On a plane to NYC and am exhausted. I can't imagine how tires the staff is tonight. You guys did a great job. Getting better every year.
Played my first tournament and was ousted by Trent A and Steven B in the first round. It was a great experience, but how do I get seeded with 3 of top players in the world in the first round??
I also picked up that cherry Buccaneer as my first wedgehead. Only 7800 plays!
It was great seeing everyone there.
Road Show: 503 games, 2.65 mins average = > 22 hours!
Wow! Road Show hasn't had this much love in 10+ years!
Held up like a champ... no credit dot.
Thanks for bringing the Iron Man! 
Both of those games were freaking awesome. I had my best ever IM game on it today.
Quoted from DefaultGen:Bummed I missed live wrestling Friday night! How was it?
Wrestling was one of the best events for us. We are by no means wrestling fans, but it was a lot of fun. I was dying laughing when the panda guy came out, then his partner was like my next door neighbor's doppelganger. I could have watched another hour of that.
"Go for the trachea!"
Just got home from helping my friends unload their pins. What a great bunch of people at the show! Love you guys even though you drank a lot of my beer. 
Quoted from _litz:Somerhing like 75% of the people who win tokens (generic slot machine tokens, at that) on Safecracker are keeping them and not playing Assault on the Vault.
Weird, eh?
I won 2! I played one and let my friend play the other. No sense in making you buy more tokens. Thanks for bringing the cracker. It deserved the recognition.
Great show! It gets better every year (and ATL traffic navigation gets worse)! Still, I keep wondering what all those "other" people are doing at a pinball show! 
Nice facility. Would've liked more/better/cheaper food options within walking distance. We checked the galleria but couldn't find anything open but Chinese? Rooms were great.
Registration was much better, but still chaotic. Lots of people working the line, though, so it moved pretty quickly anyway.
The ballroom was MASSIVE and there was ROOM to move around and form lines behind the games. There were waits for pretty much every game, the whole show. Players were very considerate and there were lots of multi-player games with strangers playing together. It was great to have that social component back. Met a lot of cool people, and re-met a lot of cool folks from previous years.
Marco continues to be an ANCHOR with a great bank of pins. He had GhostBusters, and let me tell you, that game is FUN. It has the best/most positive impression out of any new Stern, *for me*, since Simpsons Pin Party and Spiderman. It's tough, but I couldn't get enough of it. Well, I finally got enough after the whole weekend. Really like that game!
Speaking of Spidey, Marco also had Spidey VE. Love it! But now that I think about it, does it have any voice work for the characters? I guess it didn't matter, because I put this up Saturday night (thanks Paul!)
and then Sunday someone put up 171 or something like that. Good game, Champ!
I tried to like the Medrainika again, but my impression of that game remains unchanged. D-U-D! Never need to see another one.
Thanks to Marco for the nice bank of new games.
Thanks to EVERYONE who brought games to play. I tried to play every pin there as many times as possible. Didn't quite get to all of them, there was a wait for every game, all the time so I had to make time restriction choices.
Thanks to EVERYONE who worked the show. I don't know who all does what for which, but thank you for whatever you did, especially those who volunteered. You guys are my heroes.
Played The Hobbit quite a bit. It's an interesting experiment. A pinball version of Whack-A-Demon. It's fun, though. I really enjoyed whacking those Demons (well, probably officially Orcs)! Also a very fun game. I put up several Daily High scores, the best I could muster was #2 at the time...either 700K or right at 1M. Really low scoring game. I saw someone walk away with 140 points for a game. Ouch!
Thanks to the couple who again reigned over the tourneys. While I didn't participate, I know it is a great undertaking to shoulder the tourneys and I appreciate it even if I'm not in them.
Overall, I give the show and everyone there an A+ score. Just a great experience that gets better every year and already planning on attending next year.
Quoted from cody_chunn:Would've liked more/better/cheaper food options within walking distance. We checked the galleria but couldn't find anything open but Chinese?
