This month Matthew brought his XBOX 360 and using the SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection ran a variety of games including our Game of the Month – Streets of Rage (SMD). As part of our theme Paul had an Atari 2600 Jnr., Angela and Robert had an Atari 800XL with an attached cassette player – with the help of an adaptor Robert played audio files on a laptop which were loaded into the Atari 800XL as if a cassette was actually inserted. G had a Japanese MegaDrive and an Australian MegaDrive II and later showed us how Streets Of Rage and Streets Of Rage II turned into Bare Knuckle and Bare Knuckle II when put into a Japanese MegaDrive. I brought along a SNES running the Caravan Mode High Score Challenge – Hector ’87 as part of the Caravan Shooting Collection which Paul won with 60500 – his second win in a row ! I also had a MegaDrive with a Streets Of Rage cart and an Atari XE GS which – amongst other things – ran Robotron: 2084 emulating the arcade with one controller controlling movement and and the second controller controlling the shooting – allowing you to move in one direction and shoot in another – took a lot getting used to. William brought a Neo Geo Mini with two controllers that played various games through the night. I brought my mini also as part of Show and Tell but William had already stolen my thunder.
During announcements we discussed retro news and the possibility of us all going on a road trip to Japan ! Now I have to investigate further. We had out $5 Pickup Challenge – the best retro item you can find for up to $5. The contenders were – Skye with Futurama (PS2) MetaCritic rating of 59%, new comer Adam with Agro Soar (GB) GameFAQs rating 1.96/5 39%, Angela had a Puzzle Fighter variant which we were unsure of the legitimacy of, Paul had a boxed Game Boy Four Player Adapter, I had a boxed Ms. PacMan for the Game Gear which I bought at the October Go Game Market but the winner was Tim with two different Shanghai releases for the PC which he had acquired whilst working at a Salvo Store. We voted on the December Game of the Month and came up with Pac-Attack (SNES).