The best retro gaming event in the UK is back for 2011, tickets for Replay have gone on sale at the website which describes the event thus;



The first event, which was early November 2010, was excellent, with huge names such as Sony, Sega and Nintendo bringing friends like Sumo Digital along to play as well and, off in one corner room, were indie developers Ovine By Design and the almost legendary Jeff Minter demonstrating the then not-quite-finished iOs blaster Minotaur Rescue.

And, because the adorable, fluffy bunnies who organise Replay had a bit of a lapse and asked a certain long-haired wazzock with the organisational skills of a goldfish in a plastic bag to put together something to showcase homebrew gaming, there's going to be an Oldschool Gaming presence at Replay 2011!

i'm not sure exactly what hardware i'll have on hand, but i'm aiming for a C64C, Atari 800XL, 48K rubber-keyed Spectrum and a 2Mb A600HD, with all four loading from SD or CF cards. But more, much more than this... along with hoping that various homebrew peeps will tootle by to natter and perhaps show off work-in-progress code, i want to arrange a "warez rush" of new games that will be announced over the course of the event! At the moment there are four projects including one of mine on the go, but i'd like to see more produced for a wider range of platforms if at all possible.

Either way, if you're in the UK have a look at the event and consider going because it really was worth the effort last year and this larger iteration promises to be even better. Plus i expect to be stuck behind a table for most of the event and will need the company!

I'll certainly have some unreleased software you could show on the Spectrum.

Excellent - are you planning on going to the event itself? =-)

I'd like to, but it all depends really. A couple of mates have birthdays around that time, so a group of us usually go away for a couple of days of drunken debauchery. I'll suggest Blackpool as the destination this year and see what everyone thinks.

A lot of people went on the lash after the event last year so it might be worth selling the event as something to do during the day perhaps? =-)

Have you heard about In Da 80s in July by the way, much smaller event in Manchester at the Lass O' Gowrie pub in Manchester and they're wanting homebrew people there; (we're all going to be in the snug which isn't particularly big, so it's laptops only rather than bringing real hardware i reckon)? Basically it's the same event as Console Combat from a couple of years back under another name. Did i mention it's in a pub? =-)

A slight update about the Oldschool Gaming presence at Replay: i'm going to have a breadbin C64 with a 1541 Ultimate (courtesy of Frank Gasking unless my 1541U2 arrives before the event), an Atari 800XL with an SIO2SD, a newly-acquired Spectrum +2 with a DivIDE (assuming it works, the machine can't been fully tested until the SCART cable gets here from Greece!), a VIC 20 with switching RAM pack which'll be driveless but loading from the 1541U (and i need to build a composite video cable for it... i have a soldering iron now, be afraid!!) and if all goes to "plan" a soft-modded Xbox for anything else.

GroovyBee is also bringing along a 7800 and i believe Dave Moore is going to lend us a BBC as well along with the televisions.

i also have the option of taking a 2Mb A600 or 4Mb A1200 '020 (both booting from CF as soon as the latter is converted) if anybody fancies releasing an Amiga game at the event.

The C64 composite cables i ordered a few months ago work so that's sorted now so the VIC is either available as 3K, 8K, 16K or unexpanded.



The A1200 is now booting Workbench from CF (it was amazingly easy compared to the A600, i had a DMS image of RD Prep on the old hard disk and it seems to adore CF cards) and i registered WHDLoad - most of Sunday was subsequently lost to Slam Tilt!!

Anyone who wants to release a game at Replay should start thinking about telling me around now so i can "plan" things!

Do you want a copy of Coracle to stick on the Spectrum, or has Bebbers sent you a copy?

I've started working on the Byte Back themed game I promised to write, so that's probably a few weeks away...

Yeah, that'd be good - haven't heard from Bebbers for a couple of weeks i think...?

Coracle should be with you, let me know if you haven't received it.

While I'm thinking about it, would you be interested in a demo version of my vertical shmup, Milk, no Sugar?

I don't know about TMR, but I for one certainly would be interested in a demo of your shooter! I was quite taken by the early screens of it. If you could get something working, even just a level, then great

Sorry Jonathan, i've been tied up with work for a couple of days and didn't check that email account! Yes, it's arrived safely and Spector's pretty much answered as i would've too. =-)

It appears that Fikee, the author of Double Dragon 128K, will be at the show with a playable version of the game and will be looking to get it shown at the OSG stand. He's bringing a netbook just in case it doesn't work out, but between OSG and Winston (a WOS poster also taking his own hardware to show it amongst other things) we should get to see something on an actual Speccy. Looking forward to it! Now where's my joypad...

That'd be brutal - fingers crossed my DivIDE is finally on it's way now and i'll have at least one multi-card reader with me to add stuff to the CF it'll be using.

I managed to get the shoot-em-up running this afternoon, and it should now be with you. That just leaves the game I promised to write at The Lass o' Gowrie coding weekend. I'll have to get my skates on...