You had to go out of the Galleria and walk two minutes over the fly over bridge to the Cumberland Mall. There you had The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Changs, Stoney River Steakhouse, Maggiano's, etc. Not cheap restaurants, however, eating inside the mall at the food court was no better at $15 to $20. Welcome to Atlanta.
Quoted from cody_chunn:Marco continues to be an ANCHOR with a great bank of pins. He had GhostBusters, and let me tell you, that game is FUN.
I would strongly concur! Ghostbusters caught myself and others off guard. WOW! I spent most of the time playing the LE. The use of the P2K gimmick was really cool and the subway ramp was always fun to watch! Ghostbusters and The Hobbit got most of my game play.
I really enjoyed meeting Jersey Jack and listening to his 1 hr. lecture!
The only minor criticism I have is the small number of parts vendors. No big deal as I understand that this isn't just a pinball show.
Quoted from cody_chunn:Overall, I give the show and everyone there an A+ score. Just a great experience that gets better every year and already planning on attending next year.
Was it crazy mustache weekend??? I think I bumped into about half a dozen guys with Cody Chunn mustaches and none of them were you!
The other half dozen were rocking ZZ Top beards. 
Thanks once again guys for a great show!!!
Show was a blast and finally got to put some faces to names. Congrats to Steve Bowden for winning Pinvasion III and to Preston, Patrick, Shannon and the rest of the SFGE crew for busting their asses to put on such a great show. Had a blast.
Quoted from Magic_Mike:I would strongly concur! Ghostbusters caught myself and others off guard. WOW! I spent most of the time playing the LE. The use of the P2K gimmick was really cool and the subway ramp was always fun to watch! Ghostbusters and The Hobbit got most of my game play.
I really enjoyed meeting Jersey Jack and listening to his 1 hr. lecture!
I totally agree as well. GB LE was a total pleasant surprise. Great hanging out again this year and awesome show. Oh yeah I remember a couple of those Hobbit games played as well, especially that one Grand Champion one 
Again great show guys and look forward to it next year!
Ryan
Had a great time and very much enjoyed meeting many of you. Thanks to all that made it such a great show!
Nice work adding tabletop gaming as well. Having that in the center area made it very accessible whenever passing by, and made a comfortable place to play a game. I was imagining a cramped room that looked like every 80's D&D scene from the movies, before seeing the setup at the show.
Bonus - The insidious creep of pinball enjoyment crossing over to another group. MUH HAHA
Also, thank you Charlie for bringing RZSI and your newly acquired Godzilla! (first time I have played either)
I got a Spooky t-shirt, which is probably rarer than a RZLE. 
This was by far my favorite SFGE. Load-in and load-out were as smooth as silk, thanks to the many volunteers. It was a luxury to have help hoisting games back into my trailer; you guys were awesome. My new Husky cart made things much easier. Why schlep, when you can roll? I'll bring a few more of those to the show next year.
The quality of games on the floor was great. I did a few shifts as a game tech, and it was mostly just stuck balls and games needing credits. I think at least 95% of the games were working most of the time. My favorites were RZ and Meteor, which I ended up taking home.
The new location is a huge improvement. I hope SFGE did well enough that we can keep going back to that location. It was kind of like choosing between Epcot, Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. There was so much to do, there was no way to do it all in a weekend. Next year I'll do the tournament and play some board games. Snoot was a great band! I hope they come back too.
Great job, all!
I couldn't get to the vault, but Safecracker and the Phoenix right next to it were two of the best solid state games at the show. Thanks for bringing it!
Got back home in Florida at midnight. It was a long weekend and I'm tired as hell. Those flippin free Monster drinks kept me hopped up all weekend and I am feeling it now.
It was a great show and I have nothing but praise for the show runners. I'm not the type to hold back constructive criticism either.
Great show, thanks again Preston, Patrick & Shannon! And Mica & Joe! I know it's lots of hard work but it paid out BIG time!! Never made it to the tourney but know Bryan & Amanda always do a great job! Wow, all the games, volunteers etc. You guys knocked it out of the ballpark again. Can't wait to see what's up your sleeve for next year! Also, great to see Dana & Joel. And all my old pinhead friends & new pinhead friends. I had a blast! Thanks!!!
