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Play Expo 2017 saw another two full days of gaming and cosplay, plus some talks I wish I could’ve gone to, particularly the panel for Andy Remic’s Memoirs of a Spectrum Addict, but it clashed with the Cosplay Masquerade on the Sunday, and for me, that’s the pièce de résistance of the whole event and I cannot miss it. Hence, I’m hoping the Spectrum Addict panel discussion ends up online before too long.
The Play Expo events begin at 10am for those who have bought tickets in advance, while if you buy tickets on the day, the entrance time is 11am, so when the time comes for next October, I advise you by in advance, and get in the queue from around 9-9.15 if you want to be one of the first ones in, once 10am comes around.
And yes, they are long days when there’s so much to do, but I found my energy increasing as it got into the final two hours of each day, particularly on the Sunday. Was it a late adrenaline rush? Well, there’s still so much to do by that point in the weekend and I want to play as many more games as I can.
At each event, I love taking loads of pictures – especially of the awesome cosplay participants, but I’ll also try and play as many games as I can that I’ve not seen before, as well as taking in some perennial favourites, such as the hydraulic cabinets for Outrun, Power Drift and After Burner, plus classics like the traditional Pac-man.
And when it comes to cosplay, I realise that a lot of the cosplay pics I’ve taken are just when I’m walking about, so that’s why part of me prefers always to be walking round – so I don’t miss anyone, but only after the event, on Facebook, do I realise that I’ve missed a few and I’m all “Grrrr….” for not getting them, but I guess it’ll happen until I’m able to clone myself.
Note for taking pictures, that it’s best to try and take them both with and without flash, if possible. I took 2 of each at a time, but the reason for the flash aspect is because you’re taking pictures inside and, depending on the area you’re in, the lighting can vary.
2017 saw the sixth year of this event, again held at EventCity, next to the Trafford Centre (accessible via M60 J9 and J10), and this was the fourth time in a row I had been. Overall, it’s so much fun that, once again, when it was over, the withdrawal symptoms kicked in.
This year, the arcade area was better organised, since you walked through from one side to the other, rather than having straight up/down lines of cabinets for those. The latter was the case for the pinball machines, but then that most likely works best for the tech people, as pinballs have a tendancy to break down more than arcade machines, because there’s so many moving parts to them.
Check out the full Facebook Arcade album.
Rad Mobile came in hydraulic form, and looks similar to Outrun, but while it’s not as good as that classic, it’s still worthy of your attention.
The game is meant to be a non-stop road race across the USA, avoiding traffic and police cars, and all within a time limit, but I stopped aplenty when I kept crashing, as I was new to this machine from 1991. One thing that made this a little different is that, during night, you have to put the headlights on, and when it’s raining, you have to press the button to make the windscreen wipers work. Without all that, it’s rather difficult to see.
Rad Mobile made for an interesting diversion when the queues for the main big machins were too long.
Circus Charlie is a platform title from Konami, released in 1984, where you portray a clown named Charlie and you have time your jumps, as the pace never lets us. One level sees you bouncing from trampoline to trampoline, whilst avoiding knife throwers. Once you figure out the timings, it’s relatively easy, but you do get a feeling of accomplishment.
Spy Hunter – another arcade classic which I played to death in that form, as well as later on the ZX Spectrum. Inspired by James Bond, and originally intended to be part of that franchise, you drive from A to B shooting at baddie cars with your built in guns dropping oil slicks, and refuelling your petrol and ammo at the end of each level. I only had a brief go at this game, late on Sunday, but if you’re good, the road never ends, and you can keep driving forever.
Go to page 2 for the Retro games and pinball…
For the Retro games, I was into the ZX Spectrum and Atari VCS 2600, including games like Pitfall, Adventure, Space Invaders, Manic Miner and Quazatron.
This year, the Retro Gaming section was partioned similar to last year’s, with most of the consoles were placed in their own section, or grouped together in smaller sections, so everyone passing could see them, and step inside if they wanted to play them. Also, most machines were set to play specific titles, but there was also a huge original Xbox section, with a plethora of titles held at one end for you to swap over and try the lot.
Once again, there are so many great games, a number of which I hadn’t played before, and again, many of which I didn’t get to play this time as there was so much to do, but there’s always something to play. Check out my full Retro gaming album.
See below for pictures of the Atari 800 with Pac-Man, Super Mario on the Nintendo 3DS, and the ever-popular 16-player Xbox 360 Halo rig… where I regularly get my ass kicked.
Scores of Pinball machines were available to play again, and all set to Free Play, bar a few set up for competitive tournaments. I took a ton of pictures and got to play a good number.
The machines below and many more are including in my Facebook pinball album. The pictures are mine, but the Youtube footage comes courtesy of those respective titles.
First up, was one I don’t think I’d played before – Lethal Weapon 3. Yes, the film wasn’t brilliant, compared to the excellent first two, but I love a pinballer where there’s lot of things going on, and this fulfilled that in spades.
The second one was Queen’s Castle, from 1978 – one of a number of old-school machines before electronic displays came in. There’s something so gorgeous about these classic machines.
Finally, the force is strong in the Star Wars pinball machine. It’s another unit with a ton of stuff going on all over the table.
Go to page 3 for the Cosplay pictures.
