The thought occurred to me. I didn’t think it my place to do that, but I’ll keep it mind for next year.

I think all of us here need to assist by loading up an easy way to report repair needs on our phones. I don’t think informing newbs how to do it is going to solve it. We are the “Pinball People” that know what a broken game looks like. If I hear a chattering sling, or a VUK firing over and over it triggers a reaction of “problem”. If we all just watch out for all the games, repair needs will be more factual and easier for the staff. Maybe we all even carry little cards that say “please don’t power on, staff is informed of the problem” kind of thing. Get 40 Pinsider at the show to do that minor amount of volunteering at a place they will be anyways and the repair crew can be better informed.

And speaking of repair crews... another shout out to Tony and the whole crew. Great job helping people.

I don't mind helping out like this as I'm roaming around. I do most of that sort of thing anyway. Maybe have pre-printed "out of order" signs available and make it a bit more consistent/obvious for when a game is down?

I'd suggest giving folks the option of whether or not they want their number to appear--not just unilaterally make the decision for them. Some people do prefer to be contacted (I want to hear immediately when there's an issue with my game), and some people just want to drop it off and leave to do other things and not be bothered with issues or people trying to get them to sell.

Maybe put some "please silence your cell phones" signs up? I made sure to put mine on silent. I don't think I heard anyone's phone go off during the seminars I attended.

I would suggest making the font larger and use a font with wider characters in order to increase readability from a distance. I think the cards should be easily readable by the person playing the game without having to lean forward and squint, and also readable by the person passing by or waiting behind them. The small font made it hard to see what was for sale and what wasn’t. The cards are certainly large enough, and had a lot of wasted space.

For me, the most important bits of information are the game title, price, and contact number. Everything else is secondary.

Just a few comments:
First - absolutely awesome experience...just top notch! I stayed from Thursday morning at set up until Saturday morning when I broke down my Firepower. This was my second time attending, first time participating. My brother and I had a great time, and, although sometimes there were a few lines, for the most part we did not have an issue getting to play any certain machine that we wanted to. It was also just a blast to see so many people having fun on my machine and enjoying the work that I put into it.
I would like to thank Gabe for making all of this possible, and especially for allowing my brother to volunteer on Thursday, thus allowing him to help me set up things before he would have otherwise been able to enter. That was a huge plus for me.
My thanks also to the repair staff. I encountered an issue on Thursday evening where 80% of my solenoids wouldn't function, and, thankfully it was an easy fix and they helped me track down the problem. I also thank the people who were dedicated to keeping their respective machines running.
Special When Lit party was great...good food, good atmosphere. Timing was good, too...just the right time for that post-dinner meal!
Seminars were great as well - the TNT video comedy show was a blast. Their board-cleaning techniques were also very helpful; I learned some techniques that will help me with old computer repair, another hobby of mine.
Second - Some things that could have been better: machines that were never even usable. Some guy brought machines in on Friday evening in the one corner of the free play room...and they never worked once from start to finish. Four of them: not one worked. I realize that this was a ticket into the show (mine included), but I hope something was done about people pretty much freeloading their way in.
The area in between free play and the vendor hall is a little bit confusing...in the sense that it it somewhat of a netherworld. Perhaps a little redesign would help, in the sense of other things being sold there (perhaps more vender space other than art), making the console video games a bit more meaningful (i.e. perhaps have a tournament. Some of us around my age - I'm 34 - grew up on video games but also love pinball). Something like a Nintendo 64 GoldenEye tournament would be fun.
All in all, a great time. I will come again next year (sans machine - that was a lot of work, it's the only one I have, and now I have to do some repair because of all the play it got!), but I will hopefully be bringing more relatives as well. Gabe, I am sorry that I did not get to meet you in person while there, but thank you very much none the less for a wonderful time.

Thanks for bringing the game and your brother really helped out. I'm glad you had a positive experience bringing a game. It's a feeling you don't understand till you do it. See you next year and make sure you stop me to chat.

This sounds good. If you have a stack of signs that say - "Issue reported, please leave game off" - to put over the flipper area. This way people will know the problem is being addressed and they should not make it worse.

If the best in show competition doesn’t include all the games at the show, maybe have a check in the box during game registration online that guarantees your game is considered for best in show. That would give the judges a checklist of games they would have to judge to complete the checklist? Not all games in free play were contenders anyway. This would save time and not leave anyone left out.

Yes, moving it to the empty seminar room would be a great idea. Would love to be able to sit on a chair while waiting, lol. It was a long couple of days!

That's a good idea. We can have that raffle in the seminar room next year. Nice AC and seating.

