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Agence France-Presse

The shelves lining Luke Malpass’ home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and awaiting repair.
Parcels from gamers seeking help arrive from around the world at RetroSix, Malpass’ Aladdin’s cave.
He has turned a lifelong passion for gaming into a full-time job, answering the common question of what to do with old and worn machines and their parts.
“I think it can be partly nostalgic,” said Malpass, 38, as he surveyed the electronics stacked at his home in Stoke-on-Trent, in the UK.

He said the huge revival in retro games and consoles is not just a passing phase.
“Personally, I think it is the tactile experience. Getting a box off the shelf, physically inserting a game into the console … it makes you play it more and enjoy it more.”
Electronic devices and accessories, some dating back to the 1980s and the dawn of the home gaming revolution, await to be lovingly restored to life.
Malpass has between 50 to 150 consoles needing attention at any one time, at a cost of between £60 (US$78) and several hundred pounds.

It’s not just nostalgia for a long-lost childhood. He believes it is also a way to disconnect – unlike most online games today, which are multiplayer and require skills honed over long hours of practice to reach a good level.
“Retro gaming – just pick it up, turn it on, have an hour, have 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter. It’s instant, it is there, and it is pleasurable,” he says.
With vintage one-player games “there’s no one you’re competing against and there’s nothing that is making you miserable or angry”.
Malpass, who is a fan of such games as Resident Evil and Jurassic Park, even goes so far as to buy old televisions with cathode ray tubes to replicate more faithfully his experience of playing video games as a kid.
Video clips he films of his game play, which he publishes to his YouTube channel, have won him tens of thousands of followers.
I think people are always going to have a natural passion for things that they grew up with as a child. So I think we’ll always have work. It’ll evolve. And it won’t be, probably, Game Boys
Luke Malpass, RetroSix
“I think people are always going to have a natural passion for things that they grew up with as a child.
“So I think we’ll always have work. It’ll evolve. And it won’t be, probably, Game Boys,” Malpass said.
“There’s always going to be something that is retro.”
A recent survey organised by Bafta, the British association that honours films, television, and video games, voted the 1999 action game Shenmue the most influential video game of all time.
Doom, launched in 1993, and Super Mario Bros from 1985, came in second and third place.

Last week, Nintendo unveiled details of its long-awaited Switch 2 console.
It includes new versions of favourites from the Japanese giant – Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bonanza.
Held every four months, the London Gaming Market, dedicated to vintage video games, has been attracting growing numbers of fans.
“I’m a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan … You never know what you’re going to find when you’re out here so I’m just always on the lookout,” says Adrian, a visitor wearing a T-shirt with a Sonic image.
Collectors and gamers sifted carefully through stacks of CD discs and old consoles hoping to find hidden treasures.

For Andy Brown, managing director of Replay Events and organiser of the London event which is now in its 10th year, the Covid-19 pandemic marked an upturn in the return to vintage games.
“I think people were stuck at home, wanting things to do that made them remember better times because there was a lot of doom and gloom around Covid,” he says.
A study earlier this year by the US association Consumer Reports found 14 per cent of Americans play on consoles made before 2000.
And in September, Italian customs arrested a gang smuggling counterfeit vintage video games, seizing 12,000 machines containing some of the most popular games of the 1980s and 1990s.


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Luke Malpass, the owner and founder of RetroSix, plays Street Fighter II on an arcade machine in his company headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent, in the UK. Photo: AFP

Retro video games and consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Sega are gaining popularity. Above: consoles and games at RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, in the UK. Photo: AFP

Retro video games at the headquarters of Luke Malpass’ RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, in the UK. Photo: AFP

Trays contain components, cables and games for various retro video games consoles in the RetroSix workshop in Stoke-on-Trent, the UK. Photo: AFP

The long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 game console on show at a media event in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Reuters

Luke Malpass, the owner and founder of RetroSix, repairs a Sega Game Gear video game console in his workshop. Photo: AFP

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Sega launched video game Shenmue in 1999 for the Dreamcast console. It has topped a Bafta poll of the most influential video games. Photo: Instagram/dkoldies

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Lifestyle

Entertainment

Gadgets

Players are nostalgic for early Mario Bros or Sonic the Hedgehog games. A Briton has made repairing consoles to play them his full-time job


Players are nostalgic for early Mario Bros or Sonic the Hedgehog games. A Briton has made repairing consoles to play them his full-time job.


Britain

Nintendo

Offbeat