The first Retro event that I attended this year was the rather marvellous REVIVAL 2013, a two day Retrothon organised by my good chum Chris 'Boyo' Wilkins and Craig Turner from Turnarcades Custom Arcade Machines. I had previously attended the 'Retro Ball' that was also organised by Chris which I thoroughly enjoyed so I was looking forward to seeing what Chris & Craig had cooked up for Revival 2013.
For more deets head over to www.revivalretroevents.com
For the event I decided to take two complete systems to display on the Binary Zone / Psytronik stand. The first of which is the much photographed / slightly controversial / often commented on SPECADORE 64 - Which is basically a C64C with a custom paint-job to make it look like a Sinclair machine. The simple story behind this beastie is that the keys and case on my old C64C went a horrible yellow colour over time so I gave it a black re-spray, swapped over the keyboard for an original Breadbin C64 keyboard and even added a little raised 'Sinclair' logo (+ Speccy style colour stripes) to the case using a craft-knife and oodles of patience.
The mighty SPECADORE 64 - Behold its beauty!
The second machine I took along was the Commodore 64X - Which is one of those PC's-in-a-C64 style case courtesy of the now defunct Commodore USA. As it's basically an all-in-one PC it's handy for running emulators along with PC remakes of retro games. Playing the PC remake of Armalyte on a remake of the Commodore 64 using a USB remake of the Competition Pro joystick is a bit of a treat, I can tell ya!
Roll up! Roll up! Get yer retro goodies here!!
With the Kenzimobile loaded up with my kit and a box of Binary Zone / Psytronik stock I zzoomed along the M6 to sunny Wolverhampton. It's actually quite a short journey from the Zone to the venue so I made good time getting there and was soon setting up my bits and bytes on the table that Chris had allocated for me. The venue itself was great - lots of room and different areas to explore. There were literally TONS of retro machines, arcade cabs and pinball machines already set up so I had some fun checking them out before the event properly began.
So many awesome arcade cabs to play!
One of the (many) highlights of Revival 2013 was seeing the Fix It Felix Jnr arcade cab that was right opposite my stand. In fact, one of my favourite memories from Revival 2013 was watching a guy playing the game who was obviously completely smitten by the machine. He was on it for AGES, then he was taking photos of it, and then he was on his phone to somebody excitedly telling them about it. Bless!
I'm gonna WRECK IT!!
Other highlights of the weekend include chatting with various chums from the homebrew & retro scene including Boyo, Chris Abbott & Tanya (with their adopted Thing on a Spring), Steve 'STE'86' Day, Richard Bayliss, Jason Kelk, Andy from RCM, Stu from Ovine, Oliver Frey & Roger Kean, Max Hall & Jackie, the RV gang (including nudie Bane o_O!), the guys from OCEAN, the Cosplay girls (Amy & Georgie) and of course, everyone who came up to my stand to talk RETRO!
Some more of the attractions at Revival 2013! ;)
All in all, I really enjoyed my weekend at Revival. It was well organised, the Retro Lords did a fine job compering and a nice touch was Craig going around asking the exhibitors if everything was okay and if they needed anything - it's the little things like that which make a difference! The only slight downer was when I discovered my ZipStick joystick was missing from my stand on Sunday morning which meant nobody would be able to play on the Specadore that day - but the RCM chaps stepped in a lent me a joystick which solved that problem - and then, my joystick was actually returned to me later that day thanks to it having my name and details on a sticker on the bottom - nice one!
To get a taste of Revival 2013 have a look at the video below - you can see me at 2:53 giving a little wave to the camera and again at 4:23 having some fun with the Cosplay girls - *grin!*!
Thanks for reading! See you ... At a future Retro event, hopefully!
Kenz / www.psytronik.net
Yay, we were there!
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