RGP confirms NERG as part of 2015 event supply schedule

RGP Adds NERG to 2015 event schedule

2nd February 2015

The Retro Games Party event supply team confirms they will be rolling out the cabinets again for NERG (North East Retro Gaming) after finalising brief but highly productive talks with event co-ordinator, Phillip Murphy.

The event, in its 3rd year will return to Gateshead International Stadium in Newcastle on the 20th & 21st of June 2015, opening on the Saturday from 10:30am – 7:00pm and on the Sunday from 10:30am – 5:00pm.

Although the event was announced in tandem with operating the 2014 show and indications were always towards us returning, it can take a number of months for people to recuperate and start planning next year.

Its not as simple as you think and its never a done deal just because you were there last year.  We’re never complacent about the events we do.  Its a privilege to work with every organiser

Retro Games Party has been a supplier to NERG on the two previous occasions.  In the first year 40 machines from James’ personal collection stood with other collectors machines making a total of 56 – more limited by transport at the time than anything else.

In 2014, after expansion to sit as part of a larger group, RGP were able to increase the show to approximately 100 games, 80 supplied by ourselves and a further 20 again from other collectors.

The number of visitors and response also increased.

This year will be approximately the same, transport considerations are the factor that can prevent you doing everything you want all the time.  Its all planning.  We always wait to find out what the client wants – which in Phil’s case is usually everything.  This year there’s a concept we’ve been wanting to try out but were a little young in our experience to manage it – want to know what it is, come to the show.

This year, some newer titles from our stock have been requested, NERG’s own marketing will announce all of them in due course and as well as some classics you can’t be without, there’s a vote going on the facebook page for whether we should bring the full motion Out Run or After Buner.

At a previous event, I had to spend a fair bit of my time with my head inside the After Burner to try and keep it running but thanks to some hours put in by Mark, Gaz and others at base, its running solidly.  Let the people have their choice.  Just remember you’re not 12 anymore and the cockpit is a bit of a squeeze now for us adults.

The 2015 NERG show is also sporting a Back To The Future theme by way of titling itself as “Back To The NERG” in reference to the first movie in the trilogy’s first trip into the future being.  Maybe the DeLorean might burst into the middle of the hall?  I still want to know when my hover board is arriving?

If Phil goes forward to a 4th show in 2016, I wonder if the name will be along the lines of NERG the 4th Be with you!

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Where: Gateshead International Stadium, Neilson Road, Gateshead, NE10 0EF
When: Saturday & Sunday, 20th/21st June 2015, 10:30-19:00 (Sat), 10:30:17:00 (Sun)
Admission: Flat rate ticket £15 day pass or £25 full weekend.

Website: http://www.northeastretrogaming.com

Contact: 07712 135 990

Tickets: Via EventBrite

Zaccaria TRON Arcade Game Restoration And Repair - Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luuU2e3Hysg

Zaccaria TRON released in 1982 under license from Bally/Midway.

Part 2 of unknown…

 

Subscribe to us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/retrogamesparty
Thumbnail and cover graphic by Shaun Holley

 

Zaccaria TRON Arcade Game Restoration And Repair - Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGl-400LEU

Zaccaria TRON released in 1982 under license from Bally/Midway.

Part 1 of unknown…

 

Subscribe to us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/retrogamesparty

Arcade Club Launches In Haslingden

New Arrival - Namco Rally X (1980)

Namco Rally-X (1980) Joins Our Collection

In 1980, Namco released a four-way scrolling car chase maze-style game called Rally-X.  In the same style as Pac-Man, you run around collecting the flags, avoiding the bad guys and progressing through levels.

 

The screen is set into a maze and a radar and score – this is a style we’ll see again on the upgrade to this, inventively called New Rally X and then on Bosconian – a rare to find game.

Personnally, Rally X grates on me a bit, I like the game but ultimately i’m looking to convert it to New Rally X as the game is just more fun and the music is better.

