The Funstock Classic Gaming Championships - Replay Events

'Seeing retro gamers play collectively in one place - competitively'

When was the last time you can say that  happened in the public? It was actually more during the 80s & 90s themselves!

Well not now - thanks to Eurogamer events like REZZED and also EUROGAMER EXPO in September and also  Replay Events and sponsors Funstock - the Classic Gaming Championships give gamers the opportunity to be the No1 Retro Gamer in the land. To be the top of the top...top of the list in the UK!

There are a whole host of heats held throughout the UK across many months - culminating with the Grand Final in Manchester at Play Expo in October.

We recently attended EGX Rezzed in Birmingham and alongside the awesome New Gen offer there from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony they had RETRO!!

We were delighted as GamesYouLoved was asked to be a Partner of the CGC events http://classicgamingchampionships.com/partners/ and will be fully supporting the activity over social media and our website www.gamesyouloved.com up to the Grand Final in Manchester - Play Expo 2014. This mammoth event in October was already set to be an amazing event based on our last years experience.

Take a look here of some the 2013 highlights:

Not only that Showmasters being part of the Replay Events / Play Expo line up also promises some exciting exclusives too. This will increase the presence of video gaming publishers,  developers and peripheral manufacturers attending Showmasters events in the future. On the flip-side this means Hollywood movie star meet-and-greets,  photo opportunities with the celebrities, film props and movie cars will draw in even bigger crowds to the already successful event at Play Expo. Showmasters plan to bring film and TV related guests that cross over with the video gaming industry, making Play Expo 2014 and other Replay Events a fuller experience. Watch this space as they say!

For the CGC's at EGX REZZED at the Birmingham NEC we were witnessing the retro gaming action first hand and see the great job the organisers, Replay Events were putting on in a cool space dedicated to this at the event. Apart from the range of  retro gaming setups on the Replay Stand the CGC's offers people who love playing retro games a real focus at an event. 

Whether you are an expert gameplayer or just want to have a go for fun the atmosphere on the stand caters for you. You can take it seriously sure - but also with some of the games (list below) that you might not have even played before - its a case of trying it out. Then you can better yourself!

The array of titles in the CGC are worth pointing out - they have been compiled carefully by the Replay Team to test your very wit and dexterity with a controller. And many a different controller you'll have.  But it's all well and good picking up a unknown controller - what do you do with it?  Again the Replay lads are on had to help and young gamers benefited from this instruction and support as well as the older ones!

The next event up is Blackpool - www.playblackpool.com - perhaps next time we'll have a go to - can't wait!

Also the BIG EVENTS to look out for are:

- Eurogamer - Sept 2014
- Play Expo Manchester - Oct 2014

For more information go to:

http://classicgamingchampionships.com/

See our REZZED CGC Video overview:

The list of games on at the CGC's

Pot A - 1st to 3rd Generation (e.g. Atari VCS, NES, SEGA Master System), Kaboom (Atari 2600 VCS), Balloon Fight (Nintendo Entertainment System), Bank Panic (Sega Master System)

Pot B - 4th Generation (e.g. PC Engine, Neo Geo AES), R-Type II (PC Engine), NAM: 1975 (Neo Geo), Tetris (Gameboy - played via Gameboy Player on Gamecube)

Pot C - 5th Generation (e.g. Sega Saturn, Playstation, Nintendo 64), Super Puzzle Fighter 2 (Playstation), Sega Rally (Sega Saturn), Tempest 2000 (Atari Jaguar)

Pot D - Megadrive, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Paperboy, Psycho Pinball, Pot E - Super Nintendo, Super Mario Kart, Super Pang, Super Smash TV

Heats will include one game from each pot, selected at random and will not be announced until the first day of the heat.

Front Mission 3 Review

Front Mission 3 Review

DISCLAIMER: This is my favourite game of all time, so please excuse any outrageous favouritism!

Front Mission 3 is a strategy role-playing game released by Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) on the Playstation 1.

Originally released in Japan in 1999, it was the first of the series to receive official North American and European translations, both released in 2000. The game also in places bears a resemblance to a visual novel, where the story is progressed and explained through verbal interactions between characters.


Set in the year 2112, the Front Mission takes place in the real world, albeit one where nations have formed large power blocs, such as the Oceania Cooperative Union (OCU) in the pacific and the United States of the New Continent (USN) in the Americas and the Da Han Zhong Republic (DHZ) which represents a Chinese superpower.