ForceFlow: "Maybe have pre-printed "out of order" signs available and make it a bit more consistent/obvious for when a game is down?"

Taxman: "This sounds good. If you have a stack of signs that say - "Issue reported, please leave game off" - to put over the flipper area...."

Paper forms are already part of the system, but probably not understood that well. The form is overdue for design improvements anyway, and I agree that we should put that "please leave game off" wording more prominently on the half that stays on the game.
.................David Marston

I'm not an app guy. I don't want tons of apps on my phone, period. I have no issues texting however.

Here's my thought, instead of the owner's number on the machine, why not put the tech crews "hot line" on the machine. Text the machine number, with brief description of the issue if you want. They can contact the owner or handle the issue themselves based upon the owner's wishes.

How many Indians and how many Chiefs so far? We all think we know best, right!

Bunch of games I couldn't play (Friday morning), but a bunch I could that I've never played before, so overall, a cool day.

@RonSS: we were thinking more along the lines of a kiosk you can walk up to, rather than a hotline. That seems to cover more bases than texting a hotline, because it serves the people without phones. It also allows us to put instructions on the screen and guide the interaction when necessary. How about that approach?
.................David Marston

I don't understand people complaining about 4 people playing a 4 player game. What is the difference between that, and 4 people waiting in line to play 1 player at a time? I DO have a problem where one person waits in line, then calls his three buddies over to play once he gets to the front of the line.

Been going to this show since the beginning. This year, I came on Sat. around noontime, with the possibility of snagging one of the Houdini pins from Cointaker....and I did.

Positives:
Lots of new games to try: Houdini, Iron Maiden, POTC.
Seminar room was comfortable
Free-play room wasn't as crowded as it has been in past years
Kids tournament. Such a great idea.

Negatives:
Vendors continue to diminish. This 'was' my primary motivation for coming to the show.
Never got a chance to play POTC due to long lines.

Suggestions:
-Show schedule flyers at the ticket booth (did not see any). I had no idea what time specific events were taking place.
-More vendors, although I am not sure how to entice vendors to participate.
-Limit free-play game areas in the vendor space or perhaps separate it a bit more. It can be difficult to talk to vendors with the added sounds of pins being played.

Takeaway:
I love having a show in New England, and happily pay the admission price to attend. Next year, I will try going on Friday night rather than dedicating an entire Sat. to it, especially if vendors continue to decline. Thanks for putting this show together.

I think you guys are working out a best case scenario and I applaud that!

Actually we had 27 different vendors this year. All pinball and game room related. More than in past year. Vendor hall was sold out so not sure why you think vendors are light. We did have many different vendors but the hall was sold out.

I think a lot of people were looking to pick up project games and parts, but there wasn't too much of that this time.

It's never really been a good show for that. But plenty of mods, LEDS and new games were for sale as always.

It's just too goddamn hot for an outdoor flea market. Never gonna catch on at this show.

Only area we have left is the gazebo area which would be great for this stuff. If we get enough response I could get security for it. But it would need to be worth doing. That would get them in doors and air conditioning

What I don't think most buyers realize is how hard it is to buy "project" machines these days at prices you can afford to take them to shows and sell them as projects. I would love to bring project machines to this show but I just can't justify the cost. Between what I have to pay for project machines these days, cost of a room and fuel to get to the show, etc it would actually cost me money to sell project machines at this show. Allentown is only a 100 mile trip for me so I drive home each night and I still can not find a way to make a profit selling project machines at Allentown let alone adding another 300 miles or driving (each way) and several nights in a motel to sell at Pintastic.

Things have changed - it is nearly impossible to find project machines at a decent price these days. So if you are going to a show expecting to find "cheap" project machines it is highly unlikely that will happen. If you look back to post about the Allentown show people were complaining about the same thing. The days of "cheaper project machines" are long gone!

This is the MAIN REASON I splurged for the LE pass. I knew being limited to 100 sales that there would be an excellent chance of being able to play a premium "A" list of games from Gabes personal collection without too much hassle. I never, EVER, EVEEEEEEER spend money on anything. I saw value in being able to play virtually 24 hrs a day. After all, my main purpose was to play as much as possible, put up some GCs/high scores, meet some pinball celebs (which I got to battle John Borg on Metallica...dream come true!), and just flat out enjoy myself with my family. It was damn pricey for the LE tag considering I was only there 2 out of the 4 days...even all that being said, there was value to be had in buying it. Gabes collection is real nice, and held up well! However....the black on dark cherry red flipper rubbers that were translucent made it virtually impossible to see on Getaway, LOL! Steve Bowden kicked my ass on it. After a few plays, i got the hang of it. Definitely made for a challenging set of circumstances!

