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R3play Expo - Blackpool 6/7 Nov 2010 - Reviews and comments!
TonyHoyle:
I was blown away.. I've been to a few of these events that have turned out to be $bigcompany showing off something and a few hundred mobile phone sellers pretending they're 'down with the geeks'. This was nothing like that.. Ended up spending all day :p The 40 player 1942 was great fun.
It took me under 2 minutes to get a kit from turnarcades*.. went in, saw what the machines looked like 'for real' then decided on the spot it wasn't worth waiting (not to mention the saving in postage & a nice discount). Of course now I've got a pile of wood and little idea what to do next :p
* With no instructions!
LeedsFan:
What a brilliant event! Thoroughly enjoyed both days. :applaud:
Just about every home micro from the 80s was there (I didn't see a Jupiter Ace though :P). About an equal number of JP cabs and woodies. The only shame was that the Robotron cabinet wasn't working as it had got damaged in transit to the show. But other classics were there like Battlezone, Star Wars, DK, and also Jon Stoodley's beautifully restored Pacman sat alongside Tony Temple's Missile Command. (Though I did hear some bearded American guy complaining about trackball settings :P)
The computer museum section was interesting and the geek in me even had me working on their challenge to program the BBC micro to print out the first 20 prime numbers in the least lines of code. That took me 30 mins of head scratching but I managed it in eight lines. Then it was back to the games.....
Turnarcades and Surface Tension both had a couple of top quality cabs on display. It's not until you see these cabs in the "flesh" that you really appreciate the tight attention to detail in them.
There were loads of competitions going on. I got to the quarter finals of the Sensible Soccer tournament but lost on penalties :hissy:
I won a couple of PC games on the tombola stands but, best of all..... I won the King of Kong competition that Craig ran on Turnarcades stand to win a lovely bartop kit. ;D So that's gonna be dedicated to the horizontal games seeing as my DK bartop covers the verts.
There was modern stuff there too of course but the balance was right.
The organisers aren't committing to another date next year but I'm sure they'd agree it was a total success. I really hope it becomes something regular.
I got loads of pics and I'll upload some later.
LeedsFan:
As promised here are some pics :D
Chuckie Egg yeaaaaaaah!!!! I spent many weeks playing the Spectrum version of this classic back in the day. :)
Now this is cool! :cheers: Remember the April Fool joke played on Thinkgeek.com for the iCade? Well someone has put the idea into production! http://www.freekade.co.uk/
Like a typical Englishman I reached the quarter-final stage only to choke on penalties. :cry:
My DK bartop was received quite well. But unfortunately 10 hours of constant use proved too much as it expired right at the end of the first day. Need to pull the guts out to find out which component died on me. :angry:
I can't remember this guys name but he is a really good DK player. I set up an empty hi-score file for this event on my DK bartop, and it's a good job I did because this guy scored over 360K on my machine which I can't get anywhere near to as yet. We discussed tips on the game and it was good to meet someone who loved DK as much as I do.
Shame the Robotron wasn't working :-\ Those original Wico's felt awesome though. The Defender was working later on but the joystick was quite stiff to use which made the game much more hard to play. But I'm crap at it anyway. ;)
Loved playing on this original Frogger cab. The joystick was beautifully responsive for the delicate control needed. I posted highest scores on each day for this game. :blah: :blah:
Aren't Japanese cabinets simply AWESOME!!! So comfy to sit and play at these machines. Got talking to a guy about them and apparently the Egret II cab has a rotating mechanism for the monitor where you just lift the bezel and pull/turn the monitor with one hand. I have a future project lined up now that involves one of these cabs, a PC, J-Pac and an ArcadeVGA! :drool
Cosplay!
surface tension:
This was an amazing show as everyone has already said. I wish I'd had the time to go and play on the Commodores and Amstrads, plus all the geat multiplayer stuff that was going on on-stage.
Good to see you made it home LeedsFan. Some great photos. I'll put a few up over the next few days.
It was also good to put some faces to names... Craig, LeedsFan and Franco. Plus new member Xiondz, doing some research for building up his new cab.
Iain Lee was great too. He was totally at home there and very friendly.
Dave and his team did an absolutely fantastic job. I'll be giving him a call once he's finished and caught up on the lost sleep.
angrym0b:
I had a great time at the weekend. Played a pile of games that I had forgotten existed! A friend and I played Moonstone on the Amiga for about 2 hours on Sunday :P Was great to see what the Turnarcade cabs looked like finished (mine is ready to collect!). The surface tension tables are super sexy too.
I really hope they run something like this again as I'll definitely be attending :)