People who play 4 player games by themselves are the worst.

Had a great time and pins are back at home already. Thanks to all the show volunteers for everything they do!

Did you acquire some legs?

I think I left my Iron Maiden on the curb...

the whole game? I'm pretty sure i would have noticed that before i got home

Jeez - at least my game made your show list I guess.

At least one very happy person didn't agree with you though as I sold it. In defense of PCC, I think it actually is a fun game if you enjoy the simple challenges of EM's and classic 2" flippers. If not, then this definitely isn't the game for you. Besides cool artwork, it also has great callouts which I discovered Sunday AM (I wasn't at the show Saturday) were very hard to hear so I subsequently increased the volume to twice as high as what I originally set it at the start of the show Friday.

In an ideal (i.e. spacious gameroom) world, I would have kept it as it adds nice variety to a larger collection.

during shows, how about making the occasional public service announcement as a reminder and to increase awareness.

I think both things would help quite a bit - for sure larger signs though.

I can't understand a single thing in the announcements, they just add to the overall noise of the place, not in a good way.

Maybe it's time for the JumboTron!

I enjoy mishearing the raffle numbers and thinking I’ve won

Project them on the wall. You cannot I understand them. It is just a loud roar that everyone just waits out before going to back to their conversations.

I started to wonder also if hanging some large banners would help with the sound bouncing around. I have been struggling with some hearing loss in a certain range and found that the general show noise made some voices almost disappear unless I was standing very close. Getting old!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

My wife also noticed a number of people not following the one game limit. She also noticed a number of people that were not attached to the show powering machines off and on. I think a sign at the front doors might be a good idea to remind people of proper game etiquetteand if they are having a problem with a game, please let the show staff know about it.

Congratulations on the sale. Shocking, really, but congratulations nonetheless.

Just for fun I kept track of plays on the machines I sent down.

Pinball Pool came in at 334 plays
Cleopatra at 435 plays
Tee'd Off at 555 plays
Count-Down at 656 plays.

Not bad for a show that ran 31 hours (if I can still add right), so Count-Down got played around 21 times an hour or a little more than once every 3 minutes! Although I'm sure there were a few games during setup etc, that's still impressive especially since it wasn't the only Count-Down there (mine was the one with chimes, as if you could hear them

this was my first time attending the show since I got into this awesome hobby 2 years ago. I had a blast but I was really disappointed that there weren't that many used games for sale.

I all went to the bank early in the Sat morning and withdrew $$$ and couldn't really find any games for sale and the one game I contacted on the sale post board at the entrance didn't even call me back so my daughter was super bummed out that she didn't bring home a new(used) pin to play at home. She really loved batman forever and was bugging me to find one to take home. She must have walked around the show 5 times looking to see if there was one for sale but to no avail.

As a father I really cherished this time that I get to spend with my daughter and enjoy this hobby together for who knows when she will grow out of it. Hopefully next year, she still has some interest in pinball to come with me to the show again.

Fantastic show! I had a great time with my son. Thank you so much to the organizers and generous people/companies who donated their time and machines. Special thanks for the people who brought Atari Football, Basketball, Sub and any two-player simultaneous games!

Regarding game hogs, while most people were very polite, I experienced about a dozen instances of people hogging games, and one or two people playing a four player game. The people I politely asked not to play more than 1 game looked indignant, claimed they didn’t know, or “they wanted to experience the game” or some other entitled BS. Typical tragedy of the commons stuff.

Would it be possible to have the people handing out the wristbands say “1 game per player” to everyone and ask them to make sure their children and everyone in their party understood the policy? I’d also like to see prominent signage (I mean those 6 foot tall standing banners) scattered throughout, and cards on the backglass. With the right art it could be funny and really set the tone.

I would also like to see more vendors with pinball gear there. I came away with some ramps, thank you Starship Fantasy, but I wish I could have picked up some more pinball-related swag, esp. shirts for my favorite games.

On to the games:

I came expecting to hate Iron Maiden, but I really liked it. Super fun game. Stern keeps getting better with the LCD, but they have a long way to go to catch up to JJP’s quality. Their screen art used to look like bad ‘90s Flash animation, now it looks like bad ‘00s Flash animation. And WTF is the deal with not showing the score and the ball in play at all times? Lunacy.

I enjoyed playing more Houdini, that’s one I will be adding to my collection. I hope American ups their game on the animations next time, though. I found those to drag down an otherwise excellent game.

