PlayExpo 2012 - Manchester

Play Expo took place at Event City in Manchester last weekend (13-14th October) and was divided up into four areas; re.play, now.play, pro.play and cos.play. Although all areas were worthy in their own right it was of course the re.play area that I had travelled all the way up from London to embrace.

Queues outside Event City on opening day stretched back miles and were easily in their thousands as gamers from all over the country descended en-mass on Manchester for the gaming event of the year.

RePlay as the event was formally known when in Blackpool had grown exponentially over the years culminating in this weekends extravaganza for gamers which now combined fours shows in one, now.play & pro.play provided modern gaming and with the growing (but weird) cos.play section roleplaying was also covered. Together these areas now formed the biggest single expo event ever seen in gaming terms on these fair shores.

After what seemed like an eternity to get in through the solitary opened door at the entrance the thousands in their masses (myself included) finally were let of the leash once inside and the biggest gamfest was on!

Replay Events in conjunction with JammaPlus had done a tremendous job in accumulating over 70 plus fully operational arcade video cabinets and an equally large and impressive Pinball Arena which together created the biggest arcade seen in years. The lights and sounds drew me in like a magnet to the retro arcade and everything else around paled into complete insignificance.

Once in the inner sanctum of the arcade it was time to get down to some real business. There were a vast amount of games on display ranging all the way through from ageing greats like Defender, Donkey Kong and Galaxian right up to mid ’80's and early '90's units all pretty much in pristine or near good condition. If I had one gripe it would be that for the purists among us some of the games were in bastardised cabinets many being UniGame cabinets whereas to have seen Gorf and Mr Do for example in their original glorious cabs would have been….well glorious! but hey I'm splitting hairs, it was still great.

The list of games on display read like a 'Who's Who' of Classic Video games, here are a few (but by no means exhaustive list) of games I was able to play:

Out-Run, Centipede, Robotron2084, Defender, Galaxian, Pacman, Space Invaders, Frogger, Astro Blaster, Cruisin World, Commando, Mr Do, Space Panic, Hyper Sports, Track & Field, Star Wars, Donkey Kong, Stargate, Star Wars Trilogy, Millipede, Cosmic Alien, Juno First, Space Harrier, Chase H.Q, Sega Rally, After Burner, Super Chase, Super Hang-On, Indy 500 etc, etc.

I posted a nearly respectable 270,540 on Robotron2084 just to see it crushed by the very next player who clocked out somewhere around the 2 million mark. Just to think I had nearly offered him a game of doubles! Lucky escape for me!

With all the units set to FREEPLAY it was hard to know what to play next. I revisited my love affair with Galaxians before leaving them at the altar to have a steamy session with the next door Centipede. Donkey Kong in the mean time reminded me of how rock-hard the game really had been back in the day and that catchy tune from Frogger resonated between my lug-holes all day as it had once done many moons ago.

I wrestled with the controls of Pacman clocking a very decent score before once again being usurped by a clear pro who set up his Samsung Smartphone on a gorilla type tripod which clung to the cabinet banner as he filmed his High-Score attempt for prosterity.

With now bleeding ears from the retro arcade it was time to investigate the other many retro consoles and computers that literally took up half the hall. Impressive as the arcade was RePlay had outdone themselves with this display.

You could literally trace your own computing history all the way back to the late 70's and early 80's with such classics as the Commodore PET with built in green monitor display, ZX80's, ZX81's, ZX Spectrums, VIC 20's, Commodore 64's, Amiga's, BBC Micro's and more to name but a few.

All the vintage computers were playable with preloaded programmes and some even had their own original floppy disks next to them ready and waiting to be inserted and played. Plenty of home-brew stuff lay littered around and SD Memory Cards in bolt on ad-hoc capacities added to an all round impressive collection of games and hardware.

Not to be outdone the consoles were equally well represented at the show with an impressive array of among other stars: Binatone's seminal pong clone, several Atari 2600's, a ColecoVison, Atari ST's, 5200's, Master Systems, NES's, Mega-Drives, several SNES running linked-play games of Mario-Kart, Dreamcast's, Saturn's and even the odd PlayStation 1 and 2's. You really were spoilt for choice. In the end I settled for several 2-Player games on the NEO-GEO having a right good tear-up on Metal Slug 3.

I played straight through for 9 hours solid at the show with only a 20 minute break for a beer and a burger throughout the day. By the end of the day it was nearly 9pm before all bloodshot and bleary eyed we made for the exit. We returned again on the Sunday to blast some more aliens, escape some more mazes and save the earth once more.

This being my first Expo for years I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed PlayExpo and feel that it was possibly one of, if not the best, Classic Gaming Expo that I have ever attended in all my gaming years. Big congrats must go out to Replay for staging such a great and comprehensive event. But now of course everyone will be looking at them to put on an even better show next year following the unanimous success of this years….so no pressure lads!