That was an amazing first event. Thank you everyone so much for putting it on. Some of the games I really liked were that beautiful White Water, the Pirates of the Caribbean, that very pretty modded Star Trek that was next to it, and the NBA Fastbreak that I've never seen before. I loved meeting people (especially PinNerd) and just had a great experience all around. Special thanks to whoever brought that Safecracker, that was quite neat.
I also got a chuckle driving home back down I-75 and seeing other people in transit. I passed a trailer that had a bunch of stickers on it with "have you played pinball today" being one. I saw a Meteor in the back of a truck, and there was another truck I passed with a grey tarp covered something and a dolly in it.
This was my first SFGE, and it definitely won't be my last.
Wow, what a weekend!
Love the new venue, the setup and layout was spectacular! Much better than last years location and thankfully, no longer in a food desert! Very full of games and vendors (didn't look like an empty warehouse) yet there was plenty of room to get through. The games were spaced out enough to allow people to watch their friends play, and room for people to queue up behind them to play their favorite games! Man, there were a ton of people having fun. I enjoyed seeing people enjoy my games!
Joe and Mica were troopers and were always available to help and keep things moving. I can't believe they made it back to the desk at 8:30AM on Sunday after we kept them up until 4:00AM Saturday night playing the tournament GB in the lobby! Dan did a great job with the floor layout and power distribution. No continuously tripping circuit breakers all weekend! Quite a feat considering how many machines were plugged in and running!
You can tell the floor monitor and repair techs love this stuff. They were running around LOOKING for games to revive! Great job guys!
The load in and load out process went without a hitch. I don't think anyone had to wait to get out yesterday. The volunteers that helped setup and tear down were AWESOME. Some real workhorse types (looking at you Jonathan!). Thankfully Joe and Mica had water for us or we would have perished in the heat yesterday afternoon!
Overall, a great event run by some great, selfless people! THANK YOU!
Quoted from Triggerfish:Special thanks to whoever brought that Safecracker, that was quite neat.
You're welcome! The whole point was to let people experience a rare game that most probably have never seen, let alone played, before.
That's what shows like this are all about.
Thanks to all the folks at SFGE. Donna and I had a great time even if it was a ton of work. Thanks to the volunteers for helping set up all the games. Much appreciated. We made it home about 1130 Sunday night. I unloaded everything today and set our Hobbit up in the showroom. Showed 549 plays. Both Hobbits, the Woz and the MMR had lines several folks deep the whole show. I hope everyone enjoyed them. I noticed the same faces in line a lot so I know many came back time and time again. See you all next year!
A huuuuuuge thank you to every. single. one of you. Attendees. Game bringers. Volunteers. Everyone. You guys make SFGE great.
So many of you made sure all of the staff and volunteers were fed and watered and you have no idea what a difference it made! This was a great year. It was a lot of hard work, very little sleep - and worth every second of it for the good times with friends old and new.
Quoted from _litz:You're welcome! The whole point was to let people experience a rare game that most probably have never seen, let alone played, before.
That's what shows like this are all about.
I'll be another to chime in to say thanks for bringing the Safecracker. Always thought it looked like a cool game but it was even more fun than i was expecting. Found myself coming back to it all weekend and now i kind of want one 
Great show overall. Venue was a definite improvement over last year and met some very nice people.
Awesome show!!!!!!! I didn't even get to play half the games, I was so busy playing Hobbit, GB, Rob Zombie. Congrats to Preston and Patrick for such a polished, smooth running event. It is definitely worth the 4 hour drive for me. I attended several sessions as well. If you haven't made it out to SFGE, you are missing out.
Suggestion for Awards.
How about a "Best Survivor" category? For games that haven't been fully restored or modded or anything. Just nice original condition with some touchups here and there...clear or not, either way. Just a solid mostly original Player Condition game that's mechanically and electronically sound with "good" cosmetics.
A Survivor.
