Today Emma and I headed over to Manchester to meet up with her friends Ada, Iain & Tim, and to also check out the Videogame Nation exhibition currently on at the Urbis
While waiting for Emmas friends we had a nosey around the Urbis’ gift shop which always has some cool stuff and spotted Brian Ashcrafts Arcade Mania book!
Would’ve picked up a copy but got mine in Yodobashi last year 🙂
Once we’d met up with Ada, Iain & Tim we headed into the exhibition. It costs £3 to get in and was worth every penny!
Shelves full of retro goodness, there was an N64 on the bottom shelf which was a little odd… cmon it isn’t THAT old
Recognise this? if you’re a regular reader you should do!
DIY Pixel art, couldn’t find any inspiration so just made some tetris shapes 🙂 Emma made the square in the bottom left.
ELITE! the computer was busted when we came across it but I managed to get the emulator working again, not before writing a stupid little program in BASIC, i’m so cool…
Playing some Rainbow Islands, trippy fun
This next section brought back lots of happy memories with some classic games like Cannon Fodder, Lemmings and DIZZY!
Fantastic world of Dizzy, anyone else think he’s long overdue a comeback?
This is a copy of the hand drawn layout of the world map for Fantasy World Dizzy, so cool! Give the ogre the apple, use the water on the fire…
Back when games used to come in massive awesome boxes, with huges free posters and bibles for manuals, alot of that charm is long gone with boring DVD cases and PDF manuals 🙁
Behind this cabinet, the entire wall was covered in screenshots from Beneath a Steel Sky
I kinda glossed over the sports section, but took time to get my ass totally handed to me at Sensible World of Soccer by Iain, good times!
Peoples game ideas, developers will be down later to steal all of these!
Cool wall artwork for the ‘gaming on the go’ section. I don’t know about you guys but I always bust out the leathers, shotgun and game gear when i’m on the move!
It all started getting a little modern from here 🙁
A spotlight on gaming in the media, mainly focused on the negative, playing games will make you fat and die, playing wii destroys joints etc…
A visual timeline with some pretty serious ommissions, totally missed out the 16bit era with no SNES or Megadrive, and where’s the Saturn and Dreamcast? they may’ve bombed but they still existed!
It was a really good exhibition and worth every penny for the chance to play those old classics again! Reminded me a bit of the game on exhibition Emma and I went to at the Science Museum a few years ago.
Afterwards we had some munchies in the Urbis cafe and did a spot of shopping in Afflecks Palace. Then we said out goodbyes to Ada, Iain & Tim – all really nice people it was great to meet you!
Stopped off for a cocktail at Old Orleans, Emmas was non alcoholic seeing as she was driving
Also got treated to dinner at Hard Rock Café!
Emma and her yummy fajitas
My BBQ Bacon legend burger, amazing, just amazing
Really fun day, super tired now so goodnight!