Take one hotel, fill it with all manner of old computers & consoles, sprinkle with a variety guest speakers and mix in 250 odd like minded retro fans equals one helluva weekend.
Retro Reunited 09 was held at the Cedar Court Hotel at Ainsley Top, Huddersfield which about and hour/half drive for me in Nottingham. I left in plenty of time to make the 11 o’clock kickoff and on arrival bumped into a few folk I met at the RCM events in May and August.
Bright blue skies and a fairly empty hotel, ten mins later, that would all change!
The event is officially opened by Darren Jones, editor of the one and only Retro Gamer Magazine http://www.retrogamer.net/
My first impression was that a lot of organization 0f work has gone into setting up the event and I tip my hat to Sir Clive and all participates to make this a special weekend. There was plenty of machines on offer from the 70′s right up to the present including quite a few below that I’ve not had chance to play/see before.
There was also plenty of 8-bit computers setup for play and being a huge fan, spend most of that first morning in the Commodore area playing with the Vic20, C64, SX65, C116 and of course the Amiga - (Thanks Woody for letting me have a poke around inside your A1200 Tower).
My favorite Bread bin
Woody’s Amiga 1200 tower fully loaded with WHDload games.
Plenty of arcade machines to play with too!
…and a few oldies !
The line of guest speakers included the legendary Archer Maclean who presented a preview of his up coming new title for the Nintendo Wii as well of talking about his most famous games IK+, Dropzone and Jimmy Whites Whirlwind Snooker…and his Ferrari
More and more people are enjoying and rediscovering their favorite old systems thanks to the wonderful homebrew storage solutions available allowing programs to be run from modern hard drives and flash storage cards. I spotted a C64 with Ultimate 1541 SD card board, a Beeb with a IDE interface and also a Spectrum +2 with an ethernet port!
Plenty of goodies on offer via the trade outlets were you buy old systems, games and a host of Retro gaming paraphernalia. My PC mouse sits atop my new Bubble Bobble mouse mat! Also managed to pick up a few back issues of Retro Gamer magazine I have missing in my collection.
What a fantastic weekend, met some really nice people, got some tips regarding my 1541 ITX project via a chap who had built a SNES PC (including CD drive built into a game cartridge!), played lots of games including a few DC titles I want to track down, took lots of photos and thanks to Guitar Hero, can’t get the Beatles tunes out of my head!
Can’t wait for the next RCM event in Novemember.
I’ve uploaded the 200 odd photos the my Flickr account if anyone is interested to see more – http://www.flickr.com/photos/26527444@N06/
Zipsticks lined up for action.
Ooo, which one first!
hi stiggy tomatoes look good Pauline
Taste good too, especially with the Courgettes.
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