Neon-lit retro arcade cabinets glowing in a dark room

Fitzroy · Melbourne · Since 1967 in spirit

Turn on, tune in, level up.

LunarFireEmpire is a game blog spun from a Fitzroy loft — long-form reviews, retro archaeology and honest verdicts, served with a swirl of colour and no corporate press-release nonsense.

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The long strange trip

A timeline of the empire

2014 — The loft experiment

Three friends and a shoebox of consoles started posting reviews from a Rose Street loft above a record shop. First post: a 4,000-word love letter to point-and-click adventures.

2018 — Retro archaeology series

We launched our monthly deep-dive into forgotten cartridges, digitising Australian-made titles the big archives ignored. Readership crossed 90,000 a month.

2021 — The listener community

Members-only threads, a weekly recap podcast and community game nights at a Fitzroy bar turned the blog into a proper scene rather than a comment section.

Today — Independent & ad-light

Reader-funded, fiercely independent, and still publishing from the same postcode. No sponsored scores, no review embarg o games we can't be honest about.

Then & now

Before & after remasters

Drag your eyes across our restoration project — original captures on the left, our community-run remaster passes on the right.

Original pixelated game screenshotBefore
Remastered high-resolution game screenshotAfter

Outback Rally '96 — colour-corrected and upscaled by our restoration crew.

Original low-resolution game menuBefore
Restored crisp game menuAfter

Neon Harbour — interface fonts redrawn and CRT scanlines removed for archival.

What lands in your feed

The regular columns

Reader postcards

Voices from the empire

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Say hello

Pitch us, question us, join us

Got a tip, a forgotten cartridge, or a pitch for a deep-dive? The loft door is always open — drop a line and we usually reply within two business days.