What’s the best way for a middle aged man to spend his days? Obviously it’s the Replay Expo!
The expo took place on the 5th and 6th of November, in Norbreck Castle (Blackpool, England) and is probably the biggest migration of old men reliving their childhood, only this time you’re the one kicking people out of the way! Yay kicking.
The expo started at 10AM and was pretty easy to find, we marched in a big queue with the smell of old wood and machines in the air. And the queue is quickly shifted into the main area, to the left arcade machines only one was pay to play which was because they couldn’t rig it to be free. They did stock it with coins but it became full. Quite a few arcade machines were there, some from Japan like Bishi Bashi, and some closer to home like Smash TV
Everything from Bishi Bashi to Street Fighter 2 to Pac-Man (Which was held for a long, long time.)
Generally speaking people gave other people turns on the game but Pac-Man was used by one person all day on the first day and half of the day on the second. But there was still plenty of time to play it oddly enough due to the early start and late finish. And in all fairness he didn’t actually lose during his playtime he just seemed to get bored. I was informed by staff he was actually a world champion point holder on it and wanted people to challenge him, but the sign stating that had been lost so people didn’t actually know.
There was a great selection of games on the arcade machines alone, and some were even on sale at bargain prices, but the real moment of glee is when you turn around to see rows of rows of old retro consoles, everything from the well known, like NES’ and Ataris, to weird obscure things I even saw someone with a videopac shirt on, I didn’t see a videopac console though, but they’re pretty awful anyway.
They ran a few talks which we didn’t bother attending. However we walked past the cosplay one, it was very clear that the speakers were not official delegates and were only there because no one actually likes cosplay other than attention seeking teenagers, who pounce around as wolves and sing in high pitch fake Japanese accents. Everyone sat listening seemed very disengaged.
However, a few of the fans there said that the other speeches were great. Including chats about retro game keeping maintenance.
As my few frequent readers will know I like to do events in separate days after giving some background, so here’s Day 1:
We emerged in the Replay expo the dimmed lights and heavy beats of the music made the floor feel as though it was alive, there was games all over, not just retro a few new consoles like PS3s and Xbox 360s, but mostly retro.
We went straight to “console passion” a retro gaming stand they had set up, some of the greatest bargains were there. We nabbed Resident Evil 3 and a Charmander plushie.
Almost instantly it was swarmed with people grabbing games like Parasite Eve, Monkey Island and Mario Kart 64.
You could see a direct split between people who knew what they wanted, either for ebay or for a private collection and the people who just thought “Cool video games, they’re all old?” y’know the kind of people that walk around with trousers down their arse and drink monster.
Anyway, after a little bit of thought we went to the amiga CD-32 something that I had never seen outside of my grandparent’s house until now, I had been itching to play Cannon Fodder but it wasn’t there, they had some games I had never played. “Which ones?” I hear you cry? Buggered if I know.
We then went to play on the dreamcast, a quick blast on Sonic Adventure, then we tried out Power Stone, a fighting game that’s a bit like Soul blade/ soul edge/ soul calibur, but you have to collect stones to power up your character. Hence the name “Power stone”
We relived our childhood, we also had a little try at a charity lucky dip and won some funky things:
Around 10 PS1 games, a couple of Sega Saturn games, a gameboy game, and various other bits and bobs including a commodore 64 game!
We then spent several hours walking around the retro heaven playing just about anything.
Day two! Huzzah! We went right for the arcade machines today, everything from Bishi Bashi to Mr.Driller, we spent hours on these because there were so many, and eventually made our way down to the Vectrex table and played some asteroids.
We played bomberman on four player, Japanese Star Wars A new hope which had a Darth Vader that turned into a scorpion? The whole place had so many games that I can’t even remember some of them! The time flew by and the day was great. We didn’t realise how quickly time would fly
What else was there?
As well as a lot of retro games, they had a pinball alley, a photo shoot/modelling area, various vendors, a kick energy booth giving away pad covers and samples (It just tastes like any energy drink) and steel series who had slags showcasing their headsets.
The event was great fun, and we really can’t wait to go back.
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