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Nostalgia Fuels UK Boom in Vintage Video Game Repairs

Retro video games and consoles are displayed at the headquarters of RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, England on April 1, 2025. (AFP)
Retro video games and consoles are displayed at the headquarters of RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, England on April 1, 2025. (AFP)
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Nostalgia Fuels UK Boom in Vintage Video Game Repairs

Retro video games and consoles are displayed at the headquarters of RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, England on April 1, 2025. (AFP)
Retro video games and consoles are displayed at the headquarters of RetroSix in Stoke-on-Trent, England on April 1, 2025. (AFP)

The shelves lining Luke Malpass's 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's 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 the central English city of Stoke-on-Trent.

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 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 ($78) and several hundred pounds.

It's not just nostalgia for a long-lost childhood.

He believes it's also a way to disconnect, unlike most online games which are now multi-player 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's there, and it's pleasurable," he told AFP.

With vintage one-player games "there's no one you're competing against and there's nothing that's 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," Malpass said.

"There's always going to be something that's retro."

This week a survey organized by BAFTA, the British association that honors films, television, and video games, voted the 1999 action game "Shenmue" as the most influential video game of all time.

"Doom", launched in 1993, and "Super Mario Bros.", in which Mario first started trying to rescue Princess Peach way back in 1985, came in second and third place.

And on Wednesday, Nintendo unveiled details of its long-awaited Switch 2 console.

It includes new versions of beloved favorites 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," said 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 organizer 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 it was a lot of doom and gloom around Covid," he told AFP.

A study earlier this year by the US association Consumer Reports found 14 percent of Americans play on consoles made before 2000.

And in September, Italian customs busted 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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Varieties

Sudanese Artists Cling to Their Craft in a Displacement Shelter

Residents receive aid from World Food Program (WFP) at Al-Omada neighborhood of Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum on March 11, 2026. (AFP)
Residents receive aid from World Food Program (WFP) at Al-Omada neighborhood of Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum on March 11, 2026. (AFP)
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Sudanese Artists Cling to Their Craft in a Displacement Shelter

Residents receive aid from World Food Program (WFP) at Al-Omada neighborhood of Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum on March 11, 2026. (AFP)
Residents receive aid from World Food Program (WFP) at Al-Omada neighborhood of Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum on March 11, 2026. (AFP)

At a school-turned-shelter in Port Sudan, rehearsal is a modest affair, but three years of war and the humble surroundings do little to dampen the sweet tunes rising from the two musicians.

With piles of bedding pushed to the side, the lone singer croons along to the melodies of a keyboardist -- part of a group of some 120 Sudanese artists who fled the brutal fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.

In the courtyard downstairs, actors, screenwriters, painters and directors work in the sunshine, before retreating to their dormitories at night.

"It's like our own little cultural center," says visual artist Mohira Fathi, who fled the central state of Al-Jazira with her husband and son.

But the El-Rabat center is a far cry from the countless other shelters in the army's wartime capital of Port Sudan, where disease outbreaks and unrelenting hunger stalk tens of thousands.

Across the country, over nine million people are internally displaced and a record 33.7 million are in need of aid.

Like everyone else, these artists came to the army's wartime capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea exhausted, traumatized and destitute.

"When I arrived, there weren't even any fans to help with the sweltering heat. People were sleeping on mats on the floor, with no access to water," musical troupe director Hossam al-Din al-Taher told AFP.

- 'Blessing' -

Slowly, as the war dragged on, word spread of a makeshift artists' commune forming, and people started flocking to the school in the hopes that being around fellow artists would help keep their careers alive.

"We didn't have instruments or costumes," Taher remembers, and artists had to take on odd jobs to earn a living, pooling their money together to buy a guitar here, a set of paints there.

Now, Taher conducts a small orchestra between piles of luggage.

For filmmaker Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, "it's a blessing that all of these artists found each other in the same place."

They share everything: food, money, mid-rehearsal coffees, living quarters separated only by fabric sheets, and every gig that comes their way.

Three years of war have destroyed Sudan's cultural scene. Theaters, studios and museums have been shut down or looted, while many of Sudan's top artists have fled across borders.

But El-Rabat's artists make do. They've put on shows for the neighborhood, held local photography exhibitions and, this Ramadan, had some of their actors return to the airwaves in a modest radio drama.

"We've learned there is no giving up," musician Assem Abdel Aziz told AFP after rehearsal.

"We have dreams here, that yard outside is full of dreams, full of energy," he says, flanked by a drum kit to his left and a mosquito net-covered cot to his right.