Overall, I had a great time. Of course there are things you can improve on, but thats to be expected. Sitting on the side lines and pointing fingers is easy. When you're in the line of fire, it's much more difficult and time consuming/mentally taxing to oversee such an event like this. @dannunz, despite anything negative that could be said, it was fantastic! Happy to support it, and hopefully next year i'll be able to make it again.

- Len

Not sure if this is a version specific feature, but QR scanning is built into the iPhone camera now. Just pull up the camera app and point it at the QR code and it will display a notification to pull up the QR code link. Couldn't be easier.

The Getaway was very nice but it was not mine. Eric Bundy moded out that game.

I did not know this! Huh, what a world.

I know I was part of the reason games did not come. I brought 6 of the 10 pins I had planned to bring but lets face it sometimes life gets in the way. Bride decided she did not want to power up, on a night before pretest, and was scratched. Sadly I do not have time to be there for all the issues of freeplay and tend to a game I bring being very problematic. Circus and GNR both stayed here do to time issues and needing a bit more shop work with both having switch errors still. I did bring 6 pinball machines, and 2 video cabs. Good thing since we had very few video cabs and they were played nearly non stop. Tron, Monster Bash and Avatar got tons of play as well. I think some forget that 15 or 20 games in the vendor hall were freeplay games. pinstadium booth was 5 DMD games. the 11 in the middle as well. Free play game titles I personally know we had for dmd, Adams x 2 Cactus Canyon, Creature, White Water, TSPP, Tron, Monster Bash, Avatar, ripley, game of thrones prem, batman 66, ash vs walking dead, moe, Lost in Space retheme, fishtales, guardians, theater of magic, pinball magic, judge dread, World cup soccer, NGG, Stargate, Water world, Star trek DE, BK2K, xmen le, yes all of those games were in freeplay or vendor hall and not in EBL. They may have had other copies in the EBL but at least one copy of them was availible to all people at the show. This list did not include the 20 that's right 20 brand new games Automated aka pinballs.com brought with them!

personally I love seeing older games and em games. I do not own any em, and only a couple older games. we had some amazing examples of older games too. Gorgar and Firepower with beautiful playfields come to mind. We had many rare titles like Vegas, Time Fantasy and a few others that I don't recall names of.

I was there when we laied out the floor Wednesday till Monday am when I woke up to drive it all back home.

This is true but day pass attendees don’t have access to this until after 11 and many of these games were not powered up or not on free play. There were a ton of holes in the free play room that these games could have gone to. If the vendor area was sold out how did they fit 20 games in there?

Because, Columbo, the space the pins went was part of the space the vendors bought.

They also want to ensure a selection of games in the vender area to get traffic to the sellers, its all part of the floor layout.

Yes we implemented a vendor hall freebplay area to create more traffic in the vendor hall. This is working well and vendors are happy. All games in the vendor free play were mine or Dave M also 3 of the pinstadium games were mine. I brought 28 games to the show.

Making vendors happy is a big part of building the foundation of a show. The vendors are very important to me. That's why I cater to them. We give them a nice meal on Friday night as well as other perks. In return some sponsor the show and from that comes the $1500 in prizes I give away to all the game bringers.

11 am till like 8 or 9 pm. I think Saturday was 10 am. but even if it was 11am, it was plenty of time to get in there. As for games powered down well when they have issue it happens. TRON, Twister, and Bash all went down, got repaired as soon as I could and got them back up. It is pinball man. things will break after well 8 straight hours of play.....I will set my Audits but would be willing to bet average on a DMD pin in vendor hall or free play would be 600 to 800 plays durring the show. that is more then most pins in a personal collection will get in years and games on route take months to get that sometimes. This was over 3 or 4 days. You can not expect every single game to be up all day. Heck one reason my Bash went down was I had to reinstall and glue in a rail that had scratched the brand new playfield I had just put in. I downed it for the night like 1 hour before vendor hall closed and the next am turned it back on and it ran the rest of the show. had a coil go bad in it and rebuilt that flipper during the show with a new coil. just to keep it going so people could enjoy it. I very easily when it did the PF scratch could have pulled it for the weekend....but I did not.

mainelycoasters , And that Avatar........ :p

I think many people did not take advantage of the games in the SNHPC Club Room either. Some of us on the staff think it's just a matter of signage.
.................David Marston

I thought that was a private area just for their tournament.

That was what it looked like to me as well, but I went in and inquired. I think most people thought the same way.

No I gave them that room at no charge. That room is an extension of free play.

I think it was for the tournament. A little bit of wandering in and out was cool but tons of people going in there to play and not compete would have screwed things up in my opinion.