I don’t remember seeing Rally X in the arcades back in the glory days but always saw New Rally X.

The game was found via an eBay auction with a dead monitor (flyback arcing like mad), so i’d been saving a Hantarex MTC900 14″ for a rainy day so gave it a service and cleaned up the machine.

Its been done just in time for Play Expo for our monster arcade – along with the Northern Lights Pinball guys there’ll be around 250 video games and pinball machines there.   Check out the event and see our videos on it if you missed it.

For now, enjoy this little video.

 

NERG 2014 (North East Retro Gaming Events)

Return to NERG

This weekend, July 5/6 2014 saw us at Gateshead International Stadium once again for NERG!

100 arcade machines, 50 pinballs, tons of consoles and computers and traders galore.

This year NERG was supporting the Bright Red charity fighting against blood cancer.

Here’s our walkaround video of the event.

 

NERG Future

NERG will return next year on July 20th and 21st 2015 at the same location, full details can be found on the website, and yes, we can confirm here we will be providing the bulk of the machines again.

 

Contact

Official Website: http://www.northeastretrogaming.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NorthEastRetroGamingLimited
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nergofficial

 

 

Day At The New Arcade - Ben's Day

Ben Joins The Team

Long time friend Ben Ridsdale has been sequestered onto the team for a while so we gave him the camera and said “follow us around at the arcade” and here’s what he came up with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzLa9l_EHZw

Not everything was filmed or usable but we hope you like our efforts to show you what’s going on

James was investigating an Atari Paperboy machine that kept resetting itself, which seems to be voltage related at first but then has some corrupt graphics to deal with.

Also we had a look inside the Super Off Road donated to us nearly 2 years ago by Ben Roscoe (ben76) – time flies when you’ve nowhere to keep a machine that size.

The left speaker on the OutRun Deluxe isn’t working, well, you can hear the music very faintly but its hissing like it should so the amplifier is probably working but nothing is getting there.

Crazy Taxi also got a once over, the one we picked up last year still doesn’t have any top end sound working but also the test and service buttons inside the coin door don’t work so there’s probably a wiring fault – have you ever had a NAOMI upright apart?

Some cab-tris was played to get to some things, we still haven’t found Return Of The Jedi in the clump of machines – a ladder and a zoom lens did find it but we couldn’t access it – it needs its power section sorting out as it resets when warm.

And lastly, to fix some Battlezone boards we brought the cabaret cab back to the old lair, as its a full rig with vector monitor, power supply board and loom, it should make sorting the problems out a bit easier.

We’re still loving the ghetto style wiring in that machine from the Play Blackpool event – it might not be factory – but it’s original and it works!

 

Arcade Build Blog: Why we're not getting a SEGA G-LOC R360

We’ve been getting a constant barrage of emails etc about this particular game and we’d like to dispel a rumour that is going around at the moment.

We can state with absolute certainty that we are NOT getting a SEGA G-LOC R360 at the new arcade.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) Design

When the designs for the build were done, we made a decision to close the ceiling in at the standard room height of eight foot (2.4m).

The doors from our loading bay are lower than this at standard door height.

We also have a supporting beam which runs horizontally across the building and comes lower than 8ft.

2) Placement

A SEGA G-LOC R360 would therefore require a specific space and could only be in one half of the arcade which would limit us considerably as we wanted to create an environment that could be changed regularly to keep the layout fresh and interesting.

3) Public Events

We just know that events are going to want this machine if we had it – given the OutRun Deluxe take 3-4 people to move it this would mean more.

We’ve chosen not to pursue one because of the size and transport requirements involved, the more of the bigger games you take, the less variety you can have unless you use more and more trucks to move things.

4) Power requirements

These beasts are BIG and have powerful motors and require a fair old bit of electricity to throw you around on them – and given that most people just spin around in it for 2 minutes you can imagine how much power it would draw.

We have a fairly meaty power supply at the new place but you have to balance out load and that’d mean a whole extra installation.