Walk Thru Footage from Saturday...
I got to play Phoenix for the first time...
and Mysic...
and some time on Spider-Man VE...
Rob Zombie and Ghostbuster LE were quite enjoyable
although I didn't put as much time on them as I would have liked to.
The tournament was run like a champ and a fun challenge as always.
This is my husband's and my third time at SFGE. We had an ABSOLUTE blast! The new venue was a HUGE improvement over the last location, with plenty of room to move around. I definitely noticed that people were talking and socializing much more than in the past, which I attribute to the larger venue. We met sooo many cool people this year (triggerfish, Charlie and Tammy from Mobile, Dan and Andrew, Brad from VPCabs, Jack from JJP, the list goes on...). Hubby and I even managed to sell our Walking Dead LE to a local at the event! Thanks sooo much to the event organizers, and everyone that brought games. Special thank you to Larry Kitchen of Flip 'n Out Pinball for bringing the 2 Hobbits, MMR, and the WOZ. And Marco for bringing the Ghostbusters pins. This event just gets better and better every year and we plan on attending as long as it continues. Outstanding job!
Quoted from cody_chunn:Speaking of Spidey, Marco also had Spidey VE. Love it!
I just noticed that the VE is $3K more than what the LE went for.....just 8 years ago!
WOW!!!
Hey guys! I made a goofy vlog at the expo. I show a quick walk through of the floor for anyone interested. Thank you!
A few updates:
1. Thank you to those of you who attended the show, brought games, volunteered, or donated to the silent auction (or all of the above). You rock, and there is absolutely no way we could have a successful show without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
2. We heard positive feedback regarding the new event space, and we only intend to stay there while continuing to grow. Also heard good things about the addition of tabletop. Even if board games aren't YOUR bag, a bunch of folks liked the variety and opportunity it provided to get out of the busy ballroom and connect with friends (while sitting down, lol!)
3. Attendance was up about 25% with just over 3000 unique individuals in attendance over the course of the weekend. Despite several last-minute cancellations we almost reached our goal of 250 total games. (Woo hoo! Looks like we need an even bigger boat!)
4. Thanks to your donations and your bids, we raised $1500 for the Atlanta Community Food Bank. According to them, for ever $1 raised, $9 worth of food can go to someone in need. Because of your generosity, it looks like over $13K in food is headed to feed the hungry.
5. Lastly, If you attended the show, we're looking for your feedback. Please fill out this short survey so we can improve SFGE each year: http://www.southernfriedgameroomexpo.com/2016-feedback-survey/
Thank you once again for making our 2016 event so memorable. Be on the lookout for info about 2017 in the coming weeks.
Quoted from Black_Knight:On a plane to NYC and am exhausted. I can't imagine how tires the staff is tonight. You guys did a great job. Getting better every year.
Played my first tournament and was ousted by Trent A and Steven B in the first round. It was a great experience, but how do I get seeded with 3 of top players in the world in the first round??
I also picked up that cherry Buccaneer as my first wedgehead. Only 7800 plays!
It was great seeing everyone there.
Chased a Buccaneer for several years. I finally settled on a Ship Ahoy. I would still go for the Buccaneer if I found one local.
Just in case you haven't seen them already, here's my album with the official photos from SFGE 2016:
Nice article about SFGE in today's Creative Loafing newspaper: http://clatl.com/atlanta/metro-atlantas-arcade-underground/Content?oid=17316965&showFullText=true
Quoted from _litz:Where on earth did you find an actual paper copy?
I can't find anywhere in Alpharetta that carries the actual paper, paper.
The real paper? Oh, that is only available at the hippest, coolest spots in ATL.
Well not really. I got mine from the Dunwoody DeKalb County Public library. 
Quoted from thepinballworks:Anywhere on Peachtree street. Get stopped by a red light and jump out and grab one.
Every other street in Atlanta is Peachtree ST! 
I never met you Taylor because you were too busy talking to my friend Eric all weekend.
Thanks for coming and donating stuff to the auction that I did not win.
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Blue Ridge, GA