It has been revealed that a UK-based freeplay arcade packed with vintage coin-ops will close at the end of this month.

As reported by the Dorset Echo, Mike Saxton, the owner of the Portland-based FreePlay Gaming Arcade, has decided to shutter the arcade after just six months of business.

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Since 2004, the friendly face of Sonic the Hedgehog has gazed down on the M4 motorway in Brentford, West London, thanks to the fact that it's attached to the building that has served as Sega Europe's home for over two decades.

While the company has occupied several sites in the United Kingdom, 27 Great West Road has to rank as one of the most iconic. It has been Sega Europe's office pretty much since Sega became a third-party publisher at the turn of the millennium, and several members of the Hookshot Media team have fond memories of attending preview events in the building.

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If you're in the UK, you'll be aware that many areas have been impacted by floods, and Leicestershire – where both Time Extension and the Retro Computer Museum are located – has been hit especially hard.

We're sad to report that the latter has been impacted quite dramatically by flooding, with around four inches of water in the main museum, which houses a wide range of computers and consoles – including the prototype "Playboy" handheld donated by Rare, which is also based locally. Around ten inches of water is reported in the museum's separate arcade building.

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Following the success of the Nottingham Video Game Expo earlier this year, the team behind the event is expanding and launching a new show in the British city of Bristol.

The show will feature vendors, new games, food, drink and a host of guest speakers – the first to be confirmed is Worms creator Andy Davidson. Davidson is currently hard at work updating the legendary Director's Cut of the game for the Amiga.

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Earlier this year, former Rare artist and BAFTA-winner Brett Jones sadly passed away.

Jones worked at Rare between the years 1994 and 2002 and was involved with titles such as Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 as an artist and modeller. His tenure with the company – which was closely allied with Nintendo at one point but is now owned by Microsoft – would result in two BAFTAs and an Interactive Arts Award.

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When you're discussing video game TV shows with anyone British who is over the age of 30, then names like GamesMaster, Bits and Thumb Bandits are likely to crop up.

However, games actually came to TV in the UK almost a decade before the likes of GamesMaster and Bad Influence arrived and tore up the rulebook. As highlighted to us by Larry Bundy Jr, Magic Micro Mission was broadcast way back in 1983 and, in some respects, was way ahead of its time.

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Bandai's Tamagotchi virtual pet is seeing another rise in popularity, with its first UK store opening up in London's fashionable Camden market.

The brand became one of the hottest-selling items of the '90s and was relaunched in 2019. The BBC reports that global sales more than doubled between 2022 and 2023.

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We might be slightly biased here as we're based in the heart of England, but we often feel that this part of the country doesn't get enough credit for its amazing contribution to the world of gaming.

While many people will default to places like London, Manchester and Guilford when asked what they consider to be the UK's most significant place when it comes to video game development, the midlands is (or was) the home to the likes of Rare, Core Design, Blitz Games, Playground Games, Codemasters, Ultimate: Play the Game, Playtonic, Free Radical Design and many, many other companies – which gives us enough reason to think of it as the nation's "Silicon Valley", at least in terms of video game production.

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It is with a heavy heart that we bring you the news that '90s games journalism legend Andy Dyer has passed away.

Dyer will be famous to anyone in the UK who read video game magazines in the '90s; he began his career on Commodore Format as a staff writer before helping Steve Jarratt launch Total!, the UK's first magazine devoted to covering all of Nintendo's systems.

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A super-rare Hulk-themed Xbox console potentially worth thousands of dollars has been donated to a charity shop in the UK (thanks, Eurogamer).

The lurid green Xbox console comes from 2003, and was created to promote the Hulk movie released in the same year. It is apparently one of only fifty in existence and could be worth up to £9,000 / $11,000 USD.

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One of the History of Games 2024 conference talks, by Jaroslav Švelch, was on British game developer and journalist Mel Croucher. As Švelch describes it, he has become Croucher's biographer, interviewing him in his home and having access to his large archive of materials.

Croucher is perhaps best known for the games Pimania (1982), Groucho (1983), and Deus Ex Machina (1984) - the last one included an audio tape to be played alongside the game. In later years, Croucher moved into journalism and activism, writing for Crash magazine. Švelch's talk included archive photography, gameplay video, and detailed how Croucher was opposed to censorship but advocated self-regulation, was for nuclear disarmament, and, in many ways, was an outlier in the British games industry and press.

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The following event was ignored by the press, apart from Time Extension – so if you enjoy games history, please speak up.

Between Wednesday, 22 May, and Friday, 24 May, Birmingham City University played host to the fifth History of Games conference, the first taking place in Montreal in 2013.

