R3PLAY - the Gaming Expo in Blackpool - Part 2

Having arrived in Blackpool around half-way through the first day of R3Play, we had obviously missed quite a bit, but as soon as we did arrive we had plenty to explore. Arcade machines are particularly appealing to me so they were my first port-of-call, and many great machines there were too. The first game I played was Viewpoint on a lovely MAME cabinet (and it's still as tough as I remember!) but I soon played many others too. It also took me a good while to find event organiser, Godon Sinclair, who had asked me to bring my own console with me, namely my Japanese Skeleton Saturn (there's a pic of it below!).

I also enjoyed walking around the rows upon rows of tables filled with various consoles and computers and was thrilled with the opportunity to play games on some systems I've never used before such as a Vectrex, a Sam Coupe, a Spectrum running Twitter of all things, a lovely shiny Panasonic Q GameCube, an XBox running 'Steel Battalion' (complete with immense controller), and even the mighty PC Engine SuperGrafx! There was so many systems around, I seemed to find new ones every time I walked around, including something I never even knew existed - a 'Minimig', and Amiga compressed down into a teeny little box. There were also a few stands that I'd missed on my initial walk around the large hall, including a Nintendo Unleashed stand, which was showcasing some of the latest Wii games like Goldeneye and Kirby's Epic Yarn, another Wii-related stand running 'Just Dance 2', another showcasing 'PlayStaion Move', and last but not least, a Sumo Digital stand helmed by the company's Executive Producer, Steve Lycett, who was very friendly and happy to answer questions. Cheers Steve!

Anyway, here's a few more pics of the event, including some close-ups of some of the great systems there.