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ejagfest 2018

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The European Atari Jaguar Festival, “ejagfest” in short, took place on November 3rd and 4th 2018 in Korschenbroich (between Düsseldorf and Mönchengladbach), Germany. We celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Atari Jaguar this year which has been released in 1993 in the USA.

The European Atari Jaguar Festival is a noncommercial annual festival for all Atari and retro gaming fans from all over Europe. It was established in year 2000 and the focus of attention is on Atari and all systems of the cult lable. But we don’t want to miss other retro-systems, as well. The more exotic, the better. The motto is: Bring your favorite retro console and have fun!

All of you who would like to play again on systems like the Jaguar, Lynx, VCS 2600, 5200, 7800 or on a trusty home-computer of the 70s, 80s or 90s, this is the right place.

Highlights of this year:

  • TXG_MNX:
    • Showed a prototype of the Jaguar “Voice Modem”. The modem was ment for online matches in games like Ultra Vortek, but was never released by Atari.
    • A Panther Dev-Kit. The Panther was a planned but never released 32-Bit Console from Atari. It was cancelled in favor of the Jaguar.
    • Showed his Jaguar Kiosk. Atari used them to show the Jaguar at trade fairs and in shopping malls in the USA. It is very rare to find in Europe.
    • As a surprise he brought an Area 51 / Maximum Force Arcade cabinet made by Atari Games. This machine uses a Jaguar Arcade Board, the CoJag.
  • Jasper van Turnhout:
    • Showed and sold his new Atari Lynx game Wyvern Tales.
    • Further he showed us an early version of an racing game for Lynx he is currently working on.
  • Karri Kaksonen:
    • Showed and sold his new Atari Lynx game “Shaken, not stirred”. The physical version is limited and exclusive at the ejagfest. It is actually made of bamboo.
    • Conducted a Shaken, not stirred High-Score Tournament (Lynx).
  • GazTee:
    • Showed some unreleased Jaguar home-brew games like Bexagon and Uwol.
    • Further the prototype of the 7800 Expansion Module (XM) was on display.
    • Conducted a Bexagon High-Score Tournament (Jaguar).
  • Linkovitch:
    • Showed the new Jaguar homebrew game “The Last Strike” from Team Reboot.
    • Further he sold the Opal Rotary Controller from gummy Bear.
    • And he showed a new version of star cats Jag Mind Mom Squad.
  • Nick Persijn:
    • He showed and sold his very good self made rotary controllers. This year he does this as well.
    • Further he sold the Duranik Native-Demo and the homebrew game Martian Attack from Tursi, AvP Alpha, Redline Racer Beta and all three known prototypes of  “Thea Realm Fighters” for Jaguar on cartridge.
    • And he showed some beta versions of games like Ultra Vortex and an ego shooter.
    • His Nuon Player with games like Tempest 3000 and Merlin Racing was there as well.
    • Further he showed a Vectrex with the Madtronix 3D Imager.
  • Marco Willig (McWill):
    • Showed again his VGA-Screen hardware mod for the Atari Lynx and the Sega Game Gear. It improves the screen quality a lot. Further it provides an VGA-Out to play Lynx on external VGA displays and TVs.
    • On Sunday he modified systems on side and gave a little modding workshop.
    • He showed his FPGA C65 with a new keyboard this year.
    • He also showed us an already working version of his in development Game Boy Color display Mod.
  • DragonBox Shop:
    • The Dragonbox shop presented the „MIST FPGA“ Computer. This device emulates the most known and unknown 8 and 16 BIT computer and consoles. Everyone was able to try this device out at the show.
    • Further he showed the Atari 5200 Ultimate SD Card Atarimax
  • Thomas Ilg:
    • The programmer of Anarcho Ride  for the ST showed the new ST conversion of FROGS. It uses the MIDI connection for multiplayer. The game is a port of the hombres game FROGS for C64 / C128 from Dr. Wuro.
    • In addition to that, he showed some special ejagfest level for his ST game “Laser Ball”.
  • Michael Lünzer:
    • Showed his Amiga CD32 collection including a FMV module and lots of software (Video-CDs, CD&G Musik CDs, Photo CDs) ect.
    • In addition to that he showed some new Intellivision games.
  • Atari Shop NL:
    • Sold retro-games and goodies for different retro systems.
    • Further Mr. Atari showed his Atari 800 games like “Lost in Space”.  
    • And his new Atari 2600 game “Give me my Pancake!” in the ejagfest edition.
    • This year he also showed his SIO-2-WiFi device with LiteDOS.
  • Retrospiel:
    • Showed and sold new homebrew games for different retro-systems.
  • Wolfsoft:
    • The well known retailer and hardware-mod specialist for retro consoles showed and sold a selection of goods from his store on Saturday.
  • SainT (RetroHQ):
    • Thanks to SainT. He sends us a Lynx SD card. Everyone was able to try this device out at the show. It can play lynx games, homebrews and prototypes via SD card on your Lynx.
  • Gameplan:
    • The publisher is well known for high quality books about retro video games and home computer in germany. They offered and showed some of the books at the ejagfest. Beside the german versions of “Spielkonsolen und Heimcomputer, Volkscomputer, Spielemacher and Joysticks” also the rare to get english version of the “Encyclopedia of Game Machines”.
  • Zone 3 gaming area:
    • Thanks to “Zone3” we presented you a gaming area with beanbags for gamers and full of retro-gaming highlights.
  •  OhrBit Youtube-Kanal:
    • The guys from the OhrBit Youtube-Channel visited us again.
    • They showed an AV-Mod for the Interton 4000 console
    • They also sold some retro-games.
  • Silvio Laute:
    • He showed some exhibits from his collection.
    • Like an Atari 5200 together with some games. The 5200 was never oficially released in europe and is a rare piece of hardware over here.
    • In addition to that, he showed us some Pong machines. 
  • Walter Lauer:
    • Showed some rare collectibles of his Lynx collection.
    • He further sold his Lynx stands and his Atari 7800 dust covers.
  • WWD:
    • They showed the Neo Geo Mini International with some accessories.
  • Videospielearchiv:
    • They showed some items of their collection like a Vertex and a Atari 2600 with some rare games.
  • Heiko Poppen (Nexgam):
    • Shows his Sharp X68000 and a selection of games for the system.
  • Donny Fillerup (Consolevariations):
    • Donny set up a N64 with 4 Controllers for a round of Smash Bros. We got some serious Multiplayer retro gaming fun.
    • Further he showed his rare Virtual Boy Kiosk with some rare games.
  • Tora Mod:
    • On Sunday she showed and sold some of her modded Game Boy Classic consoles.
    • Further she modded game boys and Lynx on site.
  • Björn Spruck:
    • Showed an installation of four Lynx systems which played a Midi soundtrack.
    • He further showed the Demo of the Lynx game Lacim’s Legacy from Enthusi
  • Piotr Kruzycki:
    • Send us a greetings Demo from the Silly Venture Atari Party in Poland which took place at the same weekend. It was shown on the ejagfest.
  • C64 Games.de:
    • Showed a selection of old C64 magazines.
  • ST-Computer Magazine:
    • The german ST-Computer magazine was there as well. They showed and sold their latest issue of the magazine.
    • Further they showed some of the back issues of the magazine.
  • Melted Moon:
    • One of the 8-Bit electro musicians of Melted Moon was there on Sunday. He showed and sold some CDs.
  • Digital Foundry:
    • John Linneman from the Youtube channel Digital Foundry visited the ejagfest again.

