A Trip to the Leeds Gaming Market
Crowds, bargains and missed connections!
The long running Video Game Market held an event in Leeds on Saturday… and guess where I just happened to be? I couldn’t get early entry tickets as they were long sold out, so I turned up at 12pm with what looked like half of Yorkshire! This was the queue to the door…
And this was the queue to get to that queue to the door! What had I let myself in for…?
Thankfully the queues moved fairly rapidly. But as people filed into the Royal Armouries event hall, I started to wonder how I would be able to move around in there, and my concerns were not unwarranted!
At least for the tables at the front, it was impossible to squeeze in to even see what was on offer. I’d been to other Gaming Market events - London most often, and the Blackpool Expo event last year - but the sheer number of people packed into this hall surprised me. Easily busier than the London market; I expect it had drawn people in from all over the north of England.
Still, that’s enough about queues and crowds. Let’s get on to why I was really there!
Games Galore
Stalls at these events are a mixture of professional retro gaming traders (including a small number who travel up and down the country to events like these while being mostly online), those selling bespoke artwork, console mods or other assorted gaming merch aside from games, and a handful of folks whom I presume are clearing out personal collections!
As you would expect, PlayStation games were exceptionally well represented, with most stalls having boxes upon boxes of PS2 games scattered around, a fair amount of PS1 and PS3 titles too. Flicking through them often required a bit of crouching down to floor level, and my knees aren’t as robust as they used to be! Wii games were plentiful, but most stalls only had very common titles - Mario, various music and sports games, and lots and lots of shovelware.
Sega games made up the majority of 16-bit and 8-bit titles on display, as expected. When I was at Retromessa in Norway last year I was surprised at the lack of Sega there, but it’s no surprise that they’d be everywhere here in the UK where the Master System and Mega Drive did exceptionally well against Nintendo in the 90s.
Rounding off the retro selection there were a few stalls with 80s micro games - Spectrum, C64, Atari ST - and a good showing of big-box Amiga and PC games.
A Mega Haul
The burning question: what did I end up buying? Well, remember how I said that Sega titles were in abundance - they made up almost all of what I snagged from the market! No mini reviews just yet (haven’t had a chance to play them) but here’s a little bit about why I picked them…
Batman Returns (Master System)
The first thing I spotted once I’d wrestled my way through the crowds was this copy of Batman Returns on the Master System, being showcased up on a shelf with some other rare titles. But what makes this one rare? It’s the Classic variant sleeve. Towards the end of the Master System’s life in Europe, eleven games were re-released with special brown-paper box art, and for one reason or another they’ve become much harder to find than the original releases! I’ve been collecting them on and off, snapping up any I find in the wild, so I was very happy to see Batman Returns here for a very good price. I may do a whole feature on these Classic variants…
Dynamite Headdy
When attending events like these, it’s important to go in with a budget and a shopping list, otherwise you can easily end up buying indiscriminately and spending far too much on games that you shouldn’t have. I broke that rule (just a little) with this copy of Dynamite Headdy, Treasure’s unique puppet-show platformer. It wasn’t on my list, but it was in such good condition - cared for exceptionally well - that I just couldn’t leave it. Headdy is one I rented several times back in the 90s but never owned, I’m happy to finally have it in my collection!
Earthworm Jim 2 and Hard Drivin’
Earthworm Jim 2 was top of my list of most-wanted games going into this market: it’s the final game I need in order to restore my childhood collection of Mega Drive games! I had held onto a lot of my Mega Drive games over the years but they were falling apart: sun damage, missing manuals, peeling labels. So I set a goal to repair or replace all of them… and Shiny’s highly-regarded earthworm-wearing-a-spacesuit simulator was the last one. Again, I’ll do a full post on these at some point.
To get it for a decent price, I bought Hard Drivin’ with it. This one was a complete unknown to me - an arcade conversion featuring some impressive looking 3D graphics, years before Virtua Racing came along. What’s more, it’s by Tengen, and their games have a box art style that looks very nice all lined up on a shelf!
Victor Vran (PS4)
Last but by no means least, a break from the 16-bit goodness: I came across Victor Vran: Overkill Edition on PS4, and was immediately drawn in by its promise of a Motorhead DLC expansion! And even better - it comes with Motorhead pin badges! I’ve always liked rock band tie-ins in video games, from the Aerosmith-tinged Revolution X to Jack Black’s starring role in Brutal Legend, so - knowing nothing about it - I resolved to give it a try. I’ve been playing it the last couple of days and having a lot of fun dungeon-crawling, slaying skeletons and spiders and collecting loot … and I haven’t yet touched the Motorhead levels!
I left Leeds with a clutch of games in my bag, stayed (almost) within my budget for the day and completed or made progress towards at least two of my collection milestones - I’d call that a very successful outing!
The only thing I missed out on was bumping into a few other retro gaming acquaintances, friends or followers from Twitter or elsewhere - I blame this mostly on the massive crowds inside the venue making it impossible to find anyone, or even to stop for a moment and and look. Perhaps if I’d shown up for an early ticket at 11am it might’ve been easier? I reckon the next market event I’ll be at will be the London one so I’ll definitely consider it.