Celebrating The Arcade 1971-1999 at PLAY Expo

A bit late after catching up with work, but had a fantastic weekend up at PLAY Expo Blackpool after last going back in 2015 (!) when I was then running the Games That Weren’t stand. This was a really special occasion, as it marked the launch of Paul Drury’s The Arcade 1971-1999 from Bitmap Books, which he’s been working incredibly hard on with Sam Dyer for the past few years. It’s come out amazingly well! John Szczepaniak, Martyn Carroll and myself had the honour of being asked to contribute too, with me putting together the unreleased arcade games chapter, so Paul invited us along to celebrate with him. A huge bonus was Eugene Jarvis, of Defender, Robotron and Smash TV fame amongst many others, coming over to celebrate with Paul. Eugene’s games of course feature heavily in the book, and he also contributed the afterword, so it was amazing to be able to hang out together as a group. I was pretty nervous, and it was slightly surreal having a curry with Eugene and the others, then all…