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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)
Tournaments and TalksAlso in the main room was a series of tournaments, hosted by Retro Lords, starting with Pong, the classics game which, originating in 1972, is as old as I am. The version we played was more a home console version. I assumed it was on the Atari VCS, but thinking back it might not have been as the controller wasn’t familiar. It’s a game I haven’t played for a long time, but I signed myself up for it, as one of 16 players, and I managed to make it through to the final!
I’d done very well, if I say so myself, but when it came to the last round, instead of a single game with regular paddles (and I’d also played on a fast ball, so I’d got used to that), it went to small paddles… Not even a ‘best of 3’ could help me. Any chance I got to fire the ball back, was pure chance. I didn’t catch the name of the guy who beat me, but I have to hand it to him since he, as they say, had the skills to pay the bills, and batted it back many more times than I did to him.
Coincidentally, the picture I took of the tournament, which isn’t a great one, features the guy whose head you can see the back of.
Next up, was a tournament for Doom II Deathmatch!
Three of us, at a time, would take on John Romero at the game he created, so obviously he’s going to have an advantage, although he wasn’t allowed to use the mouse, so that theoretically levelled the playing field. That said, I rarely played with a mouse back in the day, as I found it easier to get about with the keys, strafing left and right as required.
I don’t know what happened early on, but the PC I was on got stuck, and I couldn’t respawn for a while, so I fell behind. However, I’m generally bobbins at Deathmatches so I wasn’t going to win, but once I got going again it was still a great blast and I got to have my picture taken with him, as you saw on page 1. It still doesn’t feel real because this man created Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake – three of the defining PC games of the 1990s as I grew up through my early 20s. Each one brought something new to the table, and, in modern parlance, the words that would spring to mind are “OMG!!”
I’m not sure how many went up against Mr Romero in total, but the final round saw all three finalists score more frags than him (bearing in mind his mouse handicap), and Spencer Guest was the winner. Thanks to Amy Grimwood for the picture below. I think I’m grinning as I’ve finally found out how to respawn.
Later on, came the tournaments for Warlords and Micro Machines, and while I did also sign up for the former, I completely lost track of time, as I didn’t know what time the tournaments were due to start once I was away from that area, and the reason I was away, was because I was watching John Romero give his talk. Then straight after that, I had to have something to eat as by then it was around 3pm and I was starving. So, apologies to the Retro Lords if they were calling my name ad infinitum (well, maybe twice before filling the gap).
The prizes were generally retro consoles from the ’90s, such as a PSone and a Nintendo 64, so very cool indeed.
Soon after the Deathmatch was complete, and a number of us had had their photos taken with him – including one fan who had his Nintendo 64 copy of Daikatana signed, it was time for John Romero’s talk, entitled by the guys at Revival, “The Seven Labours of John Romero”, where we would be taken through seven specific games during his career and he would have to vote on whether they were a ‘joy’ (as in ‘joystick’) or a ‘sorrow’ (the relevance of which will come shortly).
I won’t say which games fell into which camp, as the talks are going to be released on DVD, and at least one has been put online, so there is stil chance to see them whether you were there and missed some, or couldn’t attend the event at all.
The seven games began with his first published title, Scout Search (1984), published on the Apple II by inCider Magazine (apples? cider? get it?), a game where a bear was roaming round a maze in rather random fashion, searching for scouts. A bizarre idea, indeed. Then came Commander Keen, one of seven titles in the series – the first of which was subtitled “Marooned on Mars“, and you sadly don’t get to play with British actress Diane Keen, but instead take the role of a boy called Billy Blaze, travelling through space in a side-scrolling platformer.
The third game brought us to Wolfenstein 3D, which I’ve already mentioned blew me away. Any self-respecting gamer will know of this one. It wasn’t his first 3D-based title, though – that was Hovertank 3D, After that came the one and only Doom. And if Wolfenstein 3D blew my mind, then Doom napalmed what was left into next week.