JJP Pirates was a lot of fun to play, but the lines were so long I didn’t get enough time to really dig in like I did with IMDN. The characters added a lot of depth and I feel like there is a ton to explore on that game. Looking forward to playing more of that one.

Regarding Thunderbirds I will limit my comments to the positive and say that the playfield was colorful, and I liked the way multiball started. I don’t know what they were aiming for, and I didn’t look at the innards or build quality. But as a player, if they were going for a Data East circa 1992 they got most of the way there. More than anything I was disappointed to see a Homepin rep attacking someone here for critiquing their game. Deeply unprofessional. That certainly didn’t win me over as a customer.

It was great to play an Orbitor 1 that seemed to be completely working!

There were also some fun hobby/early development machines there. I was most impressed with the potential of Proto. That’s definitely one to watch. I was frankly astonished at what was possible at the FAST Pinball lounge.

My son and I will definitely be back next year!

Larger signs about playing one game at a time. Maybe ask owners to set machines for 3 balls instead of 5 to speed things up. I watched a lot of people just hit the start button again keep playing, I would have loved to play more machines at show

Thanks for your comments. I am always happy to receive constructive criticism - that allows us to improve.

To set the record straight, the person commenting on here that you say I "attacked" was NOT at this show and is a well known troll who follows me everywhere and does anything in his power to cause me trouble. He was making a completely unrelated comment about a minor issue that happened when the machine was shown at the New Zealand Pincade recently (he wasn't there either).

This issue was of no concern to anyone at this show and nobody would even know that there was a single instance of a very rough player causing damage in Ne Zealand that this person has chosen to latch onto and spread far and wide.

'Fake news' like this I can do without and it doesn't help anyone. It certainly doesn't help us create a better product when it is just endless digs with no substance and no interest in helping us with improvement.

Thunderbirds reflects the era in which the show was originally aired so that's possibly why it seemed the way it did to you? We are not out to compete with other offerings in the marketplace but are trying to be a little different.

But you are correct, I really should just not comment on public forums because you can never win no matter what you say.

It was presold before the show. Is there something I'm missing here? It was a close firend's of mine who picked it up at an auction for cheap. The person who bought it at the show was going crazy for it and we had people drooling over it the whole time. Is there a reason it's so popular? Or is it just what it is, a bull strength tester. I never thought much of it over the past couple of years he had it...

genex
people playing pinball shots are the best, thank you.
WE ALL LOOK LIKE FREAKS

I take you completely at your word on this.

My sincere congratulations on trying to be different. We need more of that in pinball. It is an impressive feat to get a commercial pinball machine built from scratch -- as we have seen in recent years. I hope you sell a bunch of them. I don't know the show and was a toddler when it aired, so I don't think I'm in your target market.

As a creator myself, I know first hand how damn painful it is to have my work criticized, trolled and misrepresented.

But I think you must take action on public forums when you perceive that a misrepresentation is being made, and you must do it loudly, persistently, and firmly. Unfortunately, ample negative examples abound. I would call out American Pinball as having the most level-headed and engaged responses from all of the pinball manufacturers on Pinside.

Best wishes on this and future projects, and thank you for taking the time to reply. I also forgot to mention that I thought the plastic trees on Thunderbirds were super fun.

This was my first year and overall I had a pretty good time.

Wife and I played a game of POTC and we really enjoyed it. Think it may be on our future buy list. We also had a blast playing Tails from the Crypt for the first time. I looked up to see a price on the translight but no tag

Next year I plan on bringing at least 3 pins of my own. Its a very busy show and I think it needs all the pins we can pack in. I hope more pinsiders who may be on the fence to bring a machine will do the same.

On another note, you may want to add something on your big sign warning about abusing the machines. I saw some dude banging the crap out of somebodies White Water while I was playing NGG. I just kept imagining it was me who brought it to the show and how unhappy that would have made me.

Also just like to say thanks to all the people that made this happen. Good job!

Yikes. That was my Whitewater they were "banging the crap out of". What exactly is "banging the crap out of"? Was it aggressive shaking or lifting the cabinet and dropping or banging on the coin door?

Agreed 100%. The crew deserves major props!!!

I was actually genuine and curious how it was performing but you pull the poor me card, I was not aware that this thread is only for the people that went to the show. I thought it was a forum for pinball discussion, but sorry to say unless you get everyone patting you on the back you crack the shits.

