The invite stated: “We are looking for technology based games, toys & Contests. Think any games or toys using new or old technology to run, including radio controlled toys and skill based games. Pacman and flight simulators, battery operated board games. Also looking for great radio contest stories.“

Mal VK2TMF’s Display

80s Taito Cocktail Cabinet arcade machine. When I got the game, it didn’t have a game board. I purchased a 64 in one board to get it running.  The wiring harness was in poor condition as were the buttons. The harness was replaced, and new microswitches were fitted. I have the original CRT, but it adds significant weight to the system. It currently has an old LCD monitor which is a lot lighter and brighter.

There is an active community and plenty of modern parts available to keep these old machines going. e.g. https://www.austinamusements.com.au/ Some mechanical parts are harder to find such as coin mechanisms. It also has a raspberry pi running a MAME emulator with 1000+ games which needs some attention to get going again due to the .button mapping is getting corrupted.

The exterior is in near original condition, with the addition of 2 subtle pinball flipper buttons.
Unfortunately the glass is quite scratched. Members recommended various products including ‘liquid glass’.

Members enjoyed playing some games 2 up after the event.

Tommy VK2AHA & Sam … very serious game!
Members also played Galaga which was a popular game back in the 80s.

Carmel VK2NO’s Display

This is a concept I designed and created back in 1990. It started while I was teaching Origami in several schools (they paid me $100/hr). Some teachers at Ku-Ring-Gai High were talking about vocational training and building job-seeking skills for older kids who needed a job after school, and uni students seeking work to pay for studies. I decided a job-hunt board game could help and they encouraged me to develop something. 

So I designed and created a concept demo from scratch called Get The Job, after some name changing during development. The result is a complete working board game with home-built electronic die plus mockup wax model briefcase pieces, cards and instructions on how to play. I was also going to incorporate buttons at each end with ribbon cables sandwiched between the board to a central LED membrane display, if someone became interested.

A friend suggested an agent I could meet with to see if any game board maker et al would be interested, though didn’t expect much interest as the market was competitive and the idea somewhat niche.

Took a punt and went to the agent anyway, and while there met Simon Townsend who was peddling his own game, Townsend Towers, about the first player to build the tallest tower with lego-like blocks without falling down. I think that idea fell flat, so to speak. 

The agent confirmed that it’s very hard to sell board games these days (and it was still pre internet) but he’d ask around. A few months later he reached out to say someone was interested in manufacturing a short run of my game. I received a down payment advance of $1000 after the game was sold to an American company, Oasis, in Utah. Crazy. They’d have to change all the Australian-based references. 

Five years passed and the assumption was that the game must have flopped and then been overlooked, until the agent phoned to say the makers sent my concept back and that there’s a $16,100 Wells Fargo check waiting for me (of which he took 20%).

To this day have not seen the final manufactured result, only to hear it had completely changed, and the game must have then been dropped for new stuff as there were no further royalties. Can’t imagine how much the tooling costs would have been but they must have leveraged enough to have sold a few.

Had always intended it to be a short run educational game. Perhaps the Mormon students in Salt Lake City got bored trying to skill up just to get door-knocking jobs 🙂 hi.

Brian VK2AXC’s Display

Portable TV?!? Classic games were designed for the specific scanline structure of CRTs. These TVs naturally blend pixels, softening blocky graphics and creating a more polished look than the sharp, sometimes chaotic image produced by upscaling on flat screens. The Samsung CR5A provides a unique portable CRT device solution for gamers CRT motion is incredibly clear, with little to no motion blur.

As always, very well attended!

The winners …

  • For display – Carmel VK2NO
  • For story – Mal VK2TMF
Richard and Glenn