Quake was next on the list, and I played both this and Unreal so much in the latter half of the ’90s. I wasn’t so keen on the multiplayer versions, as I’d always get my arse kicked (hence why I didn’t do very well in the aforementioned tournament) but I got more than enough entertainment and excitement from the single-player versions. This continues to this very day on all first-person-shooters. And would you believe that John, himself, coined the term ‘Deathmatch’ – since it was a match to the death, as well as ‘Frag’ – for ‘fragmentation’.
The sixth title was Daikatana, another first-person-shooter, but one which didn’t work for me at the time. John talked about how it was made with expert gamers in mind, rather than novices, and while I’d played many games previously, this one was plagued with problems such as the fact that you would pass certain checkpoints and the PC needs to load in the next part of the game, at which point it would stop dead! When once there was action, noise and movement, now there was just silence and stopping. A huge dragonfly then approached me on one leve, causing me to take a backwards step and… yes, it all stopped again. And even though you’re in the same location, any baddies that were after you suddenly disappear. It also spent four years in development, having been promoted with a poster reluctantly approved by Romero at the time, with a red backdrop and large black lettering proclaiming “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch”.
Finally, the last game was one that passed me by at the time – Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, While I loved the original arcade Gauntlet, this one followed Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy, and I didn’t go a bundle for Dark Legacy, hence why I probably discounted playing this one.
Other talks included Andrew Hewson – whose Hewson Consultants titles include Cybernoid and Uridium (the ZX Spectrum version of which was written by a guy called Dominic Robinson, but who wasn’t me), Andrew Oliver talking about the history of Dizzy, Newsfield (Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, Gary Penn, Steve Jarratt), and Ocean Software (Paul Owens, Matthew Cannon, Phil Trelford, Mark Jones Jnr, Simon Butler, Jim Bagley). I wish I’d een to see the Ocean one, particularly, as I’d taken my Ocean: The History book along for signing, but as I didn’t have a list of the talks to hand, and there was nothing obvious to remind me what time they were taking place, I missed it. So it would be good if some extra posters could be put up to confirm the times of the talks.
Note, however, that the talks were this year held upstairs, in a massive room that’s perfect for this, as opposed to setting up an enclosed space downstairs where there’s lots of gaming noise. Here’s hoping this continues next year as it was fantastic. There were over 150 people attending each talk, including a figure topping 200 for John Romero.
Now, for obvious reasons I couldn’t attend both the Ocean talk *and* the Doom II Deathmatch simultaneously, but thankfully, Retro Asylum have uploaded the entire 71-minute talk on Youtube and you can see it below:
Retro Computers and Consoles
A retro gaming event wouldn’t be a retro gaming event without a slew of retro consoles and computers, and the majority of these were in the main room, courtesy of The Centre for Computing History.
There’s more machines here than I can shake a stick at, so to fit in all the info and pictures, check out the slideshows below. First up is an Acorn BBC Master Compact, then an Apple Macintosh, a Commodore CBM 3032, and a Philips CD-I playing Burn Cycle – although, somehow, I couldn’t get off the main screen. I’d never used a CD-I much before, beyond trying one out in a shop when a salesman optimistically told me “Anyone looking to buy a CD player should seriously consider buying a CD-I machine”, even though I could see that the films available at the time, on Video CD, were of even worse quality than VHS at the time. They were released in 1992 in Europe, but it must’ve been around 1994 when they hit the UK shops properly. DVDs were just four years away, but we managed…
The other machines below are a Tatung Einstein 256 playing martial arts classic Yie Ar Kung Fu, Dreamcasts (possibly not in all cases) playing Time Crisis, Virtua Cop and House of the Dead; and finally, a ZX81 with an abundance of games. That one on view is Jetpack (just about to get going), although while it’s a little rudimentary compared to the ZX Spectrum, it’s amazing what can be achieved with a lot of extra memory.
(Note to self: for slideshows – make all pictures the same orientation)
And next, more retro goodness from The Centre for Computing History with an Acorn Atom, playing a bizarre sort-of pinball game which rings a distant bell in my brain, unless I’m confusing it with Video Pinball on the Atari 2600.
