Last night I was in Manchester to see The Lion King at the Palace Theatre – it’s in the middle of a run that finishes at the start of March, and I’ve got stuff coming up next month so thought it’d be good to get a ticket to see it now. I’m a big fan of the soundtrack to original film – I’ve listened to it many, many times, so it’s definitely a musical I’ve always wanted see.

Anyway, I only bought the ticket last week – there were hardly any seats still available apart from a few really expensive ones, but there was a single seat available on the second row of the circle for a pretty decent price. It had a note on the booking site saying it had limited legroom, but the difference in price meant I thought I’d go for cost over comfort! And they really weren’t lying about the legroom – there wasn’t much room at all between the rows!

The show itself is absolutely amazing! I actually felt emotional at the start as it opened with Circle of Life, from the iconic music to all the performers swarming onto the stage from the sides and the stalls.

All the cast were superb, and the costumes, masks and puppetry was outstanding. The performers really brought the animals to life, with major credit to the actors playing Timon and Zazu – you really did start to look at the puppet and not the actor because of their puppetry skills. But the standard was high across everyone to be fair!

Also, the set design and overall staging was really impressive. Very smooth transitions between scenes, and very good use of the space on stage. I was a bit nervy when the kid playing young Simba was on the top of Pride Rock, because there wasn’t really much to stop him falling off onto the stage below! Luckily, there were no disasters in last night’s performance!

Of course the music and singing was also really excellent – as well as the classics, there were a few new songs, some of which actually used parts of the original score by Hans Zimmer which worked well. Also, I liked the way there were percussionists either side of the stage in boxes, giving a really immersive sound to the orchestra.

So if you ever get a chance to see The Lion King, I definitely recommend it!

Earlier this month, I went to Arcade Club in Bury with Michael and Lee. It’s a place with a really great selection of retro and more recent arcade machines, spread across 4 floors of a warehouse, and once you’ve paid to go in, you don’t have to pay any more to play them!

Michael wanted to go there for his birthday which was in December, but we decided to hold back until after Christmas so that it wouldn’t be so busy.

To be honest, I’ve not really played that many games since the 80s really, so was a bit rusty, but I think I did get better as the night went on! I guess I was never really into arcades when I was younger, but I recognised some of the titles from my ZX Spectrum and Atari ST game-playing days.

Actually the first game I tried when we go there was the Star Wars Battle Pod, which was really good. I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I don’t think I properly completed the mission, but with the way the image surrounds you on the dome-shaped screen, it really does feel like you’re part of the action. I also enjoyed playing the car racing games like OutRun and Daytona – it’s certainly easier to play racing games with an actual steering wheel!

One game I was keen to try was Dragon’s Lair. It was a groundbreaking game back in the 80s because it was an adventure game that was fully animated by Disney animator Don Bluth, so the graphics are amazing, and it was all played back by laserdisc, which had never been done before. I saw that they had the follow up game, Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp, so decided to give it a go, and it’s pretty impossible to play! The way it works is you have to move a joystick to select what to do next, based on a yellow flash on the image showing you different options you have, but everything happens so fast, and it’s more by luck that you progress through the game. Not so bad playing it at Arcade Club, but wouldn’t have been so great back in the day when you had to keep paying to replay it!