Further exhibitions: A transparent Jaguar case was on display. It’s a special edition, which was produced in spring of 2015 with the original Jaguar tooling. This limited run was sold to support the “RVGS” console. The system was later renamed to the “Colecovision Chameleon” and it was planned that they would also use this tooling. After some problems during the production of the console, the project was canceled. What is left, are this nice cases for the Jaguar. For the second time at an Atari event we showed you the HotRod. After Atari discontinued the Jaguar, they sold the tooling to a company who made dental cameras. The HotRod was the flagship product of them.

Competitions:

  • Checkered Flag european championship – 6 player network (Lynx)
  • Mario Kart Double Dash Cup (Gamecube)
  • Bexagon High-Score Tournament conducted by GazTee (Jaguar)
  • Shaken, not stirred High-Score Tournament conducted by Karri Kaksonen (Lynx)

This year was the event‘s 18th anniversary and it took place for the 4th time in the location in Kleinenbroich. Let’s celebrate Atari! You got two days of retro fun with lots of exhibitors, a tombola on Sunday and drinks like coffee and water over the weekend. 

Find the facebook event here (link)

Find pictures taken by Silvio Laute here (link)

Find your way to the ejagfest: Directions and Hotel recommendations (link)

Adress:

Hochstraße 26

41352 Korschenbroich

Source(s): ejagfest.de, Photo Silvio Laute

ejagfest 2018 group picture

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