Just arrived back last night from Ireland's first 8-Bit Gaming Conference in Griffith College. There was so much to see and do; my better half and I both really enjoyed it and are already looking forward to next year. The atmosphere was brilliant; there were so many gaming enthusiasts & we couldn't get over the amount of rare games & consoles on display.
During one of the panels, we got to hear about how the idea for the 8-Bit Conference came about from one of the organisers. It was only really conceived a few months ago in a pub (he jokes 'as all good ideas are'). It came from a desire to organise a gaming related event. With a lot of work and little sleep, their idea became a reality. It's hard to cover everything we got to see and do while at the conference but I will sum it up as best I can to try to do it justice.
The first area we entered was the Retro Gaming Museum, which was fantastic. They had dedicated display cabinets for both Mario & Zelda, and some of the items featured were really rare. I thought it was really awesome that they actually had copies of E.T. on the Atari 2600 - which reminds me I really must watch the documentary on Netflix, Atari: Game Over.
While they were many great retro consoles on display, a number of which you were also allowed to play my favorites had to be a rare SNES developer console and the Atari Lynx handheld console. I was lucky enough to play a Japanese prototype version of Mario Kart on the SNES developer console, which was a lot of fun. The owner of the prototypes explained how these were sent, in various forms (complete, incomplete, slightly different to release versions) to journalists for gaming magazines in the 90s and 2000s. These prototypes and advance copies were often then sold and traded around into the hands of collectors. For me though, getting to play Donkey Kong on the Gameboy (hooked up to a big screen!) was probably the highlight for me and made me really want to buy a Gameboy again.
Next, we moved onto the Arcade Room - this was awesome! They had a number of Arcade Machines set up and built by Mini Arcade Systems, an Irish company. Not only did we get to play as many games as we wanted free of charge but they also had free sweets next to every machine. Not surprisingly, we spent quite a bit of time here hunched over machines, despite being soaked through from being caught in the rain. We even missed the Sega Arcade panel because of it. We easily could have spent the rest of the day there, trying out many of the 800+ available games from Sega, Nintendo, and many more classic systems.
Three things became apparent after being in the Arcade Room. First, playing retro games on an old style bartop arcade machines is a lot of fun. Second, having a player 2 makes it even more fun. Third, we want to buy one of these machines as soon as possible - perhaps as a Valentines Day present to ourselves.
photo credit 8-Bit Gaming Conference
To be honest I was really happy just to have seen the Retro Museum & The Arcade Room but there was even more to enjoy. There were multiple panels on retro gaming - the one we went to was on collectibles which was really interesting. We not only got to hear from the event organiser but also from some avid collectors. I really liked hearing from the guy who had his whole house dedicated to not only retro gaming collectibles but also his collection of literally hundreds of old CRT TV's & monitors - his reason being, you need a good display set up for the full retro gaming experience. It was great how excited everyone was, and they were also seriously talking about putting together a gaming museum in Ireland which, in my opinion, would be epic.
On the second floor there was so much going on. There were some really good cosplayers including two people (dressed as Squall and Rinoa) who were there talking about Kupocon. What is Kupocon I hear you ask? It is a celebration of all things Final Fantasy including; games, music, special guests & more. We will be attending next year in Birmingham as the London event has already sold out. Outside of this, there were tournaments being held and retro games & consoles on sale along with lots of handcrafted items.
photo credit 8-Bit Gaming Conference
photo credit 8-Bit Gaming Conference
photo credit 8-Bit Gaming Conference
Overall we had an awesome time and based on an interview done with the event organisers they are even looking at bringing it to Cork which would be awesome. For any of you who missed out on it this year, I cannot recommend highly enough that you check it out next year.
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