RetCon: The Retro Gaming Festival - 15/6/24

[HEXdidnt]

This year's RetCon is fast approaching! Once again, we're gathering together a wide range of retro gaming systems (along with a few new ones) and a selection of guests covering systems and software both old and new. As usual, there will be a decent Sinclair presence, and ESPectrum, an ESP32 SoC powered recreation of the ZX Spectrum, will be officially presented for the first time in the UK!

There should also be a few SAM Coupés as well - not least because the GCC has its own machine now - and we'll be featuring the public debut of wubsoft's latest game, amongst other things.

Guests this year include The Oliver Twins (Creators of Dizzy), Kevin Toms (Creator of Football Manager) and Michael J Nurney (of Mike's Vintage Tech YouTube channel).

As ever, it's at the Greenford Community Centre, 170 Oldfield Lane South, Greenford UB6 9JS, running from 10am to 5pm on Saturday 15th June.

Please keep an eye on RetCon's Facebook page for further updates.

Tickets are available in advance via Eventbrite, or at the door.

[HEXdidnt]

Just published on the Facebook page is the news that SAM Coupé stalwart, Rob Evans (aka wubsoft) will be giving his latest project - Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh - its public debut at RetCon this year. It's a tribute to the Atari ST conversion, by Imagine Software, and will support the SAM Mouse interface to ensure quick reflexes can win the day.

RetCon is very much a multi-platform event, and there's always plenty of Sinclair content because many of the staff are Sinclair fans. As a SAM owner myself, I've been thrilled to promote the machine and its users by getting some table space reserved for upcoming projects - as well as The Lower Caverns, we had a demo of Adrian Brown's conversion of Treasure Island Dizzy the same year we first had The Oliver Twins as guests.

I've played a couple of very early builds of Arkanoid II, and it's looking great so far!

[HEXdidnt]

Bit more news about this year's show: Kevin Toms has unfortunately had to pull out, but the full guest list is now available.

Alongside ESPectrum, an ESP32 SoC-powered recreation of the ZX Spectrum, making its UK debut, and our regular Sinclair and SAM Coupé contingent, we have:

• Just confirmed: Roland Perry - tech consultant, founder of Ambit International, and the man responsible for steering the Amstrad CPC to success
• The Oliver Twins - creators of Dizzy and many more original games from the 8-Bit era, and founders of RichCast, an interactive story platform, making their third appearance
• Andrew Joseph - founder of the Dizzy fansite Yolkfolk.com
• David Pleasance - former MD of Commodore UK, author of the From Vultures to Vampires books about the Amiga, a RetCon regular
• Trevor Dickinson - founder of A-EON Technology, established to help fund hardware and software development for the benefit of the whole Amiga community
• Colin Porch - former Ocean Software coder, responsible for the C64, Atari ST and Amiga ports of Head Over Heels, now developing a sequel
• Jason Whitely - a classically-trained musician who worked at EA, creating music for Desert Strike and Road Rash, amongst other games
• Steven Fletcher - producer of The Commodore Story, Amiga: Alive and Kicking, creator of Cosmic Force on the C64, and now a version developed in Unreal Engine 5
• Stephen Jones - creator of the Checkmate series of Amiga cases and the new Checkmate Displays gaming monitors
• Mike Nurney - of the YouTube channel Mike's Vintage Tech, promoting his book, 8-Bit Stories, and his A-Pet computers
• Rob Smith - the Amiga developer behind the RobSmithDev YouTube channel and creator of the Disk Backup Station, which will be available for use at the show
• Mean Machine Dean - of Console Revive Store on Etsy