Joyce's Column: March

Many thanks to Tobyco’s Shane Murphy who presented me with a lovely framed photo of the two of us together, Shane says he has the same photo on the wall in his office and thought it would be nice to give me a copy too, which of course I appreciated.

I was recently chatting with Sound Leisure’s Chris Black and he told me that they have started running organised factory tours which are capped at 40 visitors per time. On arrival the visitors are taken into their showroom, served with tea/coffee and a cake followed by a thirty- minute talk about Sound Leisure and then taken on a tour of the factory, and before they leave are each given a memento of their visit. Tour groups in the daytime have included MG Car Club, Morgan Car Club and Supercar Club.

The tours originally started with schools and colleges and have grown from there and Sound Leisure now offers evening tours these are being taken up with the likes of solicitors, banks and accountants etc. They have also achieved orders for some of their products following some of the tours, which of course is an added bonus for them. Chris jokingly said that due to the factory tours they must now have one of the tidiest factories in the World. Good to see that Sound Leisure are still very much an innovative company and appear to have achieved yet another string to their bow.

Staying with Sound Leisure, apparently Leeds Museum have a music section in the upstairs part of the building and included in this section are different music companies which are on a press button choice. Sound Leisure have come out number one of the list available on the choices, and once the button is pressed by a person, they get the voice of Alan Black and the story of Sound Leisure, yet another accolade for this great company. What next, I ask myself?

Now for chat from the recent Irish Gaming Show, which was the 45th in 2026 held at its home The Crown Plaza Hotel, Dublin Airport, which is a lovely comfortable venue, when I think back to the first venue we had the show is so much more comfortable now. The first venue was at the Leopardstown Race Course which was a freezing cold location with not very good catering facilities, and we all then stayed at the nearby Montrose Hotel which was a pleasant hotel and it was warm!! From Leopardstown we moved to the Burlington Hotel in Dublin City Centre and we were there for a few years then the hotel group J.P. Doyle the owners of the Burlington decided that they didn’t want the gaming industry in the centre of Dublin hence our next move to the Green Isle Hotel at Clondalkin which incidentally was still a J.P. Doyle Group hotel but obviously not in the city centre it was in the suburbs.

This worked well for many years, it was comfortable, warm, clean and good food with great loading and unloading facilities for the wagons, then for some reason or other it seemed to go downhill and we moved once more this time to the Moran Red Cow, located lower down on the Naas Road from the Green Isle. The Red Cow served us for some years again very comfortable with everything you needed, and all went well until the owners decided to enter a contract with the Irish Government and house asylum seekers etc in the hotel, so once more we had to move.

Poor Susan Feery and John Purcell must have been tearing their hair out at having to find a new venue that could offer all we wanted, so after much searching the Crowne Plaza came up with at least 90% of this. The problem now is, well it is not really a problem for the organisers in one sense but it is in another, but the show has grown so much and always new exhibitors wanting to take stands that the exhibition space at the hotel is virtually full to capacity and with very little if any room to grow further which is a great shame.

Hopefully something will be able to be sorted before the show next year that enables every exhibitor to get the same chance of the crack of the whip to so speak, and that some stands do not have to be in an annexe room. I have to say rather you than me trying to sort this Susan and John, but I would also like to add you did a sterling job this year despite the fragmented room that had to be, and well done. By the way, just to let you know I have attended 44 Irish shows, and I have enjoyed each one, and intend to go on doing so, and have many memories from the shows, maybe one day I will tell you some of them.    

NSM’s Alex Kirby had so many 50th birthday celebrations I think they could have lasted him until he was 51!! These carried on at the Irish Show where Martin Agabeg and Lisa Lambert from NSM decorated the stand with balloons and banners and had a sash for Alex all of course with 50th birthday greetings on them.

Staying with NSM it looks from this photo that Lisa Lambert is not a lady that does things by halves, in fact it looks like Lisa does things by full measure if having 2 pints of Guinness at once is anything to go off. Now don’t go trying to tell me Lisa that these belonged to Alex and Martin, as from the look on your face it looks to me as if were enjoying them, good for you girl, and of course when in Ireland why not?

Chatting with Bandai Namco’s John Crompton at the Irish Gaming Show he told me at 2026 saw him being employed at Bandai Namco 21 years, I could hardly believe it when he told me this, it seems only a few years ago that he joined them, how time flies. The great thing is that John still enjoys working at Bandai Namco and he said they are an excellent company to work for and they appreciate their staff. This was very nice to hear especially this day and age when plenty of firms do not appreciate their staff you are just a number to them, so presumably John you hope to be at Bandai Namco for a good few years yet, so fingers crossed you are

There will be more from the Irish Gaming Show in next month’s chat column

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25 March 2026

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