PlayersXpo, which took place in the Convention Center Dublin, succeeded in bringing gamers both young and old together into a welcoming and calm environment as I saw parents showing their children the games they used to play in the Retro Zone, and children get hyper with excitement during the convention’s impressive guest panels.

I know I just mentioned them, but I really have to talk about the Retro Zone and guest panels. The Retro Zone was really a blast from the past as I spent a lot of time playing Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, just sitting down and looking at the screen brought back so many memories of me playing it when I was younger, honestly, it was difficult to pull myself away from the game.

In relation to the guest panels, I have to say I absolutely loved the panels featuring AllCast Irish Gamers, Anti-Tinkerbell and Emperor Pewn as the five-person panels had great interactions with an audience that was mostly made up of young children, especially when it came to selecting people to come up on stage and play games with them on their couch. Their panels were both heart-warming and incredibly funny, and I really hope to experience a panel with such great hosts again.

So, what else did PlayersXpo have to offer? Well, the legendary developer, John Romero was in attendance destroying players who dared challenge him to a deathmatch battle in Doom. As a gamer, I took up the challenge and after Romero allowed me to get a few pity kills he completely destroyed me.

When it came to just kicking back and playing games, PlayersXpo offered a great mix of new games, these included: F1 2017, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, FIFA 18 and the recently released Super Mario Odyssey. If you wanted to be competitive and play online PlayersXpo had League of Legends, Rocket League and Overwatch PC setup and ready to go. There were also developers on hand to show off their upcoming games, one game in particular really caught my eye and that was Cerebros, a fun first-person shooter that required you to switch between light and dark modes to defeat enemies, it was an interesting and unique design, and I can’t wait to see more of the game.

After all the great panels and playing copious amounts of retro and modern games, there was time to sit back, relax and listen to some video game music from legendary Irish conductor Eimear Noone and the DIT Traditional Irish music Ensemble. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the concerts on Saturday or Sunday, but if it was anything like previous concerts involving Eimear Noone it was most likely mind-blowing.

Finishing up on my thoughts on PlayersXpo, I think it is important to talk about the crowds or lack there off. It could have been down to the bad press GamerCon (not related to PlayersXpo) received, but there wasn’t a huge number of attendees, now don’t get me wrong there was a good number, but the low turnout was evident when you noticed there were no large queues for games. However, to put a positive spin on the crowd size it meant that those in attendance had greater freedom of movement as children could run around playing and those who wanted to play some games didn’t have to wait in long lines. On a personal note I’m not great at dealing with large crowds, so the smaller number made me feel more relaxed.

So, in the end, PlayersXpo 2017 was a fun family friendly convention, it offered something for everyone, and I have to say you would be a fool to miss PlayersXpo 2018.

To learn more about PlayersXpo, visit https://www.players.ie/.