Retro Gaming Australia

Hello. It’s been a while. I’ve largely rebranded all of the Retro Gaming Australia socials to Stony Classics. Instead of doing written stuff, I’m now streaming on Twitch. Please follow me – https://www.twitch.tv/stony_classics

I’ll be returning to Instagram and YouTube in time, and likely expanding to TikTok. Still not sure what to do about this site, so it’ll probably hang around another year.

My host has required that we move to PHP 8 ASAP or face additional charges. That has necessitated a change of theme as the previous one was deprecated long ago.

Due to the upgrade, AGDB is down and will likely remain that way. My host no longer supports fast install of MediaWiki and I frankly do not possess the knowledge to install it manually

I found out this week that the entire wiki was backed up to Archive.org many years ago, so the vast majority of the information contained within is safe and can live on.

If anyone does decide to liberate the wiki from the Archive.org backup – you are free to do so provided you tell me that you’re doing it.

Battletoads is a beat ’em up video game developed by Rare and published by Tradewest for the NES  in 1991. The game features three playable characters, known as the Battletoads, who must fight their way through various levels to defeat the evil Dark Queen and her minions. The game is known for its challenging difficulty, but also praised for its smooth animation and memorable level design.

I will always remember this console, simply for the fact people were getting super hyped about a new Nintendo 64 model being teased. Speculation ramped up like crazy, and people got super sour when this was what was actually announced.

Pokemon Stadium was the series second release for the Nintendo 64, but the first to feature the more traditional battle gameplay. Although the first in the Pokemon Stadium series outside of Japan, it’s actually the second game in the series in the Pokemon franchise’s home territory.

Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire mark the start of the third generation of Pokemon games. It was the first generation to see a remake of a prior Pokemon title, with Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green following in 2004.

Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue are the games that started the Pokemon craze.

If you want to get technical, they are not actually the first Pokemon games; they are based on the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue, which was the typical “third version” which was the standard fare for Pokemon games up to Gen 4. The original Pocket Monsters Red and Green have substantially different art and are glitchy as heck, among other things.

Given that the latest generation of Pokemon games, Pokemon Sword and Shield will be available this week, why not have a week of Pokemon game ads?

Pokemon Puzzle League is a spinoff from the Gen 2 era, a late N64 release which mixes the setting and characters from the Pokemon anime with the classic gameplay of Panel de Pon (or its most recent western release, Tetris Attack).

It has been five years since I wrote a State of the Website address, and roughly about the same since we have done regular updates on the site. The site as it is really just exists as an archive for previously written content and the Australian Gaming Database, which never really officially launched, but is there for all to see. This site doesn’t cost much to host and takes very little time to maintain without active content production.

The lack of updates and content boils down to work, personal life and no desire to write. Back when this site was regularly updated, I was either unemployed or in a junior role in my current job. I am now in management. Life decisions like purchasing a house limited my available funds for purchasing retro games, and we found that we were just as happy to play them on mini classic consoles or via emulation. All the while, prices shot through the roof through increased demand and the drop in the Australian dollar. Plus I hate waiting for stuff to come in the mail, and getting it out in the wild is not really an option.

That third point is an interesting one. I have written about video games in some capacity since 2001, starting with amateur reviews and game guides, and eventually through to paid reviews. When you get paid well for something, it becomes difficult to do it for less and/or no money. RGA at its peak made a little bit of beer money after covering its costs, which is more than most hobbyist sites. Writing content takes a lot of time, and writing good content takes more. I’m pretty terrible at writing now, as you’d be able to easily tell comparing any earlier work on this site (coming hot off the heels of 3 years of full time writing) compared to this piece.

The Internet has moved on from writing now. There has never really been a lot of interest in reading good long form content, and there is less now. Basically anything I would write now is just for me, and posted here or on Frothing Demand. Having not done a lot of writing for some time, I find it difficult and that’s demotivating.

Video content and streaming have taken over. Certainly I have the means to get all of the equipment required to shoot video, and I can edit a video together. We tried our hand at it before to limited success. That just all takes a lot of time that I could spend actually playing the games that this site is about – and believe me, although I don’t write about retro games much, I still play them every single day. That would make streaming appealing, and I haven’t quite ruled it out yet, but I would only do it for my own amusement.

So, plans for the year:

• Make sure site doesn’t turn into dumpster fire
• Do a little bit here and there on AGDB
• Maybe futz around with streaming

Oh hello! Yes, this site is still technically alive. Happy 8th birthday to us, I guess?

Anyway, here’s a few curious items.

Full size Game Boy store kiosk – local pickup in Bankstown.

Super Famicom Box – Rare Super Famicom variant designed for hotel rooms

Panasonic Q – always wanted this GameCube variant

Dreamcast – Australian version, new and complete

Second model Australian Sega Saturn

Killer Instinct Super Advantage Bundle

Original Xbox store kiosk – same seller has some other Xbox 360 kiosks too

Harvest Moon (Super Nintendo)

Shining Force (Mega Drive)

Dick Smith Wizzard w/ Tape Drive