Well, one of my favourite times of the year has come and gone once again. After missing out on Blackpool last year (owing to a light breeze blowing through the North) I finally made my triumphant return.

PLAY Expo Blackpool is less a gaming convention and more a sensory overload event stuffed so full of content that taking it all in is a physical impossibility. At any given second, there’s a raucous main-stage tournament kicking off, while at the complete opposite end of the venue, a industry icon is holding court with an utterly fascinating talk about their lives and careers. In between? A vast ocean of glowing CRT monitors, classic arcade cabinets, clattering pinball tables, retro consoles, indie devs, live challenges, and trader stalls calling dibs on your disposable income… and the chance to meet some gaming legends.

It is a lot. It’s the kind of event where, even with a full weekend pass, you genuinely need two or three functional clones of yourself just to cover the floor. While I didn’t manage to cross off every single item on my wishlist, I nailed the heavy hitters. Everything else was a glorious bonus. So, step right up: here is my whistle-stop report from a day and a bit at PLAY Expo Blackpool 2026.

Saturday kicked off in proper fashion: me spectating a high-octane Burnout Revenge challenge before squeezing in a few cheeky arcade games in the main hall. After a casual stroll around the trader tables to size up any possible loot I may be interested in, I met up with my old mate Lord Badger Nimahson from Stoffel Presents.

Then came the first scheduled highlight: a talk featuring Tony Warriner and Stoo Cambridge. Tony, of course, is point-and-click royalty, one of the masterminds behind classics like Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky, and the Broken Sword series. Stoo is a household name to anyone who grew up on the Amiga, though most of us remember him best as the guy whose digital avatar we inadvertently sent to a gruesome death dozens of times over in Cannon Fodder.

Beyond reminiscing about the glory days, Tony and Stoo gave us a look at their new title, UrbX Warriors: The Lost City, a top-down action-RPG (a bit like Gauntlet) inspired by urban exploration. An 8-bit version is already out there, but they’re currently hammering away on an expanded 16-bit upgrade that looks quite promising. I didn’t manage to grab hands-on time amidst the chaos, but it’s definitely one to keep on your radar.

After a necessary pint break and a bit more floor-roaming, disaster struck. I somehow managed to completely miss the Eugene Jarvis talk, an oversight that made me want to kick myself in the balls, repeatedly, and very hard. Missing Jarvis was a proper sting. This is the architect of Defender, Robotron, NARC, and Smash TV, not to mention the founder of Raw Thrills (if you’ve set foot in a modern arcade anywhere on Earth in the last twenty years, you’ve played a Raw Thrills machine). But as I established earlier, without clone tech, sacrifices have to be made.

Luckily, my primary objective for the entire weekend was up next: the absolute legend that is Dominik Diamond.

As the iconic frontman for GamesMaster, the greatest videogame television show ever made, and a subject I loved so much I wrote a deep retrospective book on it, DD was the undisputed star of the weekend. His talk was brilliant, easily the highlight of the entire show. Dominik didn’t just play the hits; he was remarkably candid, reflecting on the psychological weight of sudden youth fame, his struggles with drug addiction, and navigating the industry’s dark side. Yet, he delivered it all with that trademark razor-sharp wit and charm. He was in utter control and had everyone eating out of his hand. The talk did overrun by a few minutes, and that began a domino effect of time management that almost derailed everything from that point on (more on this in a minute). Still, just being in the same room as Dominik was a joy, but the best was yet to come.

After the talk, I finally got to meet the man himself. He signed my copy of the GamesMaster book I authored (go buy a copy), and also scribbled his name my T-shirt, which he graciously declared the best GamesMaster shirt he’d ever seen.

