– Sofie Rogers contributed with this report
Gamecity is an annual festival that takes place in Nottingham. Its official website describes it as “a unique celebration of video game culture”.
This year’s culminating event celebrated 25 years of Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda” games on Saturday, October 29th and promised to be “transforming the festival base in Nottingham’s Old Market Square into a Hyrulean market village”.
This was over selling the event just a little. It was actually more like a village fete in a tent. There was face painting, colour your own shield, make your own paper boat and wooden sword fighting.
There was an air of awkwardness as adults clambered to have their faces painted or guessed which shuffled treasure chest contained the prize and were told by stewards that they were “surprised at the amount of adults participating in the games”.
There was no history of the game being told therefore if you had never played any of the games, you would be none the wiser as to what they are about.
You could grab a pad and play each generation of the game but you could also do that at home. “The Legend of Zelda” turned 25 in February of this year and its 16th title will be released in November.
This iconic franchise has spawned a number of spin-offs, TV shows, books, merchandise, and a cult-like fan following. This would have been the perfect opportunity to sell game related merchandise or even engage the audience a little more than they did.
There was the chance to experience the new game, “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” ahead of its UK launch on November 18th, something that seemed to be the only interesting part of the day.
You could also be a part of an ocarina orchestra. As fun as it was to receive a free limited edition Nintendo ocarina, it only takes a small amount of people trying to learn to play the iconic theme tune to the game before it becomes a sporadic annoyance.
The Gamecity festival lasted from 26-29 October. In the days before the Zelda take over day there was plenty of opportunities to play indie games such as FEZ DEZ REZ and Angry Mango.
Expectation should not have been set so high for a free event that was mainly aimed at children. However, all was good when free cake was provided.