Games – mercuryvapour.co.uk

UPDATE: December 2025 Well, I’ve decided I’m pretty much lukewarm to this below. Assuming you’re happy with a bit of Linuxy stuff and you’re happy to provide your own ROM image, you can do something much better, cheaper and infinitely more useable with a Raspberry Pi and a copy of PiMiga). Caveat: Do your own research.

I’m typing this, and I can hardly contain my excitement except knowing about it for months. Yes, the world is about to be introduced to ‘The A1200’. the follow-up to “The A500” Retro gaming… thing.

Many of you know that I;m a fan of the Commodore Amiga. The whole existence of this post should tell you that. I’m even typing this on an Amiga branded keyboard. Instead of going into great detail, I’ll just link back to my old posts, of which there are several. If you want to read them again, then knock yourself out.

My love affair with the Amiga started in Xmas 1993 when Santa somehow managed to get one down our tiny little chimney. It survived my teenage years, and even got upgraded with a hard drive and memory expansion. It became the most important Xmas present I ever received. I even did some programming, with some of my stuff even surviving on Aminet to this day.

While the PC clearly became my machine of choice growing up through the years, and even providing technical support for some really rather major game companies, the Amiga really never left my mind. even managing to get it hooked up and talking to my PC way back in 2001..

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the Xmas post above, my Amiga is faulty. It’ll either crash on boot up with a ROM error (red screen) and/or a corrupted screen. It’s probably beyond saving.

Fast forward to 2021. I rescued my Amiga hard drive (Part 1) (Part 2) and I even went on to buy a Greaseweazle to rescue hundreds of floppy disks.

In 2022, I bought The A500. My main thought was, back in the day, that while it had everything else spot-on, the keyboard being just a single block of plastic and merely there for show, seemed a bit of an annoyance. Sure, you could stick a PC keyboard up it, and , but it was always just another thing that needed to be plugged in.. And, while it’s actually here on my desk, I don’t use it that often.

Over the recent years, there’s been a resurgence in full-size devices. I have a “The Spectrum” with a fully working keyboard, which I love, and a “The C64”. I’ve yet to even unbox that, despite having it for about 5 months. Bloody real-life getting in the way.

Next in the line, and the whole point of this post is… The A1200! yes, a full sized A1200, with working keyboard. Preorders for it start on November 10th, and although the price tag is going to be nearer £200 than I’d actually like, to be able to just use an Amiga straight out of the box without having to fiddle around with external keyboards will probably bring a tear to my nostalgic eye.

Now, with this not even reaching preorder stage, I can’t tell you a lot about it, certainly nothing that has already been said, but here’s what I think is going to happen.

The innards. It’s going to be the same, or as near as matters, to the ‘The A500’. An ARM based emulation board, everything spun onto one chip. The previous machine did emulate the Amiga A1200, so I can’t see the hardware needing to be too different.

ROMs. No, not talking about games, but the actual system ROM. I can’t remember if ‘The A500’ had stock Amiga ROMs or if they were modified in any way, due to copyright/licensing. I know ‘The Spectrum’ has a custom ROM, and while 99% perfect, some games misbehave unless you have the original Sinclair ROMs available.

It’s going to be built as a retro gaming accessory, so some of the things I’d like to see are probably out of the question. Personally, a real-time clock and the ability to access hard drive images would be a dream, but probably beyond the scope of something that’s going to be eventually sold in toy shops.

As I mentioned, I’ll be preordering, then following the progress closely. I’m sure every retro gaming site on the planet comes out with the news before I will, but I’m sure it’ll give me something to type about.

For those interested, or wondering, yes, I have typed the King’s Lynn trip, but due to real life getting in the way over the last few months, I’ve never really finished it to the standard that I liked. I may return to it some day, but i also want to start typing about other stuff again. I’ve got a while stack of unsigned music I’d like to also reply to the ones I’ve featured who got back to me, and I never replied…

Life. Tsk.

How do you get 100 Pikachus on a bus? Pokemon.

And, if you haven’t heard that joke before, you’ve been under a rock for the past 15 years, or you’ve not sat next to me for any period of time recently, because every time someone comes out with a Pokemon Go comment, I come out with that belter of a joke. And by “Belter”, I mean that I should be belted hard across the face. With a chair.