Cosplay was once again a major part of this event, with Replay Events again devoting a masquerade on both days to those who had dressed up as their favourite characters from movies, videogames and TV, ranging from Final Fantasy, IT, Crash Bandicoot and Smite, plus many more.
I really enjoy taking many cosplay pictures while walking about the huge arena, as well as on the masquerade. Anyone cosplaying will be happy for you to politely take their picture, but always be respectful and always say thankyou after taking a picture.
Alas, one thing had changed re: the Masquerade which wasn’t for the better. I made this suggestion, hoping it would be seen and adjusted for Sunday, but it wasn’t, and no-one’s commented on the post, so I still don’t know if they’ve seen it.
The problem was that the judges were placed right in front of the stage rather than to the side. They’ve been to the side before, but if they’re in front, then they block the view of the audience, so if a cosplayer’s performance involves using the floor (i.e. sitting down, lying down, or one character throwing another to the floor), we can’t see them! Also, it stops them being able to do the catwalk down the middle afterwards, which is awesome for taking pictures.
Hence, on Sunday, I did my best to get there a bit earlier and take a front row seat for a change.
My Saturday pictures are below along with the full Masquerade video, which was uploaded by More Macs Media.
All my pictures can be seen on my two Facebook albums for Saturday and Sunday.
And thanks to Danielle for letting me put her statement here about why she cosplays, and a heart-warming story that sends such a positive message about cosplay:
- “This the pure reason I cosplay: Today, I had several kids run up to me, and kids shouting at me, saying they want a photo. Especially little girls, because they play as my character. And what made me break, was a little boy in an electric wheelchair, paralysed from the hips down, getting giddy because of it. I’ve never seen such happiness and sparks in their eyes from it.”
And the Sunday Cosplay pictures include the following. I haven’t been able to find a Cosplay Masquerade video for Sunday, sadly.
Check out the full Sunday Cosplay album here.
Check out the pictures below, then go to page 5 for some Indie and Virtual Reality titles.
Indie and VR games – and first up, Jeff Minter from Llamasoft was back, not only with the incredible Polybius – now out on PSVR and released on PC some time after Christmas, but also Tempest 4000, due out later this year from Atari. It takes the classic, but difficult shoot-em-up, to even more psychedlic territories!
Smash Tanks is a good piece of augmented reality. The picture shows the TV, but you’d point an iPad at a table, with the gameplay area effectively being on that. Pull back your tanks, like powering the cue in a snooker video game, and destroy the enemy. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it was quite fun.
Hyper Sentinel is a forthcoming title from Rob Hewson at Huey Games, the son of Andrew Hewson from Hewson International, who I also met on Sunday. If you enjoyed Uridium on 8-bit consoles in the ’80s, it’s a great modern take on that. More info about it here, and check out the gameplay video below.
RAD TV from Ruffian Games is a very engaging set of mini-games, involving wild west bar shoot-outs, punch-ups and even force-feeding one character. Note that you do need a lot of room for these, as the characters can appear ALL around you, so clear a big space in the room and make sure no-one’s standing near…
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School – a Korean horror game which looked pretty cool, but was always busy. It’s recently been released on PS4 and Steam.
I didn’t realise it had been out years before, but this version has been completely remade with expanded gameplay features and new content, including an all-new unlockable sequel story. Ji-min Yoo, a brand-new character, takes centre stage and faces the terrors of the night in a thrilling mystery that explores the history of the school and takes place during the events of the main game.
Check out the trailer below.
VR Zone – rather than something big like last year’s Battlezone on PS4, this was a series of consoles and PCs hooked up to PS4 headsets or an Oculus Rift and a HTC Vive. Over the course of the weekend, the HTC Vive wasn’t working when I went over there, and the Oculus had problems when I first was looking to try the game on there, but it was fine when I tried it later on Sunday, and they had a Wipeout-style game on that one.
I’ve not used the PSVR outside of Play Expo, so had a go on a driving game and one where you fly around like a bird. I wasn’t sure of the titles, but the latter was quite cool to simply move your head around and fly around a town, but when I had to turn round so I didn’t leave the play area, while the movement you make is natural, it felt a bit weird as you realise you have to turn 180-degrees in the real world, too! Since I was stood up, I nearly fell over, but such is the power of Virtual Reality!
Go to page 6 for a final set of pics from Play Expo 2017.
And for the final page, the pics begin with Johann Sebastian Joust – having a face-off between various classical music instruments, which is made for two players, but I was trying this on my own and since the arena was so loud, I couldn’t hear the music coming out. As such, I did really badly and ended up losing to ‘player 2’, even though there *was* no player 2, and it won by default, as there was no-one to press any buttons badly!
There are more Misc pics here.
There weren’t any big one-game stands like last year’s WWE 2K17 or Battlezone setups, nor the previous year’s Dark Souls 3 setup, but then that does allow for more open-plan groups of machines like the DOOM multiplayer LAN. I understand this worked on Saturday, but their server machine stopped working overnight, so on Sunday, it was single-player-only. Personally, I haven’t played this game in multiplayer since I got my arse kicked by the man himself, John Romero, at Revival 2014, but then I’m bobbins at multiplayer 😉
“We lost R2!” Oh, there he is….
And all good things come to an end…
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.