This year's Game Mania takes place at Blackpool's Winter Gardens on 6th and 7th May 2017 - and the Lakes Festival team will be there, to promote the upcoming weekend in October.

A Gaming Event full of Retro Games, Virtual Reality, Kids Zone, Pinball, Arcades, Developers. Tournaments and Challenges - with prizes to be won, including five prizes from Kendal's Lakes International Comic Art Festival, including signed prints from artists on Hellboy, The Walking Dead and more!

Game Mania will be offering things for all ages, from back in the day Classic Arcades and Pinball to modern day gaming and also technology. Things such as Minecraft will be one of the many areas of the event, which will enable many crafters to come along and let their imaginary run wild. There's also a timed competition for Minecrafters including prizes.

GAME will be attending with their awesome Virtual Reality Mega zone - don't play the game, be in the game, experience the thrill and the rush of games such as resident evil kitchen (age restrictions), shark encounter, Star Wars and more.

Esdevium Games will also be on hand with the hottest board games, fresh out of the box, can you beat your friends and family!

There will also be the chance to play Hyper Sentinel, the Kickstarter-funded, retro-on-steroids arcade shoot 'em up, and chat with the developers.

Do you remember the sweet sound of the Sega Mega Drive turning on or the sweet feeling when you beat someone at Street Fighter 2? Well, now you can relive those amazing childhood memories for a gorgeous price for either one day or a full weekend.

The price of the tickets range start from £9.95, Student £11.95 and this will allow you to have full access to everything that is going on in this event - everything is free!

Game Mania will be open from 10.00am online and store bought tickets, to 6.00pm, 11.00am cash on door tickets, so a day full weekend of fun awaits!

We'll also be at Lancaster Comics Day on Sunday 13th June at Lancaster Library. One of our Festival guests, Marc Jackson, will be on hand to keep children entertained with comics activities and we'll have plenty to tell about the Festival plans when you're not enjoying appearances by Roy of the Rovers artist David Sque, artist and publisher Tim Perkins or Preston-based artist Nick Brokenshire!

• For more info on Game Mania or to purchase tickets for this event go to www.game-mania.co.uk