Leicester Retro Computer Museum

In September I had the pleasure of visiting the Retro Computer Museum in Leicester. It had been on my list of places to go for probably nearly a decade and I’m not sure why it took me so long to visit!

Its exhibits are spread over three main rooms. The main room as you enter houses a lot of playable retro consoles including various Commodore computers, all of the Nintendo and Sega consoles, and even Pong/Squash. I was also excited to see a Satellaview for the SNES. The addon, released in Japan in the 1990s basically let you download games and other content. Of course the one in the museum wasn’t working (it was Japanese only and its services discontinued in early 2000) but it was still exciting to see one IRL as I’d only ever heard about its existence from watching youtube documentaries.

Probably my favourite area was the library upstairs. It contained a lot of games and computer magazines as well as console peripherals and many games in their original boxes! This is quite significant because, of the major console makers, Nintendo were selling their games in cardboard boxes up until the Game Cube, and so most second-hand games of theirs have degraded boxes.

I spoke to the staff briefly and they told me that a lot of their stock is donated, and that fact makes me really happy. Collecting retro games and computers has been popular for as long as I remember it, but ever since lockdowns it, and so many other collecting hobbies, have become prohibitively expensive. It makes me happy to see that instead of making some easy £££ by selling on ebay people have generously decided to donate their consoles and games for us all to enjoy!