Written by LvlUpUK writer Steve Bennett.


It wasn’t all about new games at Eurogamer. Tucked away at the back of Earls Court they had the Retro Corner. A magical place filled with tons of old consoles, old TV’s and old memories. If you went over the weekend and didn’t take a look, shame on you.

I must say I really enjoyed this part of the expo, it gave me a chance to play plenty of games that I used to love as well as a couple that I have always wanted to play, or been curious about, but have never tracked down. I was made to feel incredibly old, not that I cared as I was in my element.

As I said, there were plenty of consoles here, not just ones from the PS2 generation. We had old favourites such as the original brick shaped Game Boy, a Game Gear or the original Master System complete with Alex Kidd. There were a few missing that I would have liked to have seen, however, 95% of the time, if you thought of a console it was there.

We spent a lot of time in retro corner; you would have mostly seen us hogging the original Xbox with the humungous controls playing Mashed. A great little four player racing game in a similar vain to Micro Machines only with added fire power. In fact you may have played they semi sequel, Wrecked, quite recently. Great fun, I would have happily spent the whole weekend playing.

Just by sitting in the Retro Corner you could see the youth of today getting a proper video game education, it was great to see some kids appreciating how far games have come today and wandering what the future holds. It was also amusing to see the horror in some people’s faces when seeing, for the first time, what the industry used to be like.

It’s a shame that some of these games will eventually be lost to time, although I really do appreciate services like Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network. It is through these that older games can live on and be brought to the next generation of gamers, through HD upgrades or ports of the originals. Plenty of the games here have already had this treatment but fingers crossed for more.

I can’t really find any criticisms of the corner to be honest. Some of the pads didn’t work amazingly well, which is only expected when you’re dealing with consoles from decades ago, not that it was a major issue mostly. I would have liked there to have been a couple of consoles running the same games if they prove to be popular. As I said, we played Mashed quite a lot and Micro Machines was almost impossible to get on to play, we managed it last thing on Sunday. Then again, it’s not a Retro convention so we should be thankful for what we had. Next year I do pray for TimeSpliters to be playable split screen.

I really hope visitors to this section will now take the time to explore the back catalogue of games that are available; there are plenty of fun and rewarding experiences to be had. I also hope that more people will at least learn how we got to where we are today. I heard one child say the following: “look there’s a Sega Genesis”. If that was you and you’re reading this now then know this. I wanted to slap you so badly, but I’m not a violent person so I refrained. We live in England little lad, so It’s called a Mega Drive, but I’m glad you were excited by it, good boy.

No doubt the Retro section will return next year and I expect to see a lot more of you there.

Viva le Retro.