In the end if someone chimed in and said it performed well, then all good that is a tick for your different approach.

As for being a troll, no I am not ..... but you like to stir a community against me and others when it suits you instead of owning your shit. What about the Aussies that were early investors on your official thread or on AA that recently asked for a refund but you refused referring to your contract but in actual fact you missed the deadline by 2 years so technically you should pay them back, but you ignore those comments......

Over the years on other forums and here you have been be nasty, rude and a downright jerk to many people, including to the newbies, long standing members, companies and you are consistent at doing it - maybe just karma coming back to say hi

Just own your stuff, pay people back and build games and get a PR guy

I do give you credit for the company growth and taking on so much and achieving so much, but your people skills suck




Lastly to all the Pinsiders and the visitors of this show, my apologies - "I am sorry that this thread went the wrong direction"

What the heck?? I just want to read about the NW Pinball Show. Why are 2 guys from down under hijacking this thread?

http-inlinethumb06.webshots.com-43525-2778538940105101600S600x600Q85 (resized).jpg

Thats not a knife ! ha ha

Go all blacks!

The first one isn't going to happen because if you refund one it will snowball so it's a stalemate with none of the few remaining prepayers with money still down willing to take it further for recovery.

The problem with that perpetual sit and wait scenario is the second one isn't going to happen until one of the overseas distributors puts in a decent sized order to financially justify shifting factory operations to dedicated production rather than trickling out prototypes.

Aussie/NZ demand is nominal so North America needs to bite down hard or its going to stay in revision limbo.

He was aggressively bumping, shaking and raging between drained balls. Smacking both sides of the cabinet around the flipper buttons and shoving the apron. Im sure its fine but it was all just a little unnerving knowing that it was somebody elses pin.

nwpinball is correct about Friday. It's the best day for short lines. Totally worth it to take off of work. Saturday I usually play the tournaments and head over to the older games which often have shorter lines. Or just walk around until I find something open.

Please try not to get too angry at the people starting four player games. There's a good chance they aren't into pinball and literally don't know now to start a one or two player game. At Seattle barcades it's not uncommon to see someone repeatedly putting in quarters expecting the game to start on its own.

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert Hanlon

Also, getting new players into pinball is one if the goals of the event. Hopefully they'll throw some quarters in next time they see a game in the wild.

Also, the lady that runs the Air BnB I stayed at said a married couple in another unit she owns actually met at the show two years ago. They now come back every year as an anniversary of sorts. That's at least slightly adorable.

My wife and I had a fantastic time - we only went on Friday so I can't comment on the weekend lines but on Friday I think there was only 1 game that we couldn't play (there was a set of 4 guys who just rotated on it) so I feel great about the overall experience and what we were able to play. My wife discovered a couple of games that she really liked (Nascar, Judge Dredd) and I've put them on my wishlist. We never even got to many of the EM's I was hoping to try out...oh well, next year!

Some thoughts on future shows:
1) the signs down in the lobby were tiny. I think there was one 8.5x11 sign on a stand between the escalators, we literally wandered around looking for where to go until we saw some people with a pinball shirt who said to go up the escalator. I couple of big signs would help out.
2) some kind of lounge area where people could hang out and meet. I was really hoping to meet a few people from Pinside but wandering around looking to see if anyone had a badge or something didn't work very well. The couple of people with some kind of badge around their neck I saw were always heading to a machine having problems and although there were a few at the front with the presentation, I didn't want to interrupt them.
3) more vendors. I know this is not something you can strictly control but I was surprised at how few vendors and products were being sold. I came looking for cables and parts and there wasn't really anything like that. Even a swap-meet kind of thing where people could bring bins of parts would be cool - of course that might change the tone of the convention somewhat, from a "play games" to "swap meet" but when I look at the Emerald City Comic Con, there were vendor areas and chat areas and play areas all kind of side by side.

The machines are built to take that level of abuse. That Whitewater cabinet is in pretty rough shape (as well as the playfield).

I usually make my games easy for players so the general public has fun. Unfortunately (as Dan has suggested that it's a tournament player) the tournament players usually "abuse" my machines by taking advantage of the easy playing conditions. I might consider setting the tilt plumb bobs really tight. Most members of the general public don't even want to lightly push the machine. I saw one guy play my TZ last year and got LITZ *TWICE* in one game. You'd think he'd just walk away from it not being much of a challenge.

