Retrospelsmässan | Retro Video Gaming

So I just got back from Tokyo 3 days ago and I’m still a bit jet lagged, and also very sick >.< But I refused to miss out on 2014’s RSM (Retrospelsmässan), Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition in Gothenburg. So I drove there yesterday to see what they had to offer.

The setup was similar to last year, the biggest improvement though was that they had more registers at the entrance (6 instead of 1 or 2 last year) so the massive queues went a lot faster (but they were still there). Last year I waited almost 4 hours before I could get in, this year it took a little more than one hour.

The last 1/5 part of the queuing

There were as usual loads of cosplayers running around. It’s always nice to see ^_^ Here’s a few of the characters I managed to capture on camera:

It’s a me! Mario!

Street Fighter and Kingdom Hearts cosplay

My personal favorite: Wheatley from Portal ^_^ Brilliant!

Zelda & Link cosplay

At the fair there were loads of things to do. They had competitions, hundreds of systems, arcades and pinball machines setup to be played, artwork being made and sold, speedruns, street fighter tournaments, traders selling retro games and stuff and lots more.

And Charles Martinet was there (the voice of Mario & friends) and you could get his signature…

…which I did ^_^ He was very friendly and funny :)

I came in quite late since I had to drive for 2 hours to get there, so I didn’t have time to browse around a lot through the games. I also think that most of the good stuff had already been picked out, but I did manage to find a few things :) I found Sunset Riders for Sega Mega Drive, Wolfchild and Prince of Persia for Sega Mega CD. I’ve been curious about the Mega CD version of Wolfchild ever since I made the review for Wolfchild on Master System. I found it disturbing that the game lacked music, then someone told me that the Mega CD version had music, so I had to hear it ^_^ Sunset Riders has also been on my radar for some time but it has always been so pricey on eBay. I got it for approximately 40 GBP (or 69 USD).

I also found a mysterious Famicom pirate game which had no name, just an image of Tetris and airplanes?! So I had to buy it to see what it would be like ^_^

It turned out to be just Tetris, but I haven’t seen a Tetris that looks exactly like this one before. It had loads of gameplay options like 1 player, 2 player, cooperative, versus etc.

It also had loads of russian songs to choose from ^_^ Troika is my favorite :D

That’s it for now, soon i’ll make a big post about all my pickups in Japan, and also a small guide of Akihabara’s great assortment of retro game shops ^_^ But first I will have to sort out this mess on my desk of over 100 games that I bought during my 2 weeks there… o_O

If you wanna know more about Retrospelsmässan check out their webpage, you can also read about my visit to last year’s RSM here >>

Yesterday I went to Gothenburg with my friend NinjaBrite to attend Sweden’s yearly retro gaming exhibition ‘Retrospelsmässan‘. This is the 4th year in a row that they’re hosting this exhibition and I think it’s a GREAT initiative! I was there 2 years ago as well, last year I missed though since I was in Japan. It has grown immensely in these past years, and it will probably be even bigger next year. The amount of people who came was way more than they had anticipated, even though they had hired larger facilities people were still quieing for hours to get in! I myself had to que about 4 hours (arriving at 12, two hours after they opened). It was ok though, since Nintendo was hosting a Streetpass competition everybody had brought their 3DS and so did we, so we kept busy ^_^ And also met some awesome cosplayers, like Pixelninja dressed up as Megaman :)

This year on the exhibition they had all the old consoles displayed and connected to TVs so you could try everything out, everything from old Pong consoles and Odyssey 2001 to the Atari Jaguar and everything Nintendo and Sega of course. They also had a corner for speedruns where you could watch some of Sweden’s fastest gamers ;D They had a Doom LAN, Cosplay competitions, arcade and pinball corner, game competitions and stands with companies and people selling retro gaming stuff and of course games! :D

Of course I had to pick up some games ^_^ I was looking for one game in particular, which was Starship Hector, but I’ll write more about that in a later post, that’s a looong story ^^ But I found it at this exhibition! And I also found Ninja Kid, Power Blade, Castle of Dragon, The Krion Conquest and James Bond JR. All were NTSC NES and I didn’t previously have them! (I am proud of myself that I brought a PDF of my collection in my phone, because I always tend to buy doubles unintentionally when attending places like this)… ;D
So here’s a little photo shoot I had of my latest pickups ^_^