The legend didn’t stop there. Due to the talk overrunning, despite working against a very tight tour schedule, an ever-expanding queue of eager fans, and having to skip his own soundcheck just to ensure that as many people got to meet him as possible, Dominik capped off Saturday by taking to the main stage for Dominik Diamond Sings the Video Games. Minor sound hiccup and a mid-set guitar swap aside (which was then swapped back), it was a tour de force of musical comedy. Mario, Sonic, Space Invaders, and Grand Theft Auto all received the full, hilarious DD lyrical treatment. It was brilliant, fiercely entertaining, and me pondering one lingering, profound question… Why Not Dundee?

With the convention hall closing its doors, Saturday’s official entertainment ended, though the evening beer drinking carried on well into the night.

My Sunday was cut short by a mid-afternoon train and long journey back home, leaving me with a ticking clock, but I was determined to cram in a final burst of action. I did get into the main hall early (thanks press pass) before the crowds descended. Look at how quiet it was…

I started with a swift morning lap of the hall: a few more arcade cabinets played, another browse through the trader stalls, and the inevitable purchase of gaming paraphernalia I absolutely do not need, but bought anyway. From there, I drifted over to the main stage for Slope’s Game Show, hosted by YouTube’s own DJ Slope (Daniel Ibbertson), a lively, entertaining trivia showdown spanning games, film, and TV. But, I had to duck out before the final whistle because the second big event of my weekend was starting on the opposite side of the venue, and I was not going to miss it: Andrew and Philip Oliver.

The Oliver Twins are absolute titans of the British gaming scene. While I had been lucky enough to meet them on the Saturday, their Sunday panel was the main event of the day. If Dominik Diamond ruled Saturday, then the Olivers totally owned Sunday. They were in peak form, garrulous, sharp, cracking jokes, and finishing each other’s sentences as they recounted the Wild West days of early UK game development. They covered their foundational passion for coding, early successes, and, of course, the birth of British gaming’s most famous anthropomorphic egg hero: Dizzy. It was an industry history lesson wrapped in pure entertainment.

Then came the main course: the major announcement they’d been teasing on social media for a while. Dizzy is returning for his 40th anniversary in 2027. The Twins said that several new Dizzy projects are currently cooking in the background with the backing of Codemasters. But rather than leaving us with empty promises and honeyed words, they showed off early footage of Ultra Dizzy, a remake, remaster, and reimagining of the all-time classic that is Treasure Island Dizzy.

Forgive the crude angle of my photo, the room was packed to the rafters, so getting a clean shot was near impossible, but what they showed off was magnificent. Ultra Dizzy features on-the-fly game switching. You can play the original ZX Spectrum version (now with actual smooth scrolling…I saw the Speccy game scroll!), tap a button to instantly swap to the NES build, or toggle to a brand-new Sega Mega Drive version (fulfilling a port the Twins always wanted to make back in the day, but never did). On top of that, there’s a full modern 2027 edition complete with HD graphics and overhauled audio. Across all versions of the game, you get several refined mechanics, including a much more sensible inventory system where you can no longer accidentally drop the snorkel underwater, plus a proper lives system. It strikes that perfect balance of honouring retro history while modernising just enough to keep us old farts happy. It almost brought the house down with applause from the crowd. And with that, my time was up. I had to sprint for a Blackpool tram, get myself to the train station, and head home.

Reflecting on it all, PLAY Expo Blackpool 2026 was a stellar weekend. As always, the biggest problem is that there’s simply too much to see and do; you have to pick your battles and accept that some things, like getting round to trying that new Vectrex Mini machine, had to fall by the wayside.

Will I be back for 2027? Hopefully. Between now and then, I’m seriously going to look into this cloning business to see if I can get a couple of extra mes engineered. How hard can it really be? Having attended PLAY Expo for a few years now, I consider myself beyond beginner status, but not quite a veteran yet. I study the schedules, map out my vectors, and execute targeted strikes on the floor plan, but I still come away with a chunk of my list untouched. I see people wandering in with single-day wristbands and I genuinely have to wonder… why? You need the full two days to get the most out of it, and even then, you’ll still not tick everything off your list.