Then there’s the Acorn Electron playing Pacman clone, Snapper; a BBC Model B playing a flight simulator game; an Amstrad PC1512 showing text adventure, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which I remember from the ZX Spectrum. The second picture on view was my attempt at playing it at Revival 2014, but I didn’t get the hang of it; an Atari 1040ST (I only had the 520ST) with wonderful shoot-em-up, Xenon; plus a machine I hadn’t come across before, a CGL Sord M5 Home Computer, showing Dragon Attack.
One of the highlights for me, and again from the The Centre for Computing History, was to get my first-ever go on the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset for the PS4, so I could still transport myself to another world, despite the Virtuality machine from the 1990s being out of action on the Saturday (I understand it was back to full strength for the Sunday. I had a go on it last year and it was great fun).
I understand that this particular version of Oculus Rift will be surpassed by one with a higher-resolution, in due course, but even in its current state it was outstanding. The unit would set you back around £450, which is a great price for what it delivers, as long as there are the games to back it up, but as time goes on, the price will come down.
PS. That is not me with all the tattoos, but it was amusing as he was walking towards the edge of the gaming world, and his mate pushed him, making him think he was going to fall off 🙂
Then there’s balls… in pinball machines!
Yes, there were less arcade games in the main room*, but a lot more pinballs this time round, so it was a good balance overall, as you can also play a lot of arcade titles on an emulator, but nothing on a computer can replicate the feel of a real, live pinball table. My favourite was the Family Guy pinball, and even though the first two balls went almost straight down the chute in the middle, I did a lot more with the last one, and managed to get to Stewie’s mini-pinball table, which is a bonus extra in the top-right of the unit.
(*but still a stack of arcade machines elsewhere in the place)
Racing car games were given their own space in the Racing Zone – nicely placed in an area between the main room and the trader/gaming/food concourse, so there’s a lot of footfall – with a Ridge Racer sit-down cabinet, a stand-up Crazy Taxi machine complete with pedals, Gran Turismo 4 head-to-head on the PS2, and one other which the less-than-wonderful camera on my JXD 7800B handheld console has masked out the title of…. (I would’ve used my phone, but towards the end of the day, it was running out of battery)
Turnarcades were also present with their custom-built machines, some very compact and bijou while – as per the third picture – they had a unit which could project onto a massive screen, and below that is its control unit, that picture taken at the end of the day. I have an arcade machine from Turnarcades of my own which, if you’re on Facebook, you can see here.
I also met the incredible Bob Wakelin, designer of so many covers to the videogames I played endlessly on my ZX Spectrum in the 80s, including Head Over Heels, Batman and Frankie Goes To Hollywood! He was working both days, signing posters at The Attic Bug store in Revival 2014.
I bought two A3 posters, which you can see below.
More pictures from the event are as follows – from left-to-right, and top-to-bottom – a mint-condition original ZX Spectrum for £400; a couple more machines whose names escape me; a giant Pacman game projected onto a wall, where three players who were the ghosts would face the wall, while a player being Pacman would face away from the wall and only be able to see it from the screen in front of them. I didn’t get to play on this as I got so caught up in everything else.
Then there’s a PC game based on the ‘Game & Watch’ favourites, except this is ‘James & Watch‘; then there’s the controller for it; and separately, a Sega Master System from Retro Lords.
Surface Tension were also present with their cool sit-down coffee table cabinets, showing Crystal Castles on the middle picture, plus a stand-up cabinet on the left showing Kung Fu Master. The right-hand pic is the controls on the sit-down cabinet, including a glowing blue trackball, which is the mouse.
A company called Old School have ported new and current games onto old consoles and computers – this one showing Flappy Bird on a Commodore Amiga A600HD; then there’s the Bubble Bobble T-shirt I bought from RetroGT.com, one of the traders at Revival 2014; and I got the last go of the day on Sega Touring Car. I would’ve taken a picture of it in action, but closing time was imminent, and it was switched off shortly after I vacated the seat.
And late in the afternoon, there was musical accompaniment from Octave Sounds and Sid Man, performing some Commodore 64 aural ecstacy, mixing a number of game tracks together. Although I wasn’t too familiar with a lot of these pieces (as I’m a ZX Spectrum man), I still thoroughly enjoyed it. And thanks to Anna Bäckström from The Attic Bug, who also have many items available in their Ebay Store.