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Computer Space holds a special place in video game history. It was the first arcade video game ever released, launching in 1971. It was also the first commercially available video game of all time and is responsible for starting Nolan Bushnell on the path to Atari, one of the most influential companies in the history of the industry.

However, despite all of this, it was not a success when it first launched. The complex gameplay (based on the 1962 computer title Spacewar!) and unusual controls put people off, and as a result, only a few units were ever produced – and that means they're incredibly expensive today.

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Back in March 1997, Nintendo was preparing to launch its N64 console in the United Kingdom.

Trailing the 1995 UK releases of the PS1 and Saturn – and coming almost a year after the Japanese launch of the N64 in 1996 – Nintendo was nonetheless in bullish mood, as it was confident its machine was the most powerful on offer.

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UK media outlet The Guardian has ranked the 15 best UK video game magazines of all time, and Future's long-running EDGE has come out on top.

Penned by acclaimed journalist and author Keith Stuart – who has actually written for several of the publications in the list – the feature ranks some of the most beloved and influential mags of the past few decades.

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We all know that retro gaming is big business, but in the world of the mainstream media, the popularity of old games is perhaps a little less obvious.

Thankfully, Frazer Rhodes – whose wonderful museum we recently visited – was given the chance to educate the masses recently as a guest on the BBC Breakfast show.

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Every now and then, we cover some non-video game-related news here on Time Extension purely because we can't resist – and today is one of those days.

Thanks to a new video by Stuart Millard, we're now up to speed on the failed UK game show Scavengers, which was given a prime-time slot on Saturday evenings back in July 1994.

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We've laboured this point a few times in the past, but it's important to remember that UK high-street retailer CeX didn't start out as the technological swap shop it is today – in the beginning, it was primarily concerned with imported games and hardware from Japan and North America, and was one of the leading venues when it came to sourcing the latest and great gaming gear.

Before it morphed into the repository of second-hand mobile phones and DVDs that we know and love today, CeX even had its own dedicated retro store – and, it's worth pointing out, this was towards the end of the 1990s, a time when retro was only just becoming recognised as a viable commercial sector of the market.

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Those of you who have been following Hookshot Media's network of sites for a few years will no doubt recall our periodic coverage of Leicester's Retro Computer Museum. It's a short drive from where we're based in the United Kingdom, and, over the years, we've been fortunate to strike up a friendly with its founder, Andy Spencer.

The RCM recently moved premises, and we decided the time was right to pay a visit – even more so when you consider that it was holding one of its "Awesome World Famous Legendary Gatherings."

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Last year saw the inaugural Kickstart Amiga show, a live event in the UK spearheaded by The Retro Hour's Ravi Abbott.

Attended by plenty of like-minded Commodore Amiga lovers, the show had hardware, software and special guests – and, by all accounts, went down a storm.

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The UK-based retro collector Frazer Rhodes has been buying rare and obscure video games for the past three decades now and has amassed a pretty enviable collection in all that time.

He's the proud owner of a complete Neo Geo set, as well as a bunch of strange and interesting oddities, such as the Casio PV-1000, Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy, and PC Engine LT. And that's only really scratching the surface.

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After two sold-out retro and indie gaming events, The Nottingham Video Games Expo is returning for 2024.

Taking place on Saturday, 20th July 2024 and Sunday, 21st July, the event will be held at Nottingham's Belgrave Rooms, situated on Goldsmith Street, and promises "action-packed gaming, activities, guest speakers, plus more." Doors open at 11 am on each day and close at 5 pm.

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The Retro Computer Museum in Leicester has been running for quite some time now (we attended our first event way back in 2010) and is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) organisations of its kind in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Packed with computers, consoles, arcades, software and perhaps the only working link-up Virtuality set up in the country (the late VR company was also based in Leicester), RCM has just entered a new and exciting phase in its history – and the team behind the museum want the public to join in.

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Pac-Man and Oreo have teamed up for an exciting new promotion in the UK & Ireland, offering a chance to win a bunch of cool prizes (thanks Retro Dodo for the spot!).

These include an opportunity to be entered into a prize draw to win a trip for two to Tokyo (valued at over £6,000) or potentially scoop some limited-edition instant prizes like a Pac-Man arcade cabinet, mini Pac-Man arcade machine, or a Pac-Man keyring game.

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Our friends over at Retro Dodo have just made an exciting announcement – they're going to launch a new retro live event in the UK later this year.

Dubbed RDX Expo, the event will take place in Bristol and feature a selection of classic systems to play, new retro products to purchase and a section for vendors who want to bring their classic games to sell.

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