Gamers flock for a taste of retro

As requests go it was a strange one, but legendary video games designer John Romero was happy to oblige as he feigned the removal of 11-year-old Taylor Davis' head with the thankfully cardboard tool.

As gaming royalty he is pretty used to meet and greets with fans like father Arron Davis who was dressed in an outfit based on a character from Doom - one of Romero's most famous games.

"She loves Doom. I suppose you could call us a family of Doom nerds," said a beaming Arron Davis, from Stourbridge.

The 32-year-old was among more than 2,000 gaming fans at Retro Revival at Wolverhampton's Dunstall Park, an event aimed at bringing back the culture and inspiration behind the classic gaming experience.

For two days the racetrack's bar and function rooms were converted into a homage to the roots of gaming, packed with around 200 classic coin-operated video arcade machines, pinball tables and old consoles.

The main room was crammed with dozens of stalls selling early home computers and consoles such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari, along with just about any game released during the 1980s and 1990s.

There was no Call of Duty or Resident Evil on show, this was a chance for nostalgia freaks to celebrate the wonderful simplicity of others from the era such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble.

And while modern day games may shift millions of copies and earn software houses the type of revenues previously reserved for film studios, in the gaming world the thirst for all things retro has also exploded in recent years.

The event saw many of the pioneers of gaming on hand to talk to fans, including developers from prime software houses Ocean and US Gold.

But it was the charismatic Romero who proved to be the major draw. With his trademark hair flowing all the way down his back and affable manner, the 46-year-old American had hundreds of fans queuing up for his autograph, while a lucky few were given the chance to take him on at some of his own games.

He is revered by millions for his work developing Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake and Dangerous Dave among a slew of other ground-breaking titles in the 1980s and 1990s. Together with programmer John Carmack he is credited with popularising the first-person shooter style that has taken over the world in the shape of Call of Duty, Resident Evil and their ilk.

"We had no clue how big it would become," said Romero, who stopped off at the event on a European tour with his wife, Brenda, herself a games designer of some repute having worked on the Wizardry role-playing series in the 1980s.

"When we started we had no blueprint to work off. It was all new. But we sort of developed this phrase, 'Design is Law'. It was like a mantra. Everything was about the quality of the design and the game play. That is why so many of the older games have stood the test of time and are still popular to this day."

For Romero it comes as no surprise that all over the world players have been putting aside the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in favour of a return to the heavily pixelated graphics and bleep-bleep sounds of traditional gaming.

He added: "I think a lot of people, software developers and players, just got tired of what we would call the graphics arms race, where companies would try and outdo each other in terms of violence and graphics.

"But you know, sometimes people don't want something super complex. The retro thing has actually led to a lot of indie designers returning to pixel art style graphics."

It is a view that is backed up by the popularity of recent games like the Finnish produced Angry Birds franchise which requires players to control a slingshot to hurl birds at pigs. It is a game you can play on your phone, featuring graphics that would not have looked out of place 20 years ago. Yet it has been downloaded from Apple's App Store almost two billion times.

It is a return to the factors that made gaming fun in the first place, and partly explains why the Retro Revival event drew visitors from Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and beyond.

Now in its second year, the event was organised by long-time revivalists Chris Wilkins, editor of Retro Fusion magazine and Craig Turner, who runs Wolverhampton firm Turnarcades Custom Arcade Machines.

Mr Wilkins said the demand for retro gaming was 'growing out of all proportion', with the number of visitors at this year's event more than double the 2013 total.

"It is taking people back to what they first loved about gaming," said the 44-year-old from Kenilworth.

"The bold coloured graphics and the simplistic game play. Anyone can pick up a game and be hooked within a few hours."

Mr Wilkins said the reassurance represents far more than just a trip down memory lane for 40-year-olds trying to relive their childhood.

"Look around here and you'll see little kids playing Pac Man and loving it," he added.

Two five-year-old's could be seen battling it out on a Simpson's arcade machine that came out 18 years before they were born at the event while in a section of the venue dedicated to old consoles a father guides his six-year-old son through the rigours of Super Mario on the Nintendo 64.

"I've still got the old console at home so we game a lot together," said Earl Adams, aged 33, from Stourbridge.

"He got into all the old ones through me. Games have changed so much but new gamers will always get into the classics."

Nick Browne, who runs Vintage Gamer in Windmill Hill, Halesowen, said he had seen an influx of new gamers coming into his store over the past three years.

He said: "Younger people are finding out about the magic of the old games through their dads. It is great to see. This was a big part of people's childhood but it is now having the same affect for a new generation."