EDITED: To actually include the date
RetCon - The Retro Gaming Festival is one for all the family with new and old systems for you to play and enjoy with new and old friends
18th June 10am-5pm
About this event
Everyone here at GCC HQ has our fingers crossed that you are having a brilliant 2022 so far. And I bet you are. I bet you had a terrific end of ’21 that saw a much-improved Christmas (2020 set a new low for that particular bar), and a sheeny, shiny new year full of hope for a glorious future. Fully in keeping with all this wonder, you’ll be delighted to hear that West London premier Retro Gaming event is waiting to improve your year, no matter how good you’ve already got it.
Retro Systems line-up
Exotic beauties like Sam Coupé (Spectrum’s fabled successor), Vectrex (portrait screened vector graphics marvel) and the mighty PC Engine will join perennial favourites Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, NES, SNES, Megadrive, PS1 and many, many more. Every system on show will be available to try, so you can jump mushrooms, shoot enemy space ships, navigate mazes, shoot ducks, race in all manner of cars, shoot enemy spies, fly WWII fighters and bombers, shoot pool…
Guests
As usual, the high glamour and respectability of the Greenford Community Centre* attracts the best and brightest of the retro celebrities. We’ll have talks and you can mingle with gamers, coders, YouTube stars and titans of the computing age. In person on Saturday 18th June will be Andrew and Philip Oliver, collectively known as The Oliver Twins, and among the most distinguished game developers of all time. They dominated the 1980s and 90s with many of the most memorable games we’ve seen, so much so that in 1986 it was reported that they were responsible for an estimated 7% of all UK games sales.
Joining them are RetCon favourites, Nicola & Anthony Caulfield, the incredibly talented creative team who brought us From Bedrooms to Billions, followed by sequels, The Amiga Years! and The PlayStation Revolution.
If that already makes you happier than a happy person in their happy place, we are totally stoked to confirm another firm fan favourite, Stephen Fletcher will be there. You may know Stephen as the creative genius behind The Commodore Story – Changing the world 8-bits at a time and The Commodore Interviews. Stephen will be here with copies of [Amiga 2021?] a powerhouse documentary that brings us up to date on how the Amiga has been kept at the forefront of computing technology.
More guests may be scheduled nearer the event so watch this space!
Competitions
Unless you’ve been kept in a steel box for the past 30 years, the incredible allure of competitive and multiplayer computer games won’t have escaped you. Well, we’d be completely out of order if we didn’t include some of the most fun retro multiplayer games you can imagine. Open to all comers on the day will be the hugely popular Unreal Tournament 1999; Sensible Soccer and more. It’s easy, all you need do is turn up and join in. That’s when you get to the hard part!
Well then, wotcha fink?
Truth is I haven’t been a betting man since ZX Poker, so let’s get real and hedge our bets. Even if your new year has (so far) been a poo year, we’ve got a bright spot lined up for your calendar that’s bound to make it all better and all this is yours for the princely sum of six pounds.
So if you’re interested in extremely cool retro computers and games consoles, on Saturday 18th June you really ought to head to https://www.facebook.com/gaming/RetConFestival for your ticket to the one and only RetCon.
It’s a family friendly, fully featured and fabulous way to spend a Saturday and the knowledgeable, approachable and helpful Greenford Computer Club team will be waiting to guide you towards wholesome retro style fun – see you there!
*Former home of Thomas Wakely , the 19th Century Surgeon, coroner and founding editor of the famous medical journal, The Lancet**.
** Which was also the term used, at the time, for a scalpel***
*** seriously? Ok it’s a surgical tool for making precise incisions, often in people, typically used by surgeons.