I was frozen solid as I rolled up at the aptly named 'Winter Gardens' on the seafront at Margate ready for the game extravaganza that was GEEK 2013.

Thousands of gamers descended on this old victorian seaside town in Kent for the annual expo, myself included. Billed as 'A celebration of video gaming, 'Past Present and Future', with thousands of games to play on hundreds of consoles I just had to make the trip.

Driving down through a blizzard of hail and snow I was glad that this particular hobby of mine was at least an indoors one; as today was definitely a day to be in a dark and warm environment, hidden away from all the elements. GEEK 2013 fitted the bill perfectly.

The Winter Gardens are a throw back to a by-gone age of golden seaside entertainment and to be honest have seen better days, but hey we are here to talk about the games right not the surrounds, so lets get on with it.

First up as promised there were hundreds of different consoles out on display provided by the now established Replay Events team. You could play on (and in no particular order) NES, Master System, Atari 2600, MegaDrive, Amiga's, Commodore 64's, NeoGeo, SNES, Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, PC Engine, SUPER Graphix etc, etc. The consoles were indeed well represented. I dabbled in a bit of Pitfall on the 2600 and a bout of DropZone on the Commodore 64 not to mention a smidgen of Manic Miner on the old Spectrum. So the consoles were a massive hit.

But the much vaunted arcade section really was a bit of a let down to be honest, although I had been spoilt last year by the amazing set up at Play Expo I still felt slightly cheated somewhat down here in Kent. First-up there were only about a dozen or so cabs and not all of them were working, those that were - again - were not in their original cabinets but generic cabs instead, (a constant bug-bear of mine), see previous trip report! I appreciate these games are getting really old by now but to play a game in a sub-standard cabinet with no bezel artwork and no original dashboard configuration can be a major let down in the nostalgia stakes for the purists like myself.

So could do better was my general feeling in this department, that aside though, it was great to play Donkey Kong Jnr again and to speed around the great racetrack on Virtua Racing, pumping the old throttle pedal like mad even if I was still totally as useless as I always had been on the game!

Super Space Invaders 91 also got a hammering as the chance at free-to-play continues on a game that used to suck my life-savings literally out of my pocket like they were going out of fashion was just way too good an opportunity to turn down additionally I got a few rounds off on Operation Thunderbolt to boot. So all was not totally lost on the arcade front but more variety would have been good. Notable absences were Defender, Galaxian, Asteroids, Robotron, Frogger etc.

Never-the-less my attention was now drawn over to the superior collection of consoles on display and especially the imported sofas and comfy chairs which all looked circa early 1990's to me (whether intentional or not) which added a real authenticity to the home consoles environment and I even caught sight of some lads tucking into a takeaway pizza and beers whilst playing a 4-up game on one of the sofas. Real nostalgic gaming stuff going on there.

On a different note indie developers where also well represented in some of the adjacent halls with demos of new iOS and Android app's which of course played some great revamps of various classic retro games etc all on display and in demo mode to tamper with.

There were ample opportunities to add to your retro collections too at home as old systems were well represented by traders with dozens and dozens of old carts and consoles for sale on various stands throughout the venue. The prices were a tad high though I felt for the carts but surprisingly the consoles themselves were reasonably priced with GameCubes and N64's going for between £15-£25.

An interesting stand I came across was 'Bedrooms to Billions' the crowd sourced project to get a documentary film off the ground charting the part that the UK games industry played out in the early days of the then fledgling global games industry. The film follows the fortunes of the listings kings of the day tapping away in their bedrooms coding some of the games that went on to be classics of the day like Manic Miner and Elite etc and the back stories of the programmers who wrote the games and how they faired over the subsequent years. A worthy and interesting project for anyone with an interest in the history of games and particularly those with a British slant. Check out their site here: http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com

I also attended a couple of talks one by the above team showing trailers from their upcoming film and another keynote entitled 'The History of Video Games in 10 Minutes' a highly entertaining and interestingly talk charting funnily enough the entire history of video games!

So what was my final impression of GEEK 2013? The event organisers tried hard to put on an event that I can see will only grow and grow over time. Sort out the arcade and pinball sections though and up the ante on the talks plus bring in a few more merchandise stalls and the event will snowball of it's own accord. It's not as big and as brash as Play Expo but is a good little event in it's own right. So put it in your Retro Gaming diary and if you're based or down in the south east of the country next year pay it a visit you'll probably enjoy it.

And as a final sign-off may I remind you all one more time of the fact that; 'Good games never really die, they just live on in a different format!'