But it still gets a laugh from somebody. Sigh.

I know, I’m getting old, my knees are hurting from jumping on and off of these bandwagons, but this is one that I couldn’t pass, even though it’s possibly the “saddest” I’ve ever even got partially involved in.

Pokemon started off as a cash-in for Nintendo. A card game, highly successful console game, and of course, a long running cartoon. I personally paid absolutely no interest in any of these, so I had no idea what the hell Pokemon go was supposed to be.

So, what’s the premise of the game? Well, if you don’t know by now, you really should have stayed under that rock you’ve just crawled out from. You play the game on your phone. It starts off by having a street map of where you’re currently stood, and you walk around the area. Literally, walk. With your own two feet. Every so often, your phone will vibrate, and in the local vacinity, is a “pokemon” (short for pocket monster in case anyone’s still actually wondering), you click on the little monster, and it’ll appear on your phone screen, with whatever your camera is pointing at, as the background, so it looks like the pokemon is there in front of you. Obviously, when you move your phone, the pokemon moves with it, and you have to flick pokeballs to catch it. Sometimes, some pokemon are very common, and you’ll get sick of seeing them. They’re very easy to catch. Others are larger, and will run around, causing you to turn your phone 360 degrees, chasing after it, and often meaning you’ll miss with a pokeball and lose it, and some will break out, meaning you have to throw again to catch it

With me so far? No? That’s OK, neither am I, but I shall persevere.

The crafty thing is….. you only have so many pokeballs! and you have to earn more (along with other collectables) by visiting Pokestops. These are actual real life locations, usually landmarks, meaning if you want to actually get anywhere in the game, you have to get off your fat arse and get them. You can add “lures” to these real life locations, which means more imaginary pokemon visit there… and therefore more actual real life people who also play the game. And it works.

Some of you may remember in the Youtube video I posted a couple of months ago, where me and Chris went past “Jimmy’s Green”. I laughed because I thought it couldn’t possibly be a land mark. Well, here it is, swarming with Pokemon Go players…

I have a feeling this will be the same for areas up and down the country.

Here’s a couple of screenshots tro try and illustrate what it’s all about… This is me, walking across the street, and this little thing pops up in front of me…..

… I have to flick the red ball towards it. If I hit it. I’ll capture it, and get points towards levelling up. The more you level up, the more you can capture easily, I presume.

And here’s a wild Rattata I caught whilst sitting on the toilet. I could get him arrested for watching me like that.

And where would I be without the obligatory “Playing the game whilst pissed” photo…

It’s one in the morning, As you can see, the bloody thing was to the left of me, as I was too busy trying to take the screenshot whilst walking after several pints that it had bounced out of view. I wasted so many pokeballs trying to catch that fecker, but a Hartlepudlian never gives up…

Questions? You’ll have a few. But then again, too few to mention. So I’ll mention them for you.

“So, is there any point to the game?” Yes. You have to catch all of them. I think there are something like 136, and some are much rarer than others. Expect to do a lot of travelling if you’re going to attempt this.

“Aren’t you too old to be playing this”? Yes, and no

Yes, as in, I sort-of secretly play it. Obviously, you sort of have to wave your phone around flicking the screen at certain intervals, so I sort of do it in secret. I’ll load the app up when no-one’s around. I certainly wouldn’t go and hunt down a popular pokestop and join a group of people playing it. No, as in you’re never too old to have a bit of a walk, and if it adds to the “point” of the walk, I can’t see any harm in it. Remember, there’s no upper age limit on games (only perceived upper limits), and if I want to play it, I will. Though now that I’ve written this blog, I’ll probably never play it again.

“Where are the best pokestops in Hartlepool?” There’s loads in the town centre, as you’d expect. There’s quite a few on the Marina, especially around the lock gates (watch where you’re walking!), apparently, there’s 11 in Ward Jackson Park, and a load on the Headland.

Well, I think that covers most things. Comment if you have any other questions. I’m going for a Weedle in next door’s hedge.

Category: Games

The NEW A1200!

Obligatory “Pokemon Go” blog post