The story revolves around two test pilots, Kazuki Takemura and Ryogo Kusama, who find themselves reluctantly embroiled in intrigue and conflict between the OCU, the USN and the DHZ when Kazuki's sister Alisha becomes involved in a plot to steal a newly developed weapon of mass destruction. Like many Square adventure titles of the time, there are many different characters to find and unlock and unusually two separate story-lines to play through, each from the opposing viewpoint of the other. Because of this, the game has good replay value.

The story itself isn't particularly gripping in terms of the direction it takes, being a fairly typical “War is bad and evil but we must BATTLE!” anti-war message, but the script varies wildly from the functional to the truly humorous and the personalities of the characters are nicely drawn out. In one cut-scene for example several enemy soldiers are discussing the imminent attack from the player's party; “I don't wanna die!” cries one. “Silence! We will stand here and fight!” orders the senior officer in his command mecha, “You're only brave because you have that,” says a third, pointing to the officer's huge machine “and you have that because your dad is the General!”.


The main part of the game is a turn based strategy where the player controls a team of up to four combat mecha known as Wanzers (a contraction of “Wanderung Panzer” or walking tank). Each character pilots their own Wanzer, but the choice of machine and how it is fitted with weapons is entirely up to the player. Arm, torso, leg and backpack components can be switched between Wanzers, and fitting particular parts allows different combinations of speed, power, capacity to mount weapons as well as granting the pilot the chance to learn special “Battle Skills”, which are signature special moves that increase the lethality or survival chances of the Wanzers in combat. The play style, which uses Action Points to determine how far a unit can move, how strong its attacks can be and if it can counter attack when threatened will be very familiar to players of games such as Advance Wars and the Tactics series of games, albeit without any unit creation during the scenario.

Missions are fairly standard for the genre including defending a friendly target from enemies or defeating all the enemies on the map. However, for its age and considering the limitations of the Playstation, the graphics of the battle scenes are fairly impressive. When selecting your units to move and attack, they are presented on a rotatable 3D map with animated sprites (a lot like the sprites from the original Front Mission on the SNES) but once you choose an Attack action, the camera zooms in and a fully 3D animated attack sequence is shown. Though the textures of the terrain and sometimes the Wanzers themselves can look quite pixellated and blocky, the animation of the robots is very smooth and the frame-rate rarely suffers. Each pilot even has their own victory pose animation when they destroy an enemy tank, helicopter or Wanzer. Infantry also play a small role, and very unusually for this type of game pilots can eject from their machines and take control of other abandoned units during the battle.

In regards to sound, which is often a key part of any Squaresoft game from the 1990s, the music itself varies from the well-written and enjoyable to the quite frankly mediocre. Though no track is so short as to be irritating, few of the tunes really stand out, though a standard “Squarism” is present in the music played at the successful completion of a mission which is upbeat and quite memorable.

This said, the sound effects in battle are very very well chosen, the Wanzer's actuators whirring as they move, the snap-snap-snap of a mecha-sized machine gun unloading into an enemy and the metallic crunch as one Wanzer fights in melee with another using a gigantic knuckle duster or military-grade pile-driver, even down to the smash as a limb breaks off or a mecha collapses to the ground defeated The sound effects in my opinion really add to the fun of the game, and are some of the best in any Playstation 1 game.

The game does have a lot of hidden depths beyond the story and strategy elements, including a psuedo-internet where the player can browse websites belonging to nations and corporations in the game, and cunning searching and hacking are rewarded with bonus parts for your Wanzers as well as many easter eggs. There's even an email system where the characters can send and receive information to and from non-player characters.
In summary, Front Mission 3 is a game which can reward perseverance and is recommended to fans of strategy games and mecha in general. Though the dialogue can be dry and long-winded at times, this isn't unusual in the genre, and the personalities of the characters shine through, if not particularly deeply.



The original PS1 disk is still available through Ebay and Amazon, though it can be pricey as it was not produced in large numbers in English, but for owners of the PS3 it was made available in the PSN store in 2010 and I recommend picking it up if turn-based strategy and giant robots are your thing.

GamesYouloved would like to thank, Bort_Malice. Our Guest Blogger for his RETRO gaming memories.