NERG 2016

A big event in the North East for retro gamers is the North East Retro Gaming event held each year in Gateshead. Spanning the weekend, this years event was held on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd of July at the Gateshead Leisure Centre (not the International Stadium, more on that in a moment!).

This year I was once again joined by my brother Mark, and his friend Stuart (most notably of "Ashens" fame on YouTube, if you haven't seen his videos, check them out). A new addition called Robbo also joined us, indeed our party is ever-growing.

We scoured the stalls and picked up a couple of bargains but the general murmurs from around the hall seemed to be about the cliche, the hike in price of retro games since the boom in popularity.

A Quick Note About Retro Popularity and Prices
Myself included, the first 10 minutes were awash with negativity on my end on how people think it acceptable to charge certain prices for games that would have been half that a few years ago (I genuinely saw a Sonic The Hedgehog 1 on Mega Drive going for £10, though this was an extreme). 
Then it hit me (an idea, not the game), we can't really complain too much about some of our favourite titles increasing like they have. Yes, some are priced way beyond expectation and as such you should feel compelled to haggle the price. You then get the little niggle in the back of your mind that this stems from said "boom". The fact is though without this increase in popularity, we wouldn't have these events, these stalls and these machines. We pay a markup begrudgingly but if we didn't and the love of this hobby died down, where would we be? Surely back to drudging through car boot sales hoping this "this week it will be different".
While on this topic, keep in mind if the value of a game does go up, it is more likely to be looked after and well maintained. There are certain extremes as, of course there are but for the sake of a couple of quid, I am just happy these places exist.

The Event
So we set off from Mark's house and "Uber"ed over to the venue, not a particularly long journey, about 15 minutes. The strange thing was when we got there we noticed a unpleasant decrease in popularity this year, a real shame given last year seemed to have been really popular. Our worries were set at ease as we noticed not only were there fewer people, there were no people there at all! We got the wrong venue this year. It moved!
So we hollered another Uber and went to the correct venue, which ironically would have only been a 5 minute walk from the house. Undeterred, we cracked on.

There are pro's and con's about going to these sort of events with Stu, the pluses are in abundance, great guy, really funny and knows a lot about retro games. The only real negative is after his great YouTube series, a movie and a book, you come to a stark realization that you have done nothing with your life! It was nice to see fans of his come over though, they looked genuinely pleased to see him.

What We Done And Did
A couple of pickups I have been after for a while, Super Star Wars on SNES and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles on NES, haggled down to a good price. Unfortunately, with a wedding upcoming, I had to be rather specific in what I wanted to acquire this year. A little out of scope was a pretty trippy Japanese Super Famicom game called Fire Fighting. After some research I found it was called The Firemen in Europe and  Ignition Factor, I believe, in North America. I noticed there was a translation patch so gave it a go. Sadly the patch didn't work but the gameplay is still there, could be picked up pretty quickly.
Mark picked up Fire Pro Wrestling 1, 2 and 3 for Super Famicom as well as a couple of other Japanese carts. Stu got a little of everything!
After scouring the stalls, we tired a few machines, completed teh Simpsons Arcade game and myself and Robbo had a battle on one of the old Pong machines before we all went our seperate ways trying out other bits and pieces. I got my a**e handed to me playing Defender!

All in all, it was a cracking day out. NERG hasn't disappointed me yet and although the venue was slightly smaller this year, it was well laid out and the staff all appeared friendly.


Going forward, I am hoping to post where things are at the moment in terms of collection and get more reviews out shortly. I am also working on developing a Retro Game catalogue application just to keep things organised a bit.
With house moving, weddings, new jobs etc. the latter part of 2015 and the first half of 2016 have been insane and it is sitting on the couch with a controller in my hand that has kept me sane, all the more reason to push on and get something reviewed sooner much more rather than later!


All the best,
Richard