Old-School: My Atari had a broken Wang

So, I have been rather nostalgic lately, and spending a lot of time scrolling through my Steam library thinking “It never used to be this hard to pick a game!”.
I used to open the cabinet, choose from one of my 10 Atari games (90% likely that River Raid was coming out) and then spend the next happy hours of my life shooting planes and collecting fuel.

What does any normal person do when feeling nostalgic? Look at a photo album? Google some info?

… you’d be wrong.
They immediately hit up their local ‘Buy Swap and Sell’ facebook group asking who is selling an Atari 2600.  Am I right!?

And I got this!!

A very tidy haul if I do say so myself!!

Now, out of the above, only 1 of the Atari (Atari? Atari’s? How does one exactly plural this console’s name?) actually worked, the second one he threw in because ‘it’s a fancy paperweight’.
And I’m sure you noticed, as I, that nice little box that reads ‘River Raid’ on the cover!!

Out of all the games I got with this…

…only 1 of them doesn’t work.
Guess which one?
GO ON. TAKE A STAB?
I BET YOU’LL NEVER GUESS THAT IT WAS  BLOODY WELL RIVER RAID.

After a few moments of weeping in my soul, I moved onto inspecting my new collection of 20th century adventures.

This bad boy, looks like he has legitimately NEVER BEEN USED.

But then again, who in their right mind plays Golf games anyways?

Now, Atari number 1 was all plugged in and happily beeping away as I died repeatedly in GORF, but Atari number 2 was sitting there looking at me like as if it had been neglected and wanted some attention.

So I popped open the case to see if there was anything obviously wrong with it.

The answer would partially be – because it is HELLA filthy. Ew.
Like, I don’t judge smokers guys, I don’t.
But if you DO smoke around electrical equipment, it’s going to end up with a nice gooey grime layer like this.

Please don’t smoke around pets, children and retro gaming systems. This public service announcement was approved for use by the Ellie Foundation of Gaming.

Anyways, after about an hours worth of cleaning, I noticed that the contact points on the capacitor were not correctly touching, so I wriggled it around until it had a good connection.

I love that this is called a ‘Wang Scap’….because I’m a child.
My Atari’s ‘wang’ was broken guys. It was broken. But I fixed it.

Now! I am the proud owner of 2 baller level Atari 2600’s.
Hahaha, why I need 2 is beyond me, but I’m stoked none the less.

Bring on the 8-bit adventure!

~ Love you all,
Ellie.

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Kick-off 2015 with Kromaster

Hello friends!!

So to ring in 2015, the Painting Sage and I decided to bust out my Kromaster Arena board game that I picked up at PAX Australia.

This is a cool little fantasy fighting boardgame where you use the characters spells and abilities to chase down and attack your opponent.

Now, to be absolutely honest, the primary reason I got this game was because it looked BLOODY cute. Like, this is adorable. But, another reason I was drawn towards this, is that I am really not one for lengthy super involved rules.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a game with depth, but if I need to spend an hour on YouTube to work out how to set up the map then Ellie’s out. You can find me over at the other table playing Munchkin.

This game has a big rule book, with mini-maps that act as a step by step tutorial! We figured we’d take advantage of the nice weather outside (once a year where I live, seriously) and have a game outside in the shade.

There is dialogue facing the other player and an in depth explanation of the rule you’re learning to the left. This was the tutorial for basic movement, terrain interaction and attack.

As things became more complex, the map got a little bigger and the characters started multiplying to work together. In the above photo I was playing “Sheep guy” and the “Hooded con man”.

You can also buy “booster” boxes with additional characters. Even though we didn’t play with these guys today, I had purchased these when I picked up the board game itself.

I love that the boosters come with their own token set. You beauty! I hate nothing more than adding things to a game where you have to “pretend this token is this”.

I don’t want to really give this a x/10 at the moment, as we only went so far as the tutorials to start – but so far this is shaping up to be HEAPS of fun. Can’t wait for a couple more rounds of this – and to try out the expansion! (Yes, I’m that person that purchases the cool looking expansion before they even know if they like the base game *ehem*).

Paintball, Painting and WTF did I just play?

Let’s begin this story with the fact that I participated in Paintball this weekend.
Now, as much as I can hear you doing a fist pump and a ‘Hells yeaaa’ this was more of a revolutionary awakening for myself to absolutely know – I will not survive the Zombie apocalypse.
Honestly speaking when the virus ridden cannibals start roaming the streets – I’ll already be one of them, don’t worry about coming to save me.

Now for a small update on painting!!

So I’ve been experimenting with paper to see if there’s anything comparable to the P3 parchment paper to use to put my paints on. Here’s how I went:

• Standard Paper = No. It dissolves easily.
• Baking Paper = No. The wax being placed either up OR down creates a water repellent barrier that doesn’t allow the paint to remain wet.
• Tracing Paper = Maybe. I’ve had a limited amount of success with tracing paper keeping paint wet for about 24 hours. But not much longer.
• Tradesman Paper = Maybe. This is actually paper made of a type of stone. It’s oil and water proof, but this actually made it PAINT proof, meaning that if the paint was thick enough, it just sat around on the top with the water keeping liquid for about 48 hours. Not bad but not great.

TRADEY PAPER. FOR THE TOUGH MAN… Or for the 5 foot nothing woman trying to paint tiny people.

The tracing paper on the left, and the Tradesman paper on the right after 24 hours.

So, using my ‘temporary’ wet palette, I got to trying to fix horsey.
I did this by adding an orange/brown type colour to the original brown and re-going over the highlights and then toning them back again with flesh wash. I think it’s a bit of an improvement but not great.

You still haven’t fixed my saddle woman. I mean seriously, who rides a saddle without stirrups?

