Nostalgia fuels UK boom in vintage video game repairs

STOKE-ON-TRENT, United Kingdom – The shelves lining Mr Luke Malpass’ home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and awaiting repair.

Parcels from gamers seeking help arrive from around the world at RetroSix, his Aladdin’s cave.

He has turned a lifelong passion for gaming into a full-time job, answering the common question of what to do with old and worn machines and their parts.

“I think it can be partly nostalgic,” said Mr Malpass, 38, as he surveyed the electronics stacked at his home in the central English city of Stoke-on-Trent.

He said the huge revival in retro games and consoles is not just a passing phase. “I think it is the tactile experience. Getting a box off the shelf, physically inserting a game into the console... it makes you play it more and enjoy it more.”

Electronic devices and accessories, some dating back to the 1980s and the dawn of the gaming revolution, await to be lovingly restored to life.

Mr Malpass has between 50 and 150 consoles needing attention at any one time, at a cost of between £60 (S$105) and several hundred pounds.

It is not just nostalgia for a long-lost childhood. He believes it is also a way to disconnect, unlike most online games which are now multiplayer and require skills honed over long hours of practice to reach a good level.

“Retro gaming – just pick it up, turn it on, have an hour, have 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter. It’s instant, it’s there and it’s pleasurable,” he said.

With vintage one-player games “there’s no one you’re competing against and there’s nothing that’s making you miserable or angry”.

Mr Malpass, a fan of games such as Resident Evil and Jurassic Park, even buys old televisions with cathode-ray tubes to replicate more faithfully his experience of playing video games as a kid.

Video clips he films of his game play, which he publishes to his YouTube channel, have won him tens of thousands of followers.

Mr Malpass said: “I think people are always going to have a natural passion for things that they grew up with as a child. So, we’ll always have work. It’ll evolve. And it won’t be, probably, Game Boys. There’s always going to be something that’s retro.”

Covid-19 boosted return to vintage games

A recent survey by Bafta, the British association that honours films, television and video games, voted the 1999 action game Shenmue as the most influential video game of all time. Doom, launched in 1993, and Super Mario Bros, in which Mario started trying to rescue Princess Peach way back in 1985, came in second and third place.

And on April 2, Nintendo unveiled details of its long-awaited Switch 2 console. It includes new versions of beloved favourites from the Japanese giant – Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Held every four months, the London Gaming Market, dedicated to vintage video games, has been attracting growing numbers of fans.

Adrian, a visitor in a T-shirt with a Sonic image, said: “You never know what you’re going to find when you’re out here so I’m just always on the lookout.”

Collectors and gamers sifted carefully through stacks of compact discs and old consoles, hoping to find hidden treasures.

For Mr Andy Brown, managing director of Replay Events and organiser of the London event, which is now in its 10th year, the Covid-19 pandemic marked an upturn in the return to vintage games.

“I think people were stuck at home, wanting things to do that made them remember better times because it was a lot of doom and gloom around Covid,” he said.

A study earlier in 2025 by the American association Consumer Reports found 14 per cent of Americans play on consoles made before 2000.

And in September, Italian customs busted a gang smuggling counterfeit vintage video games, seizing 12,000 machines containing some of the most popular games of the 1980s and 1990s. AFP