Game Over…
But all great things come to an end, and I took some pictures of the machines once it was almost time to head home.
And finally… (including a few things to remember for next year)
I told myself beforehand, that when I get up early, I should leave the house early! I should’ve got there for 9.30am to make the most of the time cardholders can start gaming in advance of those paying on the door – they could gain access at 10.30 – but I faffed about too much and got there around 10.15. I still beat the queue, however, as cardholders paying in advance can walk straight in past the very long queue, so I heartily recommend for 2015’s event.
Buy your T-shirts early, so they don’t sell out. I would’ve bought a couple more of them, but there were only ‘medium’ left for the ones I wanted. And I am not a medium (ahem!)
Do a full recce of the site including all areas. I also completely missed the Mature Gaming Zone and the Rhythm Zone, both of which were situated within the main bar area, mainly because I didn’t need to go in there, so completely forgot about those, having been overwhelmed with everything else on display. This is why I need to go for both days next time, so in the evening, someone can inadventently remind me that I’ve not sampled those games.
Work out in advance which talks you want to attend and make a note of their times. As I mentioned, I wish I’d gone to the Ocean talk, as I even brought along my Ocean: The History book for signing. I’d not been there too long and I was still getting acclimatised. I need to be more organised for next year 🙂
The talks were only on the Saturday, but this is another reason to attend both days next time – I couldn’t get round all the games on the one day I did attend, so next year I’ll see more talks on the Saturday, while catching up with the games on the Sunday. And what about watching talks whilst also wanting to participate in the deathmatches and knockouts hosted by the Retro Lords? Well, I’ll just have to find a way to clone myself in time for next year 😉
Oh, and by the time the next Revival comes round, I’ll have a new phone, so it’ll be one which does NOT have the battery life span of a gnat’s fart… or I might just buy a proper camera.
Retro Zone’s Revival Special
There were a lot less game cartridges to swap over, compared to many more being available last year, but sadly there are those people who are light-fingered and will snaffle whatever they can, which apart from not being in the spirit of an event like this, it’s also downright illegal – it’s theft. Hence, I can understand the reason for doing this, but it’s a shame that it will be the few which will spoil it for the many. I can see Retro Zone, whose Revival Special is above and is well worth a watch, also thought along similar lines. Then again, I did just get caught up in the excitement of it all, so I think II’ll need a list of the talks tattooed on the inside of my eyeballs so I don’t forget next time, since I remembered hearing the Retro Lords making announcements early on, but once I’d got involved in the Pong and Doom tournaments, I lost track. Also, I forgot there were maps available listing the zones and the talks info, but then I also brought with me my copy of Ocean: The History, and forgot to get it signed at all. I would’ve remembered if I’d gone to the talk, but I’d have to have cloned myself to do Doom and the talk at the same time.
That said, I was still quite happy to try as many different machines as possible, and last year I generally went with the game that was in the machine so I could get round them without delay. This year, I think the only game I swapped over was one on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) so I could play Super Mario Bros. I can remember when this console was released and, my God, did I want one. I never did have one, though. But while I’ve played on various sequels over the years, nothing compares to playing the NES original.
There was a lot more on offer food-and-drink-wise. Last year, there was just the bar and rather a long wait for some, but this year there were at least three fast-food and similar outlets on-site, so there’s no waiting this time round and, like the name of the classic ’80s videogame, it’s Burger Time!
And, yes, there is a nearby McDonalds and KFC, but as long as the weather’s good, it’s very comfortable to sit out in the Racecourse’s food court and take in a breath of fresh air before heading back for more gaming action.
And as I was driving back on the A449 from Dunstall Park towards the M6, I passed someone wearing a Stormtrooper outfit, just walking back to wherever they lived! I so wish I could’ve stopped my car and taken a picture, but it was a dual carriageway with nowhere to stop. Curse you, road laws!
And like Arnie… I’ll be back! 🙂
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.