SOUTH WEST AMIGA GROUP

It’s that time of year when we partner with Revival Retro Event’s and visit the Walsall football stadium for the weekend 15th – 16th June (next week!), where we will be showcasing what our group does and we will have on display many of our own Amiga machines and no exception to this year as we still have a whole area dedicated to the Amiga. Myself Dave, Duncan, Gil and Zeb will be there all weekend and we will be joined by some of the regulars members. If you fancy spending the day with us, you are more then welcome and tickets are available from the RRE website.

Not only is Revival is about the Amiga, it is about virtually every aspect of retro gaming from consoles, computers to arcade and many people come all over the UK to visit the event, they also have a talk’s and a ‘meet and greet’ are and this year some of the people who have been announced are developers from Bullfrog (known to us mostly for Populous) to Sensible Software’s well known football game.

In 2017, we were asked if would help out with the event that has now doubled in size, not only we had successful shows but our membership has increased significantly and has helped us to start bringing more recognised people to our own meets, the RRE team been very supportive of SWAG and we are thankful for our association with them. We welcome everyone to come up, get a ticket for around 15 pounds.

After a successful Workbench meet in Chipping Sodbury, (which was supposed to be a unique one-off) we ended up back for meet number 9 with some help from our sponsor Checkmate and we had our best meet-up to date by far. We had over 40 machines, we had two talks, we had many YouTube channels, we had the Speedball 2 finals, rare computers, etc!

‘Let’s talk Retro’ Colin and James have done a video explaining what happened on Saturday 18th of May.

Thank you to all that came, especially to our sponsors. Over the next week we will be posting some more details of what happened during our day.

We are returning to Chipping Sodbury near Bristol for our next meet but this time we will be in the presence of Stephen Jones of Checkmate. 30 Years after the original introduction of the Checkmate case, Stephen is now putting his finishing touches to his latest creation following a successful Kickstarter campaign that will bring a new highly configurable case for your existing Amiga. Follow the progress on his website or come and see the new case for yourself at SWAG #9.

Stephen has also very kindly sponsored the event and covered all room hire costs. If you see him on the day then please do say “Thank you”. He, more than anyone else, has made the day possible.

The event is being held at Dodington Parish Hall, Chipping Sodbury, on Saturday 18th May, and runs for a whopping 12 hours from 10am to 10pm. Along with Stephen’s case unveiling we’ll have our tech team on site upgrading and repairing classic Amiga hardware, mod tracker demonstrations, Deluxe Paint tutorials, game tournaments and much more besides. If you haven’t been to a previous SWAG all day event then this would be a great time for you to come along. 

Since we have been growing rapidly, we’ve decided to set up a booking system so you can reserve a table. The booking system will open at Saturday at 6pm UK Time, so get your order in sooner rather than later. Tables are limited! If you just wish to attend but do not require a table then you will still be very welcome. Regardless of whether you’re booking a table or not, the attendance cost is £5.50, to be paid in advance. This covers the cost of lunch, snacks, soft drinks, tea/coffee and disposables. Under 18s accompanied by a fee paying adult are free, but do let us know you’re bringing them so that we have an idea of numbers and know how many sandwiches to order for lunch.

We look forward to seeing you!
p.s. Javascript is being used in the booking system, if your booking fails please contact us for help.