One of the highlights of my year is Play Expo – a weekend away in Blackpool that has a bunch of retro and modern video games. It’s pretty much the same every year: arcade machines as you walk in, trading hall to the left, pinball machines to the right, home consoles towards the back along with the main stage. Play Expo has a familiarity to it, which makes it a must attend every year for me. If only to see the same faces every year.
The traders hall is often a place I go for a wander. Not straight away, as it’s hectic, but towards the middle afternoon on Saturday it dies down a bit and you get to check out the trading hall, have a bit of a chat and just generally have a better buying experience. You feel less pressured as you check through the boxes on the floor (which – as somebody who has dropped 3 stone in the past year – is a lot more easier experience on the knees).
One such place is The Gaming Newsagent – a long time attendee that started as SegaMags, but branched out into all such other magazines. It was in one of these boxes and a bit of time for exploring I found this magazine. St Format issue 70, from May 1995. An immediate buy. When I said immediate, I meant immediate. I never bothered looking through the rest.
So what was so special? This small PD Game on the cover disk, Chain Reaction. A simple addictive game I played so much and stuck with me for a while. Here whas what was written about it.
If you followed me online for a while, you’d know that this sounds a lot like a game I made. Gone Fission! was inspired by Chain Reaction (and a thousand other PD games, I’ve got an article in my drafts where I talk about all different versions of the game and everything cool that has happened post launch. This is another of those things to add to that post, in a fun coincidence.
Anyway, weird kind of full circle on a side project that dominated this year.