5) Lastly, availability

Ever tried finding rocking horse poop?  Yep, these are as rare.

Like with a lot of dedicated classic arcade games, unless the cabinet could get converted to something else then in a large number of cases, the game got smashed up.  That’s why there’s not that many Space Harrier sit-ins and Star Wars cockpits about anymore.

So that’s our 5 reasons we’re not going to be having one, now there’s an official blog entry about it, anyone asking, I can just direct them here.

Hope to see you all soon.

 

Public Announcement Q&A

Public Announcement Live Q&A Session

This page hosts the public announcement question and answer session

Retro Games Party 5.5 - August 2013 Official Party Review and Video

 

Retro Games Party 5.5
They came, they saw, they played!

From all over the UK, 86 people descended upon Retro Games Party 5.5 on 31st August in Blackburn to play in total 48 video games, 4 pinballs, 1 Electro Mechanical gun game and relive an arcade experience never covered in the press any more.

Sure, we at Retro Games Party support public events like North East Retro Gaming, Revival and PlayExpo (2012) with the loan of machines but the media coverage has completely overlooked the arcade side of the retro gaming scene, instead concentrating all their sparse reviews on the pinball machines so our job is to re-raise the awareness of these classic bits of history.

We had worked very hard since our last party in April to expand the space available both for machines and visitors, fix machines that had presented problems following events, even rebuild new arrivals like Dig Dug and finally, in the last days leading up to this event, we were so happy that our Star Wars cockpit finally came to life.

Facebook has been lit up over the past few days following the party with feedback and, unlike the last few events, I managed to run around with my own camera and film what was going on.

This time we had more people from the pinball community due to our dedicated pinball room provided and maintained by Luke Wells of ArcadeUK as well as guests Melli, Bill and Matt Peakman who were winners of our competition run in conjunction with GamesYouLoved.

Chris Wilkins, RGP and Paul Hughes, 31/08/2013

Special Guests

Sometimes there’s a point comes up in doing these events that you’re really glad of a nice surprise and it’s nice when people bring people with them, Chris Wilkins of Revival Retro Events brought long time friend of his and equal retro enthusiast Paul Hughes (formerly of Ocean Software) who i’d been briefly in contact with a few years previous, having grown up with the Commodore 64 and most of Ocean’s games and then reading Paul’s site I can say it was an absolute pleasure to finally meet the man.  Anyone who ever loaded an Ocean game on the C64 from tape will know the loader – this was the guy that wrote it.  I’m not one for being a who-met-who but it’s nice to sometimes get a picture to remember things from.

Chris borrowed one of the rooms here at Retro Games Party HQ to perform an interview for a book he’s writing and I kind of barged in for a few minutes and got a bit of footage which is in the video.

Well behaved machines, well behaved players

I’m always constantly thankful that the machines live out the night, i’m not bothered if they fail the next day, at least everyone was able to play on them until they got switched off, this time fortunately everything behaved very well.  Even the newly refurbished Star Wars cockpit survived 8 hours of service, it has a few niggles to iron out like an intermittently disappearing left speaker and the control yoke wants some work doing but those are minor compared to the utter sweat poured over the monitor, game board and power supply for nearly a year by our friend Nad Parvez (aka Equites), we owe this man a huge thanks in his own right.

The only machine that we couldn’t keep working was Battlezone, it seemed to be suffering with heat related issues, normally we can work around those quite easily but because of where we had placed the machine and the volume of people, sadly we had to turn it off after a couple of hours.  It will go into the investigation pile as it had previously run for multiples of several hours.

Everyone who attends is always so pleasant to talk with, we have fans from older and younger generations who come and thankfully the old practice of slamming joysticks and control sticks about has ceased.

Below you’ll find the YouTube video but before you watch it, i’d like to say a huge thank you to the people that work behind the scenes with us to ensure the machines work and to help with the set-dressing side of it (moving the machines around, making sure we all have place to stand and talk, catering etc).

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrBtk0DDL2g