Me love you long time.

Picked up a pair of tickets for Saturday! 6:00AM departure gets me there for doors opening! 3rd year for me. Once again the tigers are out of town so I can’t kill two birds with one stone. What are the odds the wings or pistons are deep into the playoffs

JM, are you going to have dmd clocks as prizes?

you sir, are one funny guy

If the Pistons are a 5-8 seed and make round 2 of the playoffs, game 3 of that series would be in Detroit around May 4th or 5th. Hardest part of that equation is not getting bounced in round 1.

You can count the Wings out, I have.
Pistons look better this year but I don't follow them.

Someone asked about T-Shirts... I have this teaser Eric released.
Sorry I cannot comment on pre-orders Eric will have to chime in.

teaser (resized).jpg

Waste of space completely.

A temporary show only presence would go over well with a a few patrons. Overall I'd say a waste of time and space.

Maybe not for the Saturday crowd but I would love a vintage show. 1930s, bolwers woodrails, rifles, Chester Pollard football.

I'm in the small group that would love to see the stuff, but it would be a space waster for most unfortunately.

I love the oddball kooky stuff however a lot of people find it boring.

I always play of few games at the games right at the front entrance but it doesn't seem that most people do. Cool to look at but not spend a lot of time playing.

Those are woodrails 1950+ I believe. I think pre-war is all flipperless?

Now, if, say there was a new building added to the VFW compound and there was excess space that needed to be filled; Bring out the Ballyhoo, Baffle Ball, Jigsaw, World Series, Air Way etc.

Wondering if there is a layout game map of the show?

If no, how difficult would it be to just make a list of games per building?

Would be cool to be able to walk in say 'i wanna play xxxx' and it's as easy as looking at the game list that already exists and it just says where to find it.

Just a thought.

To me, the wood rails right when you walk in are interesting from a nostalgia stand point. One of the helpers there showed my wife and I how one worked without flippers and how it was mostly mechanical with little electronics and showed under the playfield. That was interesting and great of that person to show that to us and explain it. But I was also eyeing that the "Junk Yard" game had just opened up and wanted to go play that more.

My personal opinion is that those really old ones are good to look at and get a tour of how they work once. But then on to the more modern machines to play while time permits. For the show, even though it is many hours, we want to fit in as much gaming as we can ... while we can. If, as MrBally said, there is another new building added, maybe make an area for the wood rails and older pins as more of a "museum" type setup with someone like we had that would show and explain how some of those old pins worked. Every once in a while, people need to take a break and a old time pin tour/seminar would be something really good to see during that "break time". Just a suggestion.

Like others have said though, if you are space limited, make room for more of the solid state era pins would be my vote.

Do you mean somthing like this?

BTW it's not up to date with all the recent additions. "Hopefully" we'll have it current by show time.

Doug D.
VFW Member

VFW Layout 10.06.17.PDF

Sorry that i will not be attending this year;
but anyone who does will not be disappointed.
Great show (best show for playing excellent working pins).
More pins than you will ever have time to play
almost never a line with a few exceptions.
I would advise to wear sensible comfortable shoes
and maybe bring your own portable stool
cause by the end of the day your feet will be dog tired.

Looks like they greatly increased their collection of 60s Bally EMs,
now just need to work on getting some more 60s Williams EM pins.

I'd love to see that Sega Cowboy arcade game in action if there's any chance of getting that up and running.

That's a great map, however, the cyan labels are unreadable on the machines.

Maybe a bank style setup, similar to pinburgh could work?

Number the buildings (or stick to the names) and each row can be an aisle number, and each game is the number in the row.

For example (purely made up):

*Using the current games list in the website*

Bad Cats (Williams 1989) - Building 1; Aisle 4; Game 17

I know a bunch of people (myself included) walk into the show with a bunch of games we'd like to play because in many cases they are unattainable locally to us. (Especially the antiquities)

It could even be done with a simple Excel spreadsheet pre-filled with the website game list.

I'll ask if we can make our bottom man Bob do this grunt work. It's a fine idea.

If I was geographically closer I'd offer to do it no problem.

I'd be upgraded to grunt from common garbage.

Most of the games are already kinda grouped together by era and MFR.

it looks better when color plotted from AutoCad. This was just a quick 11x17 .pdf print.

Doug D.

Yes they are, but if you don't have a grasp on the show floor and want to hit up specific titles it may help to know exactly where it is. I know my first time to VFW was confusing for the first couple hours and I walked in circles a lot.

It should just be done because; why the hell not? Easy enough

I like the cut of your jib.....

And your gloves

Last year I just asked at the door.
Where would I find Alien Poker?
Then I played it till the memories subsided.

Need more cigarette smoke to bring back the true feel of the old days.

Only thing that bugged me was the odd player that would stand back as far as possible with their head down for the playfield view.

Love the bowling machines.

Yes, good idea. We're going to do this and have it posted at the front door.

Doug D.
VFW Member

I'd say the one thing that bothered me most about other show-goers was the flatulence.

My god

They fart because they cannot smoke in the buildings.

I'll bring a bottle of Febreeze just point me in the direction of the crop dusters

I think that we should issue chastity corks this year to offenders and watch them explode

I understand dropping a bomb here and there, but some of these guys may as well have been dragging around a corpse with them.

What happened to Gary?
He was a great host. Kept even an EM tourney interesting.

He left the organization to persue other career interests; we wish him well in his future endeavors.

Awesome! Same idea came up last year but must have been to close to the show.

The Arcade
10816 Grand River Rd
Brighton, Michigan 48116

Pinball Petes
1214 S University Ave,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Sparks arcade at Premier Bowling is not real close, about an hour away mostly freeway. They have 47 pins and food/bar service. Open till 2am. Game list here...

https://sparkspinballmuseum.com/games

Pinball Petes in Ann Arbor is only 25 minutes away, also open till 2am. I have never been there but here its a nice place.

http://www.pinballpetes.net/

marvin's marvelous mechanical museum
31005 Orchard Lake Rd
Farmington Hills, MI 48334

(248) 626-5020
groupon: https://www.groupon.com/deals/marvin-s-marvelous-mechanical-museum-1?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_dt_sea_ggl_txt_alp_sr_cbp_ch1_nbr&instance_id=0&loc_uuid=0e565400-039e-b06a-9298-013a8fde4316&template=CR3&bypass=true

Marvin's is awesome.

I always make a stop if I'm passing through. I'll likely end up there and maybe have dinner at California pizza kitchen out front.

The Arcade in Brighton is open until 11PM on Saturday. They have a Groupon out for 2 person discount ... but buy it ahead of time as it can't be used for the first 24 hours. It also has to be used within 120 days, so time the Groupon right if you go there. I'll inquire if they can stay open until midnight or later if enough people go there that night. I'll update their pin list here on Pinside next time I go there (within a month likely). Recently added games are SW, GOTG, TH, FT. Others I remember - AS, MET, GOT, ACDC, GB, IM, Mustang, AF, PZ, WD, FG, RFM, a handful or so of others.

Thanks for the warning I just grabbed my tickets for the em tourney and all 3 days

Are there any steps required to register beyond buying the ticket on paypal? I neglected to put any "instructions" in the paypal transaction, and the only confirmation I got was from paypal itself. I think i got one of each ticket...
I'm looking forward to going back to Michigan for a long weekend. But i certainly hope it's spring-like by then!

keep your paypal payment email or at the very least capture the transaction with your cell phone. most people bring either a print out of their transaction or pull it up on their smart phones (the transaction shows their name and payment email address)