Not sure what the NH guys’ intentions were.

Yes I was quite excited about it, they had some nice machines in there. But I think some people either just glossed over it or missed it entirely.

What was the attendance year over year?

only minor changes from the work you did. I have to figure out the interactive back box since it got unhooked when i was fixing speakers and did not have the time to put that part back together. I did change out the lower section of led to be more white. other then that for the most part it is how I bought it from you. Still the awesome machine it was then.....but your skills have come a long way to the next gen you sold me is OMG amazing!

I would do that. The flea market space needs to be defined wherever it is.

I just went over the list of games that got checked in and were in the vendor hall free play and regular free play. Not including games in the EBL and any vendor booths we has 44 DMD games. That is a very high total from what I can tell.

If you include the vendors games which you can play with a $25 ticket that brings the total up to 72 DMD and LCD games. Not to shabby.

If you add in the extra ball lounge the total in the whole show was 95. Of those 23 were color DMD games.

But wait there is more lol include the tournament banks and we are at 102 dmd.

This was my first Pintastic and had a great time. I really appreciate all the hard work that went into the show by the organizers and volunteers. Everyone was really nice all weekend. We brought a Genie and a Globetrotters that got almost 700 plays a piece. It was fun watching people enjoy the games and really enjoyed the seminars. Can't wait till next year.

I've been to pintastic every year, but this was the first time I brought a good pinball friend and stayed overnight on Friday. I have to say it was a fantastic show. Highlights for me were definitely:

a) The Vendor area with all the newest games. This is such a treat to get to try all these out in one place. Thanks pinballs.com.

b) The tournament. I vastly prefer games from the last ten years in general, but I still really enjoyed punching a couple of tickets in the Silverball. Thanks to the Sanctum crew.

I'm not sure I can agree with folks complaining about long lines - I was there all day Friday and Saturday and played every game in the vendor area multiple times without ever having to wait for more than one person/group to finish up. You had to be patient and pick your spots, but there was plenty of opportunity to play those games without too much waiting around.

I'm not a great player but I did blow up a couple of the games in the vendor area once or twice and I did feel bad for causing a long wait for the folks behind me. However, a couple of people actually said they enjoyed watching me play and learning a little about how those machines work (maybe they were just being polite, but I know I enjoyed watching Steve Bowden play Maiden, for example).

Honestly, the number one thing that would help move people through those new games in the vendor area would be to tighten them up - I don't think a single one of them other than Pirates had a tilt bob even installed. While it's really fun to be able to get physical with a game and rack up a huge score, it really lengthens ball times. My guess is that maybe the vendors want people to have fun so that they'll buy the game and tilting is not fun, but still, I think they would benefit from shorter lines.

At first I as bummed by the lack of DMD games in the free play area, but honestly I really enjoyed being force to spend some time with older games outside my comfort zone, and ended up having a great time. Radical, Time Fantasy, Space Station, and Black Hole were a few of the ones we kept returning to.

Anyway, thanks so much to everyone involved with the show. I hope it was successful for you and that you made some money, because I know I got way more value out of the show than I had to pay. Can't wait til next year!

I’m sure he was referencing you...you’re a stu....oh wait. Sorry. Wrong Jim.

Jim’s a good dude...even when I was talking to him he was busy at the tournament running things. I brought a game I picked up for him, and couldn’t even get him outside for 10 minutes until later in the day to finish the transfer. He’s good peeps though, I’ve never seen him be rude to anybody.

I can see some of the good and some of the meh that people have mentioned. But things are always improving. Good show Gabe. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer.

I’d be happy to contribute in some way next year, even if it’s going around breaking fingers of people that are misbehaving (politely of course).

That Globetrotters was sweet! You guys really did a fantastic job on that!

Who went to the auction? What did you win, or miss out on? Was everything clearly explained?
.................David Marston

Thanks Ron!!

Ok I am a little confused.....

I have never been to a big pin event, but have thought about going but after reading some of what I have read on the post, I gotta say something. Might ruffle some feathers, so I apologize in advance.

It sounds like you have to pay to go to these events. Fine I don't have a problem with that, but when someone posts a comment like..." I saw people hogging games" I saw people being rough with games" the response back always seems to be, "You should have reported that, you should have told someone.

Why does it fall back to the attendee of the event to be the police for the event??? Where are the people that put on the event and why are they not taking charge of it and watching what's going on??

I would never bring a game to a event like that if I knew this kind of abuse to machines was going on.

Now I know someone will say. "We all a big pin community and we watch out for each other", but that doesn't seem to be the case when these fellow pinball lovers are acting the way they do.

Just saying...................