Features// The R3play Festival 2010

Norbreck Castle in Blackpool played host to the 2010 R3play event on a cold and wet weekend. During these two days a variety of video game consoles and computers from the past were available to play on and even buy in some cases. It wasn’t just the past that was explored either, for the present and a teensy bit of the future, care of Nintendo and Sony, were in attendance at this volunteer run show.

My journey started on a cold and very damp November morning. It was the weekend of the 6th/7th whereupon I travelled over 250 miles through the rain, wind and sleet just for the chance to take a glimpse at some 30-year-old video game hardware few people below the age of 25 could give a monkeys about. So, yes it was an arduous journey, but it was very much worth it!


The bulk of the show was located in a hall, with small rooms surrounding it that hosted vendors, developers and even a museum. The main hall was filled to the brim with a variety of retro kit that would melt the heart of even the most jaded of retro gaming enthusiasts.

I spent a great deal of time in all of these locations, with the most of it being on the PC Engine and Turbo Graphix (TG) machines as they were never released in Europe. So, I was curious as to what type of games they had. Yes, I know I can play many TG titles on Virtual Console via the Wii, and indeed I do that very thing myself, but it’s not quite the same as playing games on the original hardware. This is the main draw for events like R3play. At least that’s the case for me anyway.

Others came to buy items from vendors, participate in tournaments, enter raffles and attend talks given by British video game industry veterans. There was so much to distract the visiting punter yet little time to cover everything. I was quite shattered by the end of the weekend.

Twitter on Speccy
One of the most intriguing aspects of retro gaming scene is what people are doing with the hardware that has long since passed its perceived sell-by-date. The best example I saw of this was when I encountered a ZX Spectrum that was hooked up to a router via an Ethernet cable. Upon closer inspection the Spectrum in question was actually running a Twitter client, all be it a rather rudimentary one. I could scarcely believe it as I typed a message onto twitter using a computer that is older than many people who are reading this right now. The madness didn’t stop there either.

Amiga Quake
A large section of the show hall was dedicated to the Commodore Amiga, a long-since dead machine that had ceased to be supported over 12 years ago. Yet here there was a large selection of heavily modified Amigas all doing things their original designers would not have thought possible.


Created by the Ami-Bay Amiga fan support group, there were barely recognisable Amigas running four-player Quake matches over a LAN. Nothing any modern PC can’t handle I grant you, but to see an Amiga doing this was another matter entirely. What’s also amazing is that these machines ran throughout the weekend.


Another common sight at R3play were 8-bit computers hooked up to Compact Card readers. This enabled users to store the entire back catalogue of games for any given machine on a small card and load them instantly onto the computer, thus doing away with tape and floppy disk loading of old. I saw a Commodore 64 with a similar set-up and spent far too long trawling through the 10,000’s of games it had on offer at the push of a button.

Arcade Fires
Arcade cabinets also featured very heavily in the main hall units all available to play for free. Highlights for me were a working Battle Zone cabinet as well as Star Wars. What can I say? I’m a sucker for vector graphics games. Oh, and before you ask, yes there were many Vectrex machines running at the show. I didn’t actually play on any of them as I already own one!

There were also resellers showing off the custom-built cabinets that housed PCs all of which ran MAME arcade emulation software. A company by the name of Turn Arcades was taking orders for fully built units as well as basic kits for people to build their own arcade cabinets for their homes.

They looked very impressive and worked well throughout the weekend. After speaking to the company reps at length, they explained that the show for them had been a huge success as the number of orders they took was way above their expectations. This didn’t surprise me considering the how well the demo units did on showing off what they could offer.

On the less commercial side of things there were tournaments being held throughout the weekend. These varied from Super Street Fighter IV to Pong on Binatone consoles hooked up to 12” black and white TV’s.


One of the climaxes to a tournament had the developer of the game play the champion of the show. This was Jon Hare of Sensible Software fame who played against the Sensible Soccer tournament winner and was defeated 6-0.


Speaking of Mr Hare, and of ‘speaking’ in general, there were also talks being given by various people who worked in the video game industry during the early 80’s. This is a time when the UK actually had publishers with names like US Gold, Firebird, Beyond Software and Ocean. Ocean was actually the subject of one of the talks I went to as it had four people who were instrumental in creating games for the once all-powerful publisher that specialised in making licensed games. To the uninitiated, Ocean were the kings of games based on film and TV shows. They made a lot of games as a result, a vast majority of which were really quite bad. Having said that some gems did manage to creep in, despite the subject matter the games were built around.


The people giving the presentation were Jim Bagley (programmer), Gary Bracey (Managing Director), Simon Butler (artist) and Mark Jones (artist). They spoke with much affection for the games they made and explained how they managed to get a pint out of the tea pots that were the 8-bit machines of the day. I asked how they felt about how games these days can take many years and hundreds of people to create. Their response was centred on the theme of technology pushing the amount of assets required to build games being exponentially greater than in the 8-bit days of old and hence the time, resources and money required to make them has increased accordingly.

Jon Hare was also on hand to share a few anecdotes about his time at Sensible Software when he created the likes of Wizball, Microprose Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Sensible Soccer to name but a few. A forthright member of the gaming industry, he was rather critical of how Sensible’s games were treated in the US when they were released there. This meant that many of the innovations Sensible Software developed with the likes of Mega-Lo-Mania and its RTS-like combat model was adopted by the now defunct Westwood for its PC game, Dune II.


Going back to the commercial side of the show, retailer Console Passion was on hand to sell off a lot of its retro gaming stock. They had everything from Mega-CD’s to wireless controllers for Atari 2600 consoles. I even succumbed to the siren-like nature of their booth by getting a copy of Shining Wisdom for the Sega Saturn as I’m a bit of a sucker for the Shining series of RPG’s and adventure games.


Another personal highlight was stumbling upon Jeff Minter of Llamasoft in a small room next to the main hall. He was showing off his back catalogue of games as well as a new iPad/iPhone title he’d developed over the previous week. Carrying the working title of Minotaur, it has the player controlling a space craft by touching the screen and dragging it around. Bonus points are awarded to players picking up Minotaurs that appear randomly as they player blasts and enemies. The game supports up to four players for the iPad version as it allows people to have their own corner of the screen each. It looked and played very much like most of Llamasoft’s output over the past 30 years, i.e. completely insane, yet still fun.

Putting that all aside though, the biggest success had to be the pinball machines that lined a small corridor outside of the main hall. These were constantly in use throughout the weekend and it was a hard time getting any time on them thanks to the crowds of people waiting to get their turn to play on them. I never knew pinball was this popular, but it clearly holds a soft spot in many people’s hearts judging by the hordes of attendees that gathered around them.


Thankfully I managed to catch up with Dave Moore who was looking after the logistics of the event. He explained to me that the whole crew were shocked at how successful it was and that they planned to hold R3play again in 2011 at the same venue. He couldn’t give me exact details, but what he told me and showed off during our chat had me promising myself I shall be making the same arduous journey again, for I’d be a fool to miss it.