Can I Get A R3Play?

Hey, did any of you guys go to Game On in 2002? You know, the videogame exhibition exploring ‘the history, culture and the future of video games’. The event that let you play an opposable-thumb-trembling array of systems – from the crudest computer games through to early, not so early, and I-really-wish-we-had-released-this-thing-when-people-still-played-in-arcades coin-op machines, all the way to primitive and contemporary console games.

Cool, wasn’t it? But did any of you go to the second Game On expo in 2006/07? The one with everything minus the machines and the visitors? Yea, kind of sucked didn’t it?

Well guess what? There’s a new exhibition in town. It’s called R3play (pronounced ‘replay’, not ‘rthreeplay’, silly). It’s supported by industry magazine behemoths Retro Gamer and gamesTM, and it’s coming to Norbreck Castle, Blackpool on November 6 and 7 2010.

Like Game On, the expo will explore the big three Cs: consoles, coin-ops and computers. However, unlike Game On it will exhibit over 300 systems – that’s almost double what we saw at Game On! That pile that you’ve left festering in the corner of your bedroom comprised of the games that you will never get around to playing is going to look like a Crystal Dynamics videogame series compared to this baby!

What’s that? You want me to excite you even more? Then try this on for size: you will be able to take part in gaming competitions. Now, I’m not talking about the meaningless comparisons of Xbox Live gamerscores – a number that merely reflects when you got on-board with the Xbox 360 (don’t look at mine) – or even your run-of-the-mill multiplayer game – I’m talking about fierce, in-the-flesh contests with some of the best players around on some of the best games in history. Yea, this is big boy shit.

For those of you who can handle more excitement without climaxing, check out the R3play website for further announcements and to buy tickets.

At least a portion of R3play funds will be going to Macmillan Cancer Support and The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, because, you know, we gamers will eventually save the world.