I also used black wash to give him a slightly darker tone on his hocks. I was going to do him full bay colour and black them out, but I figured – he’s obviously no REAL breed of horse anyways, so we shall cheat! MWAHAHAHA.

—-

In PC gaming news, I have gotten addicted to the Mighty Quest for Epic Loots.

So the point of this game is to build a castle, and other people can attack it. If they beat you castle they get a % of your loots (gold and gems) – if you attack them back you get a % of theirs.

How anyone travels from castle to castle is currently a mystery. Pegasus ponies maybe??

My castle in all it’s glory. AAAAANNND can be beaten in about a half a minute. Sorry gems, it was nice while it lasted.

The idea is that people get more and more creative with how they set up traps and monsters and try to catch you out. So far mines a pretty straight forward Walk in > Beat obvious frog guys > Take my shit.

There’s just a heart warming feeling knowing the loots you scored were actually another players. MWAHAHA.

Other than this – I also got Anna some time back if anyone remembers? But I hadn’t actually played it.

Regret.
So much regret.

Welcome to Anna. Where the best part of the game is the font the title shows in.

So it’s a horror puzzle game. Where the puzzles are actually ridiculous. After 10 minutes of kicking around in this pretty outdoors area I had to google what I was supposed to be doing.
Would you believe I was meant to go find a branch, use to to move rocks in the river, fill up my canteen and catch a glass shard – and then just HAPPEN to work out that I need to set this glass shard on fire using a pinecone while sitting in the groove of a stone eye.
Like…what the actual fuck?

We’re trying to look dark and ominous. Instead we’re just giving you a headache with the overdone music and shitty lighting.

You fumble around in the water mill for a while finding random objects, like this prize winning message on a handkerchief.

I’m pretty sure I follow the 14 year old girl that wrote this on Tumblr.

I ended up giving up the game after I illuminated some magical bridge over a puddle and got to enjoy the ‘horrific’ image of a stick figure hugging kids in the water.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal was the art work for the kids. Really? REALLY? We allowed someone to publish that nightmare?

Neeeeedless to say, I won’t be finishing this game. I have plenty of better ways to spend an hour. Like you know, sniffing paint.

Well, that’s all for this evening folks.
I have a tendency to waffle – my apologies.

Night all!!

Work is dull and I have a PhotoBucket

I pretty much use PhotoBucket.com to host all of my images for various forums/blogs etc. So I thought the other night, why not upload a bunch of random things and use them to write a blog post if work turns out as slow as expected….glad I did. Work is dull.

So, a couple of random things…

Have been soaking and scrubbing some more of the miniatures given to my by a friend.

Raaaaawrrrr…rch…chu…bleeerg *furball*

I think this little guy is about as clean as he’s going to get.
The reason that the head looks SO clean is because it had actually never been put on!! In addition, the rider was never painted – so I just have him in a baggy waiting for his new fat raptor pet to get a coat.

Finally got the Infinity ALEPH figures together (my god, never again, so tiny) and then spray painted them with my Vallejo Off White. This was my first go a spray painting anything.
YIPES. So much more difficult than I had ever imagined. Half the time I think I was just blowing air in their general direction.

Then they were sprayed with a light coat of Sepia GW Wash.

Now to paint the detail!! Omg…paint…the detail. That detail is like under a 1µm in size. NOPE THEY JUST STAYING WHITE. *sigh* I’ll give it at go…but it won’t be pretty.

Last note, Painting Sage has been teaching some other people from work how to play Warmachine. So I headed around to watch the match and sip my cappuccino. Mmmm…delicious.

Well, that’s all for today it appears!! Love you all ~

~ El

Photos, Photos la la la

Anyone remember that song? Onions, onions lalala, Onions, oniona da da da – doo doop do do doop doo do.

Yeeaaaaaa….anyway.

Ok, so as I said in my last post, tried to get some nicer photos of my (almost) finished Malifaux crew so far.
I say ‘almost’ because le tiger still needs some grass, and everyone’s getting some tufts.

Firstly, Miranda…

As a side note, Wyrd have changed her design to now wear an executioner type mask and have cheerleader pigtails. I feel this Miranda would not be impressed with pigtails…

And then my Tiny-Dragon!!

I’m so happy with how his mouth turned out, despite using the wrong colours for it.

And little le Tiger.

Still not really happy with the heads, they don’t stand out enough. But I honestly have no idea how to fix them.

Finalllllllyyyy, a progress shot of Marcus.

Why everyone else get to be semi-pretty, but when it comes to me – I have to look like this, eh?

His clothes are now getting a coat!! Woowoo. The colours of his clothes are thankfully taking the attention away from his skin. *ehem*

Oh, as a side note, was wandering around the Wyrd forums (as I do) when I saw this on my profile.

(For non-Wyrd fans, that name is the creator of the company/games).

Dunno why this made me happy, I guess it was more ‘oooooh, what did I say that made him look at my profile??’ *beam beam beam*.
Buuuut, knowing my luck, it was a miss click when he was trying to select ‘Mark this user as a derp’ or something, haha.

~ Love from, Ellison

XBox One – Still Sucks

I don’t care about any of Microsoft’s recent backflips. They didn’t stick the landing on this at all, 1/10 for effort.

Backlight

I finally got my back-lit keyboard through (now keep in mind this is a cruddy $15 that I got until my expensive one comes into the shops) – but either way I figured the best way to test it out would be to write a blog post!

So far, so good. Not a bad $15 in all honesty.

Still can’t wait for my Logitech but hey – still not bad.

Wetting Myself With Excitement

I think I just peed a little in anticipation. DAAAAYUM. That’s so good.