This article is available in dual media format as a written article and as a video on our YouTube channel. Both are focused on my experiences at EGX London 2022 and whilst they do parallel each other in terms of the topics I talk about, there are some topics that I touch upon in each that doesn’t appear in the other.
If you would like to watch the video, you can do so here, otherwise do continue below for our written feature.
It was that time of the year again where the UK’s largest video game event is held at the ExCeL building in London. I am of course, talking about EGX. It is a four-day long gaming event that has tens of thousands of people in attendance every year. Travelling to EGX London 2022 is not an easy trip for me as I live in Spain but I have been going to the event since 2019 and this year I had extra reason for going. 2022 was the 25th Anniversary of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 and some of the developers were going to be at EGX to do a panel.
I grew up with the N64 and have many fond memories of playing GoldenEye on the console with my brother and sister. Being able to meet some of the developers who worked on the game and being able to thank them for the happy memories in my childhood was definitely not an opportunity I could miss and was well worth flying to London for.
The other big plus with flying to the UK for EGX London 2022 is that I get to spend time with my family too. We have gone to several different gaming events together in Spain and the UK and just being able to spend a few days with them always makes me feel better as I do miss them every day, even if they don’t believe me.
A Day Out With Mum To EGX London 2022 (Fri 23rd Oct)
Anyway, back to the matter at hand for the four days that EGX London 2022 was running, I went for three days. On Friday, I went with my dear mum Larissa. On the Saturday, I went with my brother Jack, and on the Sunday, I went with my sister Ashleigh, her partner Alec and their friends Johnny and Paul. Friday was just a general reconnaissance and family bonding time with my mum. She had never been to any gaming events before, so it was a first time for her and she loved it. There were retro consoles and arcade machines that she recognized from her youth and she even gave some of the modern games a go including a VR game called Space Salvage.
I must admit that I did find it rather amusing that my mum had quite literally gone from playing the retro 8-bit classic Space Invaders to diving into the immersive world of VR in Space Salvage and how they both seem to involve the word Space. The other thing my mum rather liked was all the free swag she could get her hands on. She came away with a tote bag full of posters, stickers, badges, fidget spinners and even sweets, Sweets!
The Name’s Eye, GoldenEye (Sat 24th Oct)
Saturday was the big day. GoldenEye day. Jack and I made the whole day of it at EGX and were there shortly before 11am and were heading home after the main event’s closing at 6pm. We could have stayed for the after-hours activities but we already had a rather full day, and I needed to save some energy for Sunday. As for what we did on Saturday, we had a wander around all the merchandise stands to see all the wonderfully enticing goodies that they had on sale. There were plenty of T-Shirts, Pokémon Cards, Controller Shells, anime figures, and nick nacks of every variety. Jack picked up a few things for his partner and their children and I spied a Pokémon World Championships 2022 Pikachu Plush which, I just could not let the opportunity pass me buy and had to buy it immediately.
After milling around the merchandise stands for an hour or so, it was time to join the queue for the GoldenEye: Meet the Devs Panel. Jack and I were hyped and couldn’t wait to see the likes of Martin Hollis, Brett Jones, Graeme Norgate, and Karl Hilton take to the stage and share their experience of developing this iconic game that is still highly regarded by fans today.
The queue to see the panel was long, and I do mean long. Fortunately, Jack and I were about a quarter of the way up the queue so we were certainly going to have a seat to sit on once we got inside the theatre area. A little further ahead from us, I saw the familiar faces of Jack Gawny (Nintendo Life and Rich Stokesy (Nintendo Players UK). We were planning to meet up for the day but first things first were, of course, the GoldenEye Panel. I said hello to them and said we’d see them inside and the good chaps saved us a couple of seats for my brother and I, legends!
At the start of the GoldenEye panel, it was announced that there was a bit of a mishap and that two of the developers were stuck in Leicester with problems with the train service. It was a shame that Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate would not be in attendance but Martin Hollis and Brett Jones had more than enough stories to tell and anecdotes to share with the audience. The panel was about an hour long and yet, the time seemed to have flown by so quickly. After the panel, there was a signing with the developers and Jack and I had just the thing we wanted them to sign, our faux GoldenEye Switch cases that I mocked up after the announcement that GoldenEye was coming to Nintendo Switch Online.
After sharing a few words with Martin and Brett, thanking them for their work and getting them to sign our GoldenEye cases, Jack and I met back up with Gawny and Rich and we spent a good few hours together around the event and even found time to partake in a nice pint of lager. We also met up with some other good friends of ours at the event; Dottie, Sib, and McFootie. They had been playing in the Splatoon 3 tourneys that day and would be taking on Nintendo Life in the finals later that day.
Jack, Gawny, Rich and I were hoping to take part in a Splatoon 3 tourney ourselves but we were out of luck. As we asked at the registration desk. All the available slots had been taken for the day and we would have to try again in the morning the next day. That was a bit of a downer so we decided to go and try out the Sonic Frontiers demo. The queue at the Sonic Frontiers booth was pretty long but we had heard that there was a demo over at the TikTok booth and that the queue was shorter and the demo was longer. We made our way over to that but everyone in the queue was waiting to play Sonic Frontiers but as some of the other games at the booth were free, we were asked by one of the attendants if we would like to try them while we waited. Rich and I played Multiversus whilst the two Jacks were playing a game called CYGNI: All Guns Blazing.
