He started a 4 player game all by himself and then walked away after playing a couple of balls.

Had a blast there Saturday!! So many pins to play of all variations. Lots of fun. I also took part in a tourney at a local pinheads home which was nicely run with a small amount of locals very fun as well.

Wonder if it was the same drunk guy that tried sticking his tongue in my ear Friday night in the bar...

Sounds like the same guy who made a big scene and wanted to fight because I wouldn't buy him a shot. "I don't know you dude, and you're wasted".

MGC on Fox channel 6!

http://fox6now.com/2016/04/10/midwest-gaming-classic-features-65000-square-feet-of-games-for-all-ages/

just got home.

beat but still smiling!

WOW! what a great show!

Thanks mr2xbass for loaning me your multimeter during the after party so I could get Genesis functional.

Only my 3rd MGC but my favorite yet! Sorry to Chris S who loves the updates. I failed you miserably. But once I park my vehicle on Friday, I pretty much close out the entire rest of the world. I like to pack so much in that I forgo almost everything (even sleep) except my sons and MGC.
Thanks to the ~500 volunteers who make it so special. Special thanks to the guy with the broom and dustpan (pic below) sweeping the cement at the entrance to the vendor tent early this morning!! And the guy lugging boxes of shirts at the end of today (photo did not turn out but it was Dan).
Was very cool to officially meet Rob Anthony and his beautiful dog.
Putting faces to MANY pinside names was great too. Thanks to Troy for the back box lock!
I could go on for pages and still not thank everyone for the fun games and conversation. Chubby Rubbers???
Last thanks goes out to David Pizon for a massive compliment he paid me that put me on cloud 9.
See you guys soonish.
/rant
rant/ we also need a pro to help Gary with his TRON. Having some issues and I'm guessing he enjoys it more at home than I do at MGC, and that's a lot!!

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Nice looking Tommy in that bit.

Had a good time as always.
Put up a 1.2 billion on gb, so now I need one b/c obviously we totes in love

Depressing picture of a great weekend coming to a close.

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Where are the after party drunk pics? Flank not present this year?

Wow, that was fun!

First - thanks to all those that help with the event. Those guys are running around all weekend just trying to make sure everyone else can have a great time. THANK YOU!

We skipped most of the stuff on Friday, instead our group got a table at Friday's at Miller Park. It's really the only way I care to see a game. It seems like we missed out on a pretty good time, but we got a chance to hang out for a while after we got back.

I actually got to bed at a decent time on Friday, so I managed to get up and check things out at 10am on Saturday. I played in the tournament, but really did pretty poor. The format seems good though - 2 tries on each machine, and an average of those scores. It really rewards consistency, which I did not have.

I love walking around all the other areas of the show. I make a pass through pretty much every room just to check out what's going on. The guys in the basement always seem to be having a good time.

The vendor hall is really impressive.. It seems like that really got figured out, it was always at a good temperature, and dry! The music was great, it was loud enough to please those watching, but not too loud to prevent you from making deals with the vendors (at least not while I was in there). I was looking for some classic games, so I spent a lot of time out there browsing.

Saturday night I was thoroughly intoxicated, but had an absolute blast! Ghostbusters seems really fun - if I didn't feel like I might be missing something on the premium, I'd order a Pro right now. It was VERY cool of Dominos to donate all of that pizza!

I brought a couple of games, but sold both (before the show, actually). That made my Sunday a lot more relaxing than normal. It was great to be able to just hang out for a while before packing it in and heading for home. I learned quickly that taking off on Monday is a necessity, I've never once regretted that decision.

Thanks to everyone, it was really fun to hang out and have a few beers with all of you!

MGC was awesome again! Thank you to everyone who helped me out and everyone who helped make this show what it is , Awesome !

Yep, I'm one of those guys who mainly knows Gary, but really just got to know who you are this weekend. Always deal with him for getting set up with tables and such.

Seems like he's always in or near the tent.

I was just there on Sunday, first time in 4 years I didn't buy a game. Had a friend bring my Sharkey's Shootout to sell but just didn't buy.

Picked up some parts from Rob Anthony as usual, always good dealing with him and my Captain Morgan neon from Trilogy. I did like the color display on Tom's CV, like the look of the colored dots as compared to the setting on the TAF (just personal preference, like seeing the dots )

Played my first game of CC, really liked that game. Seemed like there was less vids this year and more pins? But maybe that's just me.....overall it was easier getting in the pinball hall as the congestion of having Marco in the pin room instead of the hall made it easier to maneuver.

I'm getting packed to head back East (and turn around and immediately go to Dallas tomorrow, stupid day job), but wanted to thank everybody involved in MGC for a great weekend. I enjoyed every single minute.

Just ask the hotel to lay in five times as much Spotted Cow for next year, being sold out on Sunday is inexcusable

Just want to say thanks again to the few people I was able to introduce myself to at the show. Had a blast this year, and hopefully it works out I can bring my machine next year.

Also really enjoyed entering my first tournament, but man that averaging killed me

The view from the afterparty at 2am.

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another great year. Still my favorite show out of all the pinball shows I attend. Thanks to everyone who made the show possible. Everything ran smooth. Exhausting but smooth. Pingolf was a little hecktic to run, but wasn't to bad. Bottle necking was a minimum. Only had one game really slow everything down. I'll try and streamline it even more for next year. Lots of great games there, and in excellent condition. Spent most of my time talking as usual. Ghostbusters was great to play. Still a little unbalanced on the scoring in spots, but is coming along great.

pingolf made many improvements over last year and I am sure it will be even better next year! Thanks for running it Neo!

I wil be talking with Dan about moving up chaos timing (4-10; with 10pm playoff) for next year so we dont have the conflict of playoffs liek chaos and golf had this year. I want people to be able to play in both playoffs and not have anyone rushed or hold others up, so this should be a simple way to make it work even smoother for next year!

Dan,

Fantastic show. Had a blast as always. Thanks for all you do to make the show go so smoothly.

Thanks to all the volunteers and folks who brought games. It's tough work, and it is appreciated!

Andrew

A few personal highlights for me of the show weekend.

Rob came over on Wed pre show to help work on a few games and drink bourbon. Good times with what I consider to be a friend and great tech toutor

Scott G came down on Thursday to hang and drink more. Scott managed to place 1st at the Alt Brew monthly/ MGC warmup tournament which was sweet.

Chaos went really well this