Profile & backstory

Who is the bloke behind the night?

Find out by reading this

The first question is usually “When did all this start?”

Well it all started many years ago at the Lass o’ gowrie when the then pub landlord Gareth tried to put on a night of it on a Sunday, I was not around for those early days so have no memory’s of it.

What did happen was he changed the night of it to a Tuesday and advertised it on the (now defunct)  Retro gamer forum and I started to go along to it, first as just a punter looking to spend the night outside in the “outer world”, until one day Gareth asked “Do you want to take it over and run it from now on?” of course I said yes, so after much sorting in the cellar I got it all organised* and put into a way that I could easily grab what was needed.

I also started promoting it all over the place with flyers a Facebook page and a twitter account, these things help spread the word about it and help me converse with people about what’s going on, I feel such a thing is important these days as word of mouth only works a little bit.
it proved so popular that we started putting it on a Friday night, I also ended up buying more stuff for it, stuff like Everdrives and “new” systems.

In the mean time I started going to more large scale events and getting known among the retro gaming community.

And then a few years down the line a bad thing happened, the owners of the pub had finally driven it to the ground with putting the rates up, so we had to move, the move was set in motion by Gareth, the move to the current location “FAB Cafe” and that’s where we are from now on.
I also do a bit of work for Monopoly Events, when ever they need gaming, they get in touch with the guy that hires me and he gets on the phone to me, we mostly use his equipment at those events, I get a fair bit of work freelancing at events with people that know im a hard working type that will get stuff done if it needs to be done.

Now onto about me. (Not ego trippin)

My personal history with video games is varied, I have over 30 (40, im older now) years of gaming under my belt and am more of a console gamer, I don’t mind computers but didn’t really own one (apart from a Dragon 32 that never worked and a lent Amiga 600), I just prefer the whole plug in and playness of consoles. It also makes set up a lot easier on my end. These days I do own a few computers, and have a fondness for my rubber keyed 48K Spectrum

In life after the Binatone and 2600 I took the Sega route, this means in current times I am a bit stuck as Sega don’t really release anything any more**, I don’t really like using modern consoles for events as unless its Nintendo they don’t do local multiplayer and have a REALLY HEAVY focus on online play, I do prefer to keep a generation behind, it enables me to get some great games on the cheap.

In the late 90s to the start of the Xbox era I worked in a small indie game shop selling DREAMS!! errr games, sometimes really bad ones with the lie “ive been told its good” (I hated doing this as it meant it would come back, id prefer to recommend good games, but at times, we needed to shift things, that’s retail for you),  I did build up quite a good customer base or people that regularly spent a few quid on things, I eventually left that job as the business was starting to die down due to new stock not coming in as regularly.

Personal favourite consoles. 

With this you can see why I tend to put out certain machines a lot more than others, haters of these machines can go and play on something else, I don’t like catering to fanboys.

The Playstation 2, a diverse range of titles and some gosh damn jolly well good arcade conversions, also when it has been modded even more titles come into view, stuff like Japan only titles that where actually good unlike most the budget tosh that came out over here. its also gotten to the point where games can be loaded off a internal HDD, I regularly stick a PS2 out with a bunch of games on the drive.

The MegaDrive, still a quite good fun machine with a good number of playable titles, never had a SNES while growing up, same with knowing people that owned one, it is also home to some of the best games ever made im not being biased here, it really is HOME TO SOME OF THE BEST GAMES EVER MADE also some right tripe like Back to the future 3. It also lends its self perfectly to events as a lot of its games are pick up and play.

The Atari 2600/7800 Well the 7800 plays 2600 games so its included also it has a decent library for its self, the Atari 2600 is simple, most of its games work on its simplistic basic controls, the bad games try to get things complicated, it should be at the state where you give somebody the joystick and right away they find out how to play via trial and error unlike these days when they have to tell you “Press right to go right”.

The Wii, OK stop laughing, underneath the waggle fests and spamware games theirs a ton of quality titles, it is the console that got people off the couch and can be played by anyone capable of moments.

Games wise

I do often get asked “What my favourite ever game is?” or words along those lines.

This is a tricky one as I don’t really have one and sometimes it can come and go, I do have a few games that I always come back to, mainly because they are loaded up and ready to go.

But when pushed I tend to say “Eeeee that’s a bit of a bugger” while stroking my stubbly chin

*Bit of a note to some, im an organisation freak

**Bloody hell, they stepped up on this

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