As we passed the time playing these games, the attendee who told us that our spot in the queue would be saved had disappeared and so we effectively lost our place in the queue to play Sonic Frontiers. It sucked a little but I would still get an opportunity to play it on Sunday. However, for my brother, he was a bit disappointed as he would only be at EGX for Saturday only and the queues for both the TikTok and the Sonic Frontiers booth were constantly growing. In the end, we decided to head off to the community stage area to see our friends Dottie, Sib, and McFootie take to the stage and play against Nintendo Life in the Splatoon 3 Tourney finals.
As we watched our friends play against Nintendo Life that afternoon it was simply spectacular! Four teams made it to the finals and our friends were on two of those teams. As we sat there watching them play, we were enthralled from start to finish. All teams played to the best of their ability but there could only be one victor at the end of each final. Out of the four teams Nintendo Life played against, they only won once… against a team of young children, no less.
Dottie, Sib, McFootie, and all the other contenders were victorious and oh, what a sight it was to behold! The MC, Elliot, who was commentating during the finals did a superb job and kept the crowd engaged and animated the whole way through. We genuinely felt a part of the action that was taking place on the stage and on the screen and made it all the more entertaining and fun.
Confronting Fears With Sonic Frontiers (Sun 25th Oct)
On Sunday, it was day three for me and the last day for EGX London 2022. This time I was with my sister, her partner Alec, and their friends Johnny and Paul. Ash has been to EGX with me before and Alec came with us both last year in 2021. For Johnny and Paul though, it would be their first time and they were pretty hyped to be going. Their hype wasn’t so much for all the games that could be played at the event but because Alec had told them that there were all sorts of Pokémon Trading Cards and sets that could be purchased at the event.
Prior to arriving at ExCel, we did make a mistake on getting the wrong DLR train to the event and ended up on the other side of the River Thames. Fortunately, there was a helpful gentleman who showed us the way to the foot bridge that would take us across the river that would be quicker than taking another DLR train back to our previous station just to get another train. If I was on my own, I probably would have just waited for another train but because there were five of us plus another two who had made the same mistake, we decided to take the chance and sure enough, the man took us to the foot of the bridge and we thanked him for his help. I thought about rewarding the man and went into my wallet to pull out a £10 pound note as a means to say thank you but as I turned to face the man he had already walked off into the nearby shop.
Anyway, we made it to the Excel over the footbridge and we went on in. Although the first port of call for Alec and his friends were the Pokémon Card stalls, we stopped off at the Nintendo booth first so I could sign us up for a Splatoon 3 tourney. We were at an unfair disadvantage as Ash hasn’t played Splatoon since the Wii U, and Johnny and Paul have never played any of the games at all. They do play the likes of Call of Duty and Fortnite lot so they were well familiar with Shooty Shooty Bang Bang games although Splatoon 3 is a totally different kettle of fish.
All I can say is that we came, we saw, we floundered but we came away with a participation Nintendo tote bag with a Splatoon 3 poster in it but the main takeaway was that Johnny and Paul left with a newfound respect for Splatoon 3 and that it is surprisingly deep for a game about squids that turn into kids and ink each other.
As we had time to wait before we could participate in the Splatoon 3 tourney, we all wandered around the merchandise stalls and promptly lost one another. It wasn’t necessarily a large area but there were a lot of people and it was so easy to lose yourself as you gazed at all the merchandise on display. We regrouped a couple of times but we later decided we would meet up for the Splatoon 3 Tourney after we had seen and bought everything we wanted/needed.
During this time, I made my way over to the Super Rare Games stand to say hello to Ryan, Anni and Co. and play some of the games they had on display. There was Lone Ruin, Post Void, Otxo, and The Gecko Gods. All four of them were very unique and interesting to play and I can say without a doubt that you should keep an eye out for them when they finally release on consoles and Steam.
The one game that I really needed to play though was Sonic Frontiers. I had heard a number of contrasting opinions about the game from people at EGX with some people praising it and others not so much. I kept my expectations low as I know that Sonic has not exactly had a stable success rate over the last few years. The queue for the game was a lot shorter today and it didn’t take that long to be taken over to one of the demo units so I could play the newest entry in the Sonic series.
The time limit for playing Sonic Frontiers was about 15-20 minutes or so and the demo only really limited you to an open area with cliff faces and I believe some “Boost stages” that are like conventional Sonic stages but I never got to experience them so I cannot confirm if they were in the demo or not. There were a couple of bosses to fight in the demo and some lower class enemies so you could see how Sonic attacks his foes in the game. The gameplay for Sonic Frontiers was decent enough but I do feel like it was still missing something. It wasn’t terrible by any means but it felt like it was missing that hook that would keep you ensnared and make you want to keep playing.
All Good Things…
Just like with the last couple of days, the time had flown by so quickly and before we knew it, we had seen and done what we wanted to do and it was time to go home. It had been a fantastic three days and each day had something different and wonderful to experience. For me personally, EGX London 2022 hit a lot of high notes and I have come away with many more new happy memories. I got to meet old friends again and people that I have known for a while and were meeting in person for the first time like the Cross Players. I also got to see Jason Baigent again who I met at EGX last year and will be writing for Miketendo64 on occasion in the near future.
But alas, as with all good things, they must regrettably come to an end. I thoroughly look forward to seeing what EGX will bring next year and spending another amazing weekend with my friends and family. As I round up this feature, I would like to give a shoutout to all the incredible cosplayers that were at EGX London 2022 and would like to share a gallery of some of our favourites that we saw at the event.
Thank you so much for reading our feature on EGX London 2022. If you were in attendance at EGX and would like to share your experiences and your favourite moments with us, please do so in the comments as we would love to read them.
Until next time, Keep On Gaming!
It’s always good to see you too bro.
😊