Waking up at 4am on Friday, I jumped on the Megabus from Cardiff to Manchester armed with a bag filled with DS & PSP video games to maintain me firm. After six hours of travelling I arrived in sunny Manchester (albeit with a numb bum), strolling out of the bus station I immediately noticed a pawn brokers (not a part of the occasion!) with a load of video games within the window, dashing over I believed I used to be about to make my first purchases of the weekend…after I noticed the costs.

WOW (£43 for a tatty copy of Road Rash 3, anybody?). The value labels on the video games had been clearly previous and on the value they had been, I’m not stunned that they remained unsold!

Manchester Play Expo Blog – by @kingdomofcarts

Arriving onto the Event City grounds itself after a extremely nice, straight journey from town centre journey previous Old Trafford (observe to self: play extra Super Sidekicks 3) I initially by chance walked in to the mom / child expo held within the subsequent block. (The solely infants I wished to be surrounded by are the celebrities of Chuck Rock 2 and Jack the Nipper!)  heading into the Replay Events expo itself, the primary individual I noticed was the right begin to the weekend…Jeff Minter!

The occasion was bustling with like-minded folks and superb cosplay, you would see that some folks had spent hours on making their costumes. After watching some gameplay footage of his latest recreation ‘Minotaur Rescue’ I cursed myself for not bringing my copy of ‘Attack of the Mutant Camels’ for him to signal and vowed to recollect on the Blackpool Replay occasion in May.

Picking up a surprisingly decently priced pint of Aspall’s cider I did a circuit of the occasion to see what was on provide, getting side-tracked by the whole lot alongside the way in which, there was a tense Streetfighter match on the Red Bull stage and managed to catch an awesomely tight end by Zangief with a spinning powerbomb, simply the good transfer within the recreation! (Although I at all times select Ken, who might resist that blonde bob in SF2!)

It was a extremely shifting sight to see so many children wide-eyed with pleasure, taking part in Minecraft en masse, it nonetheless amazes me the extent of complexity that younger youngsters can weave out of those video games, admittedly I’m extra of a 7 days to die fan (a deeply flawed gem in my eyes) but it surely’s unimaginable to disregard the impression that Minecraft has had on a complete technology and rightly so. Next to the Minecraft followers there was some intense DOOM-ing occurring, (such a cool recreation even 23 years after launch) after which I noticed the shining beacon of house that was the gaming stalls.

Such an infinite election of strong gold on provide, the primary stall I approached was a charity stall specialising in Amstrad / Commodore /Spectrum cassettes and magazines which is one thing that’s particularly near my coronary heart.

The workers there have been superb and I bought into a extremely insightful dialog relating to how you can soup up the Amiga 1200 which will certainly be a future challenge for me, I ended up shopping for over fifty video games and a couple of dozen magazines from this stall and was rewarded with a free, mint copy of Winter Games, cut price! One of the issues I really like about video games from that period is how quintessentially ‘British’ the paintings is, one thing I must look into in additional depth because the cartoon-ish covers actually seize the enjoyable of the sport inside.

After taking part in Ridge Racer for half an hour in the neighborhood Zone, I seen that there was a high-score competitors occurring and it was going down on a newly launched indie model of Space Invaders on a Mega Drive, after making an attempt (and failing) to beat the excessive rating (on the time it was 10,500 however by the Sunday it was nicely over 12000, I bought to about 8500 and met my match!) I bought right into a dialog with the developer (Psychatic) about how the sport got here to be, it seems that originally, the developer started to create the sport as a method of illustrating how recreation improvement works to his youngsters but it surely become a fully-fledged recreation challenge. Now, I’ve at all times wished to personal a ‘new’ Mega Drive recreation and as I’d had a lot enjoyable making an attempt to beat the excessive rating, mixed with the truth that ‘Invasion’ additionally had a 2-player co-op mode and was solely made in a single run of 100 video games, I couldn’t miss this chance to seize one and I can’t wait to beat that elusive excessive rating!

Following this, I picked up a number of different PSP, PS2 and Sega Saturn video games (oddly, no mega Drive this time round which is uncommon for me) and listened to the Tomb Raider panel which had some nice questions being put to the builders and managed to catch a number of the TR music being blasted via a PA system in all it’s glory, one thing that I’ve no drawback with!

After a short dalliance with the packed arcade part, the place I kicked ass in Virtua Fighter and was reminded of how enjoyable and frantic Operation Thunderbolt is the day was coming to an finish and it was again to the lodge to have a better have a look at my gaming haul, have a number of whiskeys and prepare for spherical two.

I managed to reach earlier on the Sunday and after getting the compulsory cider, headed over to meet up with the blokes extra at Games You Loved,  as I used to be overlaying the occasion for them and had a press move.

They even gave me a few superior T-shirts which I instantly turned into! GYL had been as cool and educated as you’d count on, it was nice to lastly meet them in individual and put faces to names, following a fast interview (Coming Soon!), we chatted about the whole lot from Japanese wrestling video games to the Vectrex and past, superior guys and I actually hope we keep in contact.

Following this, I managed to catch Jon Hare sound-checking for his set later within the day and heard what was for me, one of many highlights of the weekend, an instrumental model of the ‘Boot Hill’ theme from Cannon Fodder, simply one in all my favorite items of gaming music, such an exquisite melancholic melody…in reality I’m going to take heed to it proper now.

After yet one more circuit of the occasion seeing and selecting up but extra superior stuff on the cassette stall, I entered a raffle for a Commodore 64 signed by, amongst others Rob Hubbard! Sadly although I used to be one ticket quantity away from the win : (

Overall the day was a hit and I’m positively wanting ahead to going again once more subsequent yr. What an superior weekend.

To end the weekend whereas ready for the megabus to reach I stumbled throughout an ‘aladdins cave’ of a retailer which had plenty of cool antiques and film memorabilia, hidden below one of many tables had been 3 copies of Crash journal for the Spectrum from the 80s they we’re priced at solely £1 every, what a cut price, I purchased these immediately.

What an superior technique to finish the day.

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