Skip to content
Revival 2014 was the second year for this retro video gaming event, held on August 9th & 10th at Wolverhampton Racecourse, and after the immense amount of fun I had at last year’s inaugural event, I was even more excited for this one.
With over 250 playable games at any one time, 50% additional floor space over last year’s event, and the talks held in a separate room, again, it’s difficult to know where to begin, I’ll again start as I did last year, from when I walked in and take it from there. I didn’t take quite as many photos as last year, but that time I took over 200 and this year, I wanted to get stuck into as many games as possible. And if I just replicated pictures of all the same consoles again, then there’d be little point.
I’ve also used a different plugin this year for the photos – WP Lightbox 2 – so in each case, you’ll see a small ‘thumbnail’, so to speak, and when you click on it, the full-size version will hover over the page. Just click on it again to shrink it and get back to the article, or click through to the next ones to view them all independently of the article. Last year, I used NextGen Gallery, which worked fine until WordPress 3.9 came along, and then their own plugin update completely SNAFU’d the images, so that they now open in a new page instead.
And, yes, that is me alongside Doom maestro John Romero, who attended Revival 2014, but more on his involvement later.
Enjoy the next 9 pages! 🙂
Arcade Machines
While Revival 2014 was split into many different gaming zones, I’ll start with the arcade machines in the main hall of which there were quite a variety. Games include G-Loc Air Battle (in a stand-up cabinet, not the 360-degree rotating machine), Traverse USA (from 1983, and very similar to 1982’s Burnin’ Rubber), Gorf, Defender, Super Cobra, Bomb Jack, Pleiads, Metal Slug, 1942, Space Invaders Part II, Prize Space Invaders (which I didn’t play, as I always lose when gambling, since this was the only machine which required money), and Pac-And-Paint – yes, it’s exactly how it sounds, but while it’s an intriguing idea, it didn’t quite work as a whole, but then if I was doing a full review on one particular title I’d have to go back almost 30 years to 1986 when it was made.
Then there was also the brand new title, Revival Survival, created especially for the event, where you enter a Pacman-inspired world, helping, Chris Wilkins (Revival Retro Events), Craig Turner (Turnarcades) and the other master chiefs to put Revival 2014 together, before beating eaten by ghosts. Just like real life 🙂
(Images from Traverse USA and G-Loc Air Battle are from Arcade History)
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.