Varieties

Fetching Votes: In Paris Mayor’s Race, Dogs Dominate Campaigns

People walk dogs on a pedestrian crossing in Paris, France, March 6, 2026. (Reuters)
People walk dogs on a pedestrian crossing in Paris, France, March 6, 2026. (Reuters)
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Fetching Votes: In Paris Mayor’s Race, Dogs Dominate Campaigns

People walk dogs on a pedestrian crossing in Paris, France, March 6, 2026. (Reuters)
People walk dogs on a pedestrian crossing in Paris, France, March 6, 2026. (Reuters)

Paris will choose a new mayor on Sunday, with one unlikely issue dominating campaigns alongside all the partisan acrimony - dogs.

Candidates from socialists to conservatives have set out policies to deal with an issue which voters have regularly ranked among their top concerns, a lack of space for the capital's estimated 100,000 canines.

"Paris isn't exactly a very dog-friendly capital," said Vincent Danna, founder of the Monceau Dog Club, a group of around 1,000 owners who have campaigned for more open spaces for their pets.

"It can indeed be a decisive factor in municipal elections. I think the candidates have understood that well."

Rachida ‌Dati, the conservative ‌candidate backed by President Emmanuel Macron, has filmed herself ‌with ⁠dogs on the ⁠campaign trail and told Reuters she would create new parks where owners can take their dogs for walks, or even let them run free.

"We're going to develop dog parks specifically to create these shared spaces. And not just for the sake of shared spaces, but so people can bring their pets along freely, without being bothered or judged. That's the idea," Dati ⁠said.

Socialist Emmanuel Gregoire, who led the first round of voting ‌last Sunday, has also committed to ‌expanding outdoor spaces for pets.

"The main goal is to have outdoor spaces where ‌animals can live as comfortably as possible," Gregoire told Reuters.

Sophia Chikirou, from ‌the hard-left LFI party who came third in the first round, has proposed letting owners take their dogs on all forms of public transport.

Pets have long played a role in French political life. Every president since Charles de Gaulle has ‌owned at least one dog. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen studied to get a cat-breeding diploma in 2021.

An Ifop ⁠poll in ⁠February showed 58% of French voters saw animal welfare as a priority issue in their municipality. So far, activists have taken the lead.

Following pressure from the Monceau Dog Club, the park of the same name has let dogs run free in a dedicated area in the first trial of its kind in the capital.

Still, not everyone is convinced dogs will make a difference in the second and final round of voting this weekend.

"If you ask me whether a dog plan is going to sway my vote one way or the other, I would say no. Because I think there are perhaps more important things," local resident Marie-Christine Alary said.

"But I do think it's a very good thing."

Varieties

Fans of Niche Japanese Crisps Brand Panic After Oil Shortage Halts Production

A shopper checks food items at a supermarket in Tokyo, Japan January 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A shopper checks food items at a supermarket in Tokyo, Japan January 20, 2023. (Reuters)
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Fans of Niche Japanese Crisps Brand Panic After Oil Shortage Halts Production

A shopper checks food items at a supermarket in Tokyo, Japan January 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A shopper checks food items at a supermarket in Tokyo, Japan January 20, 2023. (Reuters)

Die-hard fans of ‌a niche Japanese crisps brand took to the internet on Tuesday to lament a production halt the snack maker Yamayoshi Seika blamed on a shortage of cooking oil caused by the conflict in the Middle East.

The US and Israel's war on Iran and the resulting effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz have fuelled fears of a knock-on impact on prices in ‌Japan. But news ‌of the crisps brand's suspension is ‌among ⁠the first tangible ⁠fallout for consumers.

Once the news spread, Yamayoshi Seika's "Wasabeef" became the third-most trending buzzword in Japan on social media platform X, with the company name trailing not far behind.

"I never expected the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to result in ⁠the production stoppage of Wasabeef," ‌user @JoshuaGboyega5 posted on X. "I ‌can't imagine life without Wasabeef!"

CEO Satoshi Kada said Yamayoshi ‌Seika's heavy oil wholesaler had warned him in ‌early March of an expected price hike of 20% to 30% and soon after said it could no longer send any supplies.

"We had no choice but ‌to stop the factory," he told Reuters, adding that he did not know ⁠when ⁠production could resume.

Yamayoshi Seika, which was established in 1953, calls Wasabeef a "national brand" characterized by a flavor blending wasabi and savory beef essence. The company has monthly sales of about 400 million to 500 million yen ($2.5 million to $3 million), Kada said.

Japan, which depends on the Middle East for around 95% of its crude oil supplies, this week began releasing about 80 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserves to mitigate disruptions.