Are you forgetting about Betson Specialty Coin in Kent?

Betson Specialty Coin Kent
7651 S 180th Street
Kent, WA 98032

503-786-9200
800-987-4946
253-395-2936 (Fax)

For those interested in statistics I have interim stats ... interim because the numbers only cover Friday and Saturday. The rush to close down on Sunday meant that I didn't go through the machines and collect the audits before power off. The final numbers probably won't be available for another few weeks. I'd consider posting an update if there's interest in stats (I know it's not everyone's interest). I am interested in the final counts. I don't think any machine of mine has broken 600 plays and only a handful break 550 plays during the course of the show.

The first column is the count of plays on Friday. The second column is Saturday. The third (empty) column is Sunday. The final is the total (Friday and Saturday only).

181 | 271 | - | 452 = Laser War
176 | 241 | - | 417 = Black Knight 2000
185 | 305 | - | 490 = Whirlwind
136 | 226 | - | 362 = Terminator 2
201 | 279 | - | 480 = The Addams Family
179 | 283 | - | 462 = Fish Tales
195 | 271 | - | 466 = White Water
218 | 281 | - | 499 = Bram Stoker's Dracula
188 | 224 | - | 412 = Twilight Zone
165 | 183 | - | 348 = Indiana Jones
165 | 155 | - | 320 = Star Trek: The Next Generation
162 | 217 | - | 379 = Theatre of Magic
141 | 184 | - | 325 = Safe Cracker
130 | 196 | - | 326 = No Good Gofers
186 | 237 | - | 423 = Monster Bash
172 | 253 | - | 425 = Lord of the Rings

I've been trying to explain the difference between counts as perhaps "popularity". I think shorter games results in more games played. BSD is drain monster (especially with lightning flippers).

Star Trek (TNG) was down more than I would like. That explains the lower count. I need to spend some time figuring out what's wrong to make it more reliable. The machine was completely rebuilt two shows ago so it should be something simple.

Safe Cracker games are longer than average from what I've seen (board game can take up a lot of time). There were a lot of 3 and 4 player games on the Safe Cracker (by the same crowd of players) and I'm also wondering if the audit counts multiple player games as a single "game played" in the count.

I put in a total of 120 tokens.

50x brass "10 year"
10x nickel-plated "10 year"
50x brass "Safe Cracker"
10x nickel-plated "Safe Cracker"

There was a 1 in 5 chance of getting a nickel-plated token.

The machine dispensed a total of 68 tokens.

24x brass "10 year"
7x nickel-plated "10 year"
32x brass "Safe Cracker"
5x nickel-plated "Safe Cracker"

I am interested in your final counts. It will be a little time before I am able to see the counts on mine. I still need to get them back downstairs and setup. I am estimating that my Addams should be close to the same count as yours. Silverball will be more interesting sine it is an older machine, yet rarely did I see the machine not getting played.

Busier than last year, that’s for sure and the numbers of games played shows it, my met pro last year had less than 600 total plays, and dudes laser war had 450 not counting Sunday.

I had the four at the end of the same row; KISS, GB, TSPP, and MMr. Should be able to pull numbers when i get then set back up this weekend. All four seemed to have constant play. My MetPro in the Marco area had 569 plays.

I took home one of the Marco Iron Maiden pros, and it had just under 500 plays on it.

Yeah, I can see the appeal to the EM crowd, and to Pabst fans, but I find those 2" flippers a novelty and not fun. Don't like them on my Popeye machine! As you said though, that's just me. I would have like to have heard the callouts, but I couldn't hear anything in there, including the music for Iron Maiden. Thanks for bringing it to the show, though, I can cross it off of my "bucket list", and congrats on the sale.

There was a guy that had a 4 player game going on Lexi, I walked away because I didn't have time to wait. Disappointed I didn't get to play that one.

I haven't been to the previous shows but from what I am hearing it seems like this show is growing exponentially. Which is great and if we are to expect an even larger crowd next year, it would be wise to aim for more solid state pin volunteers. I know this isnt an easy task and that the arcade machines initially outnumbered the pins this year (got your messages via smac) but its worth a shot.
You definitely have my support and can expect a few pins from me next year, possibly an arcade cabinet as well.

Thanks again for hosting such a large and fun event.