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The annual UK Games Expo will be held this year May 31 - June 1 in Birmingham, England.  This short-but-sweet conference hosts every possible game format now on the toy market, from miniatures and  board games to role-playing and card games. And don’t forget the state-of-the-art video games.

The feature everyone is looking forward to is the Living Dungeon: a life-sized dungeon maze, complete with monsters, traps and puzzles!  This should delight every kid-at-heart who remembers the humble beginnings of the gaming community with Dungeons & Dragons.

There will also be a World of Warcraft competition as well as the annual Grand Boardgame Tournament.  We can’t make it to this conference but we appreciate how the UK blends its enthusiasm for both traditional boardgames and computer games!

The struggling Atari, Inc has been booted from public trading.  Maybe Atari Inc has other things on its mind, like its merger with Infogrames. It’s a bizarre turn of events for the company that is mostly responsible for inventing not only the game entertainment industry, but also the personal computer craze in the 1980s.

Atari has always been committed to educational video games, so we hope Infogrames shores up Atari’s stock quickly.  Today’s video game industry caters to sensationalism - for instance, the highest earning game launch in history is now Grand Theft Auto IV - but we still hold out hope that Wii and other video games companies remember their roots in education and learning.

The UK is upping the anty, as we say in the US, with plans to build the world’s biggest toy store in South London.

Details have not been released to the public yet, but we do know that the large open-floor store will be called Grandpa Grey Goose. Kids and parents will be able to roam around the store freely, with access to hundreds of toys, games and activities.

The investment group behind this amazing toy multiplex is Vision Investment Ventures, who promise a new kind of toy shopping experience that combines safety and freedom to play.

Thanks to Toy News Online for the story.