot be burned by a normal DVD writer, a guy called c64eva or similar hacked a certain select set of dvd writers to over write, I had a Liteon that you could flash to do this. The only other way to get around this is to install an Xkey in to your 360 that allows you to use a USB HD to put the image files on....And very nice it is too

 

I'll buy the original 360 version, just needed to know if I should look on ePay or Xbox Live arcade to get it! As for burning disk images, for now I've only done it with systems upto the Dreamcast, used games for later systems are still cheap and easy to obtain. Burning is a last resort for over-priced games from that era and Home-brew, hacks (like Bleemcast! PSX games), etc. I'd always want the real thing, machine or software if I can obtain and afford it. Right now I only have CDR burned games for Jag CD, 3DO and Dreamcast...a few for Sega CD which I don't own anymore...

By the way, @Paul "Mclaneinc" Irvine , you need to get a 3DO in your collection (I'd recommend Jag too if it weren't so expensive), they are brilliant machines with some great unique games! An FZ-10 Panasonic model is cheapest version that is real reliable.

 

I have to be honest, I've got the entire PSX library as ISO's bar the unplayable Japanese stuff, Also the Dreamcast and any of the good PC Engine, Sega CD etc shooters.

I do actually own a selection of real stuff but Its nothing compared to what I used to have that went with the numerous moves we have done. I would gladly own the originals but silly prices and our status prevent that.

I see no wrong doing on my part, I've got tons of real games and dvd's / blu rays, the retro game iso's I have do not get sold, I don't distribute them unless a friend needs one, none are connected to a single or multiple torrents and I simply enjoy them.

I used to pick stuff up at the thrift / charity shops when they were open and that's how I increase my real collection, that and sensible priced 2nd hand stuff off ebay etc for the PS4 etc..

I remember me getting in to a huge row with a journalist called Stuart Campbell in the PSX usenet group over levels of piracy, he was at the time doing pieces for The Edge etc but hung out in the group.He simply would not accept that there are levels of piracy, he said that a kic copying software at school is just the same as the people producing 'silvers' in Hong Kong. It went on for days, he was extremely pig headed and had a bit of an ego (he used to brag that he was vetted to go to Number 10 as if that made him elite). Sadly for him it was about a week before one of the big shows and we had decided to go as a group and I knew what Stuart looked like but he had no idea what I looked like

Never has a small man ran so fast from a group of jeering yobs

That was the year we sanitised Gremlin Graphics...Those panty pads stick like buggery to stands and I have to hand it to my mate jim for the very realistic looking content on the pad....A++ for him..

And like all the old stories, 100% true..

I miss the old PSX group, we had lots of the programmer, Bizarre creations hung about in there, James Sutherland from Gremlin Graphics (hence the pad attack), Tony Crowther also popped in a bit, he was at Gremlin Graphics at the time and I beta tested a really small item for his game) and a list of other good folk that included a lot of old friends from Psygnosis. The was a guy called Graham Goring who later became a PD game writer, He used to be the butt of a lot of the groups jokes and once asked the said Stuart Campbell to either sell him a copy of a PSX game or asked him if he wanted a copy, I never remember which way around it was but it went down like a lead balloon with Stuart.

Wonder where Graham is now, he a witness to the havok some of us caused at the shows..

Great times...Sadly no shows anymore unless you want to travel to the states etc...

 

Enjoyed that damn good read and recount of the old days and the old shows, Paul.

I got to maybe 3-4 and never had half the fun you had (who could match those hijinks, really?!) but the sheer thrill of just being there, seeking out a bargain or three and actually meeting and seeing your 'heroes' of the 8bit world (I stood about 2ft away from Jeff Minter - once!) and getting the goody bags and freebies from companies great and small was just a massive blast for a computer freak teenager.

You brought it all back there, buddy.

Anyone else had some "fun and games" at any of the shows back in the "good old days"?

PS. What has Matt's avatar pic morphed into? Is it still Matt himself or some devious deckhand from... Gremlin Graphics?! We need answers and fast, you formatted floppy folks.

 

I was wondering the same...

As for the bloke I mentioned at the end, just been speaking to him on twitter, he didn't even remember the thing with Stuart Campbell..Lol...I just mentioned all the things he was there seeing so waiting to see if he remembers them (I mean who would forget seeing a stand covered in bloody san pads).

I loved the shows, being in with a few of the distributors I'd get some extra freebies from the likes of Centresoft, nothing stunning but nice to have. My fave 'score' was at the Sony stand, they were handing out pens and badges but if you were worth their time others were getting free mugs with the PSX boot logo on (sadly I only have one left..Boo hoo) but after a chat with one of the lovely ladies and a ton of BS'ing I walked away with a whole box of them, sommit like 24 mugs which were plundered by our group bar 6 or so that I kept.. But it wasn't all being a pillock (99.8% was) I was actually very interested in the stuff and loved chatting to the devs, some of which we had dealings with. Loved the show with the Konami stand, they were showing of the PSX Metal Gear Solid to huge numbers of very excited fans, me included, the intro tune and video alone just amazing.

But yeah, most of what me and Jim got up to was arsing around, I saw Jon Ritman giving a PC demo of that 8 bit footy game he wrote, I've pretended I don't know who he was a as I strolled past said loudly to Jim something along the lines of "christ, that awful football games on the PC now, it was shit back then on the 64" and looked him dead in the eye as he turned away from his demo'ing...He was mortified.

But like you I simply loved the hustle and bustle of the shows, the cacophony of old and new game noises and music, the goodies you could get and the damn sexy dancers on System 3 will always be a fond memory, damn, you could almost see flaps....I stood there with the hormones going silly, got the horn which made one of the girls laugh but made me so embarrassed.

Like you I love hearing other people's stories about the shows, it was all new then and we were seeing the expansion of 8 - 16 bit and then the consoles, great times, silly times but always fun times..

Took me ages to lose the horn! short tight dresses, tee shirts with no bras, I think it's lucky I didn't take someone's eye out....These days its like my cat, wakes up, flops about a bit and then goes back to sleep..