Digital games can’t compete with the nostalgia of a Game Boy and Tetris, as thousands flock to retro heaven at the London Gaming Market.
As digital-only video games become more and more the norm, the London Gaming Market’s retro-focused exchange offers an escape in the exact opposite direction.
It showcases a community dedicated to keeping old consoles, games, and accessories alive and judging by last Sunday’s event, retro gaming is still very relevant to a lot of people.
GameCentral spoke to vendors and buyers, and the common denominator was that today’s games and consoles can’t compete with the nostalgia they have for what used to be.
The first thing that was clear at the event, held at the Royal National Hotel in London, was that it’s almost too popular for its own good.
A long line of gamers were queuing outside the hotel, well before the 11am opening time, and once inside the amount of personal space stood in direct contrast to the overwhelming number of retro games and consoles on show.
‘It’s intimidating, there’s a lot of people here,’ says Daniel Booth with a nervous chuckle. He’s a first time vendor at London Gaming Market but knows exactly why events like this are so popular.
‘I think it’s very important. There’s a big community around physical games that you can hold in your hands, or see in your bedroom. Modern games are often downloaded and there isn’t that connection, but everyone here believes the same thing: that games should be physical.’
Like many of the vendors we spoke to, Booth revealed that Pokémon still rules supreme among buyers, as the Game Boy classic taps into what’s most important at a market like this one.
‘I think nostalgia is the obvious [appeal], but I also think it’s a gateway back to simpler times. Modern games are very different to more streamlined and focused games of the older times. I think a lot of people, along with the nostalgia and the memories, just really connect with that.’
William Stott, who’s been a seller at similar events for about 10 years, was at the London Gaming Market helping his friend downscale his retro gaming collection.
He said they could make a couple of thousand at an event like this, and that the old Game Boy handhelds and the 1989 Mega Drive console are among buyers’ favourites.
At this particular stall, the most valuable items were a £500 Monster Hunter Stories amiibo figure (top shelf in above picture), which was only produced for two weeks in Japan, and the game Snatcher on the 1991 Mega-CD for £700 (disc in front of the Sega Master System on the top left).
Sellers usually don’t bring their most prized possessions along to an event like this, but one vendor claimed he had the rarest item in the room: a PC Engine LT console, only released in Japan in 1991, which he priced at £3,500.
Retro gaming doesn’t have to be that hardcore, however, as looking around you could find anything from Atari 2600 consoles to PlayStation 1 through 4 and the first Xbox up to Xbox 360, with countless games for each format.
There’s also every version of the Game Boy and various Nintendo consoles, as well as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering trading cards, and a surprising amount of crochet of popular video game and anime characters (we bought a pokéball and Electrode).
This is that nostalgia buyers are looking for, and we even overheard someone who said they bought a £3 PlayStation 2 game just because they liked the cover art when they were young.
One browser, Beth Anderson, was looking to reclaim her collection from when she was younger, to relive those PlayStation and SNES memories again, in an increasingly digital age.
‘Games now move more into digital-only and we don’t own things anymore, and it’s really nice to have something on a shelf. It’s like the tyranny of choice with the online stuff, that you have everything that could ever want to play.
‘It’s nice to be here in real-life, next to people, rather than just online. There’s a really nice community of retro gamers and this is a chance to get together and see friends too, it’s really important,’ she said.
Huy Nguyen was on a mission to finally fulfill his dream of getting his hands on an original Game Boy with Tetris.
‘When I was a kid I wanted to get a Game Boy, but my parents never got me one. So I thought now that I’m older I can afford one, I can buy one without any bad conscience or guilt,’ he said, and added that he too appreciates the promise of simpler times.
‘Modern games are great, but they’re very complex. Like Baldur’s Gate 3, you have to spend hours and hours and hours to play those games, whereas something like Tetris you just pick that up and play it. Tutorials of newer games lasts longer than some of the older games. I can’t spend two hours learning how to basically do a run and jump off a wall.’
It’s a good thing that there are three of these events in London each year, and even more around the UK, as two hours after opening time and the queue outside still hadn’t shrunk.
Judging by the amount of gaming history that was on sale, and the overwhelming enthusiasm of attendees, retro gaming’s promise of simpler entertainment has a lot of appeal in today’s digital age.
Much of that may be spearheaded by nostalgia but that’s far from the only factor, as gamers look for an alternative to the bloat and grind of modern titles.
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