Retro Gaming Festival 2020 - 30th & 31st May

Description :

We're very pleased to announce our first ever Retro Gaming Festival.

It's a brand new event in the museum's calendar, but it's going to be huge!

Since it all started with Spacewar! in 1962, the computer games industry has grown to become an industry worth hundreds of billions. The Retro Gaming Festival will celebrate the rich history of the last 60 years, bringing together some of the rarest and most important consoles, computers and games.

We'll also celebrate the growing world of 'Retro Gaming' itself - the people who collect, repair, use and still develop games for the consoles and computers of the last century.

What can you expect to see?

Machines for running games - Classic and rare consoles and handhelds

Machines running games - Classic, unusual and homebrew games

Things that make machines run games - Eg. multiroms, joystick convertors and floppy emulators

People who write and publish games - Meet the people who keep these systems alive!

Meet the Evangelists!

Everyone has their favourite gaming platform, whether it's a console or a microcomputer. Come and meet the people who know their favourite platforms inside out, from the classic games to the very latest homebrew titles. If want help on getting the most out of your own machine - how to load games from SD cards, how to use it with a modern TV - or you simply want to know what the fuss is about for a particular platform - then meet our Evangelists!

Would you like to be an evangelist? No system is too obscure! If you'd like to share your knowledge, please drop us a line - tony@computinghistory.org.uk

Saturday Night Talk: Videogame Heritage and Preservation

On the Saturday night, we're going to have a special presentation. Jason Fitzpatrick will talk to us about what's involved in preservation of videogames, the challenges the museum faces and where we see it going in the future. More information can be found here Videogame Heritage and Preservation.

This evening event is open to exhibitors and museum guests and will start at 6pm. Afterwards there will be informal opportunity to talk about the issues raised, meet the exhibitors and other guests.

Exhibitors confirmed so far.

Asobi.tech - Quang Nguyen
His enormous collection of consoles made us all so jealous at the Japanese Retro Festival, so we're very happy he's coming to this event too!
[Saturday & Sunday]

Johnny Blanchard of Re-enthused
Author of 'Gaming in the Obscure', Johnny runs the 'Re-enthused' Youtube channel. Jonn will be bring a wide range of gaming hardware, such as the Super A'Can, FM Towns Marty and PC-FX.
[Saturday & Sunday]

The Centre for Computing History
This year, we're going to have our own table, and take the opportunity to show some rare and wonderful machines that don't normally see the light of day. We'll tell more closer to the event!
[Saturday & Sunday]

Binary Dinosaurs
Fuelled by discovering a lone Enterprise64 in a field in 1998, Adrian's collection is as eclectic as it is far reaching through UK home computing history. For this event, he'll be bring a wide range of gaming systems - from the original Odyssey to the Vectrex - plus a huge selection of Pong consoles.
[Saturday & Sunday]

Adrian Page-Mitchell

Adrian will be bring his Commodore 264 machines running the very latest games - showing the true capabilities of these misunderstood machines.

[Saturday & Sunday]

@AFRetro

Andrew will be bringing a number of both rare and popular consoles including Famicoms, Saturns, NeoGeos and Virtual Boys.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Roy Templeman
Roy will be bringing a collection of 80s micros running games new and old, as well as a selection of handheld VFD games.
[Saturday & Sunday]

Here Be Dragons!
Modern technology can making playing games on older computers so much simpler. Tony will be showing how multiroms and floppy emulators can bring a machine's entire games library to your finger tips.
[Saturday & Sunday]

David Walford of ArbitraryFiles.com

At the dawn of home computing, anyone could make a game. Which was not always a good idea, as demonstrated thirty years later by Super Enquiry Simulator, David's epic exercise in tedium for the ZX Spectrum. Come and ask him how (or why) it was made.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Bitmap Bureau - Mike Tucker

Their Mega Drive title "Xeno Crisis" has received great critical acclaim since its launch last October - they'll be bringing along the Neo Geo version to play and possibly a new title too...

[Saturday & Sunday]

Norwich Amiga Group

The Norwich Amiga Group will be showing off classic games and machines as well as some exciting new releases, along with modern hardware and software that's keeping the Amiga scene exciting today.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Atari Invasion

Atari Invasion is a group of retro enthusiasts with a love for the Atari brand from the 70s, 80s and 90s. They’ve been in contact on-and-of since the 80s and more recently get together during the HCC Commodore sig meetings in the Netherlands. This is where they got the idea to start an Atari takeover of the Commodore meeting and so Atari Invasion was born. Here they are now, showing you that the Atari legacy lives on and that there are still many enthusiasts that release new items on a (fairly) regular basis.

[Saturday & Sunday]

Call for exhibitors ...

Would you like to be involved in our festival? Do you collect hardware or software? Do you write or publish games for retro platforms? Do you create or repair hardware or offer any other services to the Retro Gaming community? What ever your interest, please get in touch!
tony@computinghistory.org.uk

As a fundraising event for the museum, all proceeds will be used to help us run our educational services and inspire another generation in to a career in computing.

Remember - All proceeds go to support our Computing Museum!