Addicted to Gaming

Over a month ago, before the distractions of Retro Reunited and my PS3, I started working through my MSX games collection, and last week I finally got back on track and completed my evaluation...

The MSX wasn’t particularly popular in the UK compared to places like Japan and Holland, which is a bit of a shame as it’s quite an impressive 8-bit system and is notable for several milestones in the development of gaming and home computers in general.

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I've not updated this blog for a few weeks because I've been playing with a new toy. Yes, I finally joined the Hi-Def console generation by buying a Playstation 3! I really have no love for most modern games - stuff like First Person Shooters hold no appeal to me whatsoever - so you may wonder why I've spent a load of cash on this console? Well, the main reason is because I already had Rock Band with all the instruments on the PS2, so I have now upgraded to the PS3 version with all that lovely downloadable content without having to buy a new set of plastic instruments!

I must admit that while I don't think graphics are the most important thing in games, the Hi-Definition visuals on the PS3 are absolutely stunning. Of course I will inevitably pick up a few modern style games eventually - GTA IV and Fallout 3 are both tempting - but for now the games I have are still very old school in style. My first purchases were Street Fighter IV, LittleBigPlanet and Soulcalibur IV, all of which may have modern visuals and online play but definitely have retro gameplay. There are also plenty of cheap downloadable games from the Playstation Store that look like my kind of thing, although I'm content to play around with all the free demos for now...

So if you were worried that I'm betraying my classic gaming ideals, don't! I've been spending a lot of time on my MAME cab recently and will also be posting a review of my MSX very soon. However, if you also have a PS3 and want to get in touch then feel free to add my PSN ID witchfinder76 to your friends list.

Last weekend I had a fantastic time at the Retro Reunited event up in Huddersfield. Organised by retro community stalwart Gordon Sinclair (AKA SirClive) the event gathered over 250 gamers together for a weekend of gaming, drinking and lots of great conversation.

My weekend actually began at 1pm on Friday as I took the afternoon off work to hire a large Transit van, which was filled with several MAME arcade cabinets, boxes full of consoles and games and virtually every TV from my house and garage. Having picked up my good friends Rob and James, we hit the road at around 5pm and enjoyed a relatively painless trip up the M6 to arrive at the venue, the Cedar Court Hotel, just before 7...

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OK, a rather extravagant title and one which makes more of my recent experiences than they really were, but I’ve just come back from a ten day camping holiday in Mid and South Wales with my girlfriend Anna. Obviously the main aim of the trip was not to focus on gaming, but I did get the chance to visit some seaside amusement arcades and also try and unearth a few gaming bargains from a variety of towns.

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Over the last few weeks I've been bulking up my collection of Megadrive shooters, with many of the games being Japanese or American versions since a number of them were never released in Europe. So with that in mind I thought it was about time I did another of my guides to import gaming, focussing on Sega's most successful console...

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About a year ago I had a plan. The plan was to work through each system I own chronologically, play on them for a week and review both the hardware and some of the games available. If all had gone to plan then this blog would now be full of info about three decades of games systems. However this grand plan was interrupted by Byte Back and general laziness, and as it stands just two systems have been reviewed – the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. Whoops!

Now, finally, I bring you a review of a week playing on another of my systems, the one that is probably the most unique of all the consoles I own - the Vectrex!

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OK, crap title but I can't think of anything better to illustrate the fact that after six months of blog inactivity I am back! But I've not been idle over those last six months – they were largely consumed by me organising the highly successful Byte Back event, which took place in early March, attracted nearly 300 visitors and raised over £2300 for charity.

I won't drone on about how great it was because you can see and read all about that on the post-event review at the official site, but I will share just one photo that I think sums up just how cool the event was...

So, now I'm back and will start posting on here again, probably starting with a review of a week playing on my Vectrex.

Thanks to everyone that has visited the blog over the last few months – I've been averaging over 300 hits a month, which is pretty good considering I haven't done anything!

I recently bought a new PC, which came with 2 Gigabytes of RAM. 2 GIG!  The amount of memory and hard disk space on modern PCs is just ridiculous. At the same time I was setting up my new PC I was also playing games on my Commodore 64, so named because it had 64Kb of memory.

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Let's make a journey to the cave of obsessive-compulsive video game collectors and take a look at my Bubble Bobble collection!

Over the last few months I have been gradually trying to accumulate all manner of goodies related to the original Bubble Bobble, my favourite game of all time. Not only am I attempting to get hold of every release of the original game but also any spin-offs that feature the classic 'trap them in a bubble and pop it' gameplay (so no Rainbow Islands, Parasol Stars or Puzzle Bobble!)

I've also picked up a few collectibles related to the series, as the following selection of images shows.

First, here's all of my stuff together...



And now for some close-ups of the more interesting items in the collection...

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Well it has been way too long since I updated this blog but I do have a good reason. Since mid-August I have been putting plans into place for a classic gaming event to be held next year. A venue has been found, a website designed and tickets are now on sale for Byte Back 2009!

For more info visit the official website at www.byte-back.info. I will make occasional updates on the progress of the event on this blog as the big weekend approaches, but more importantly I'll get back to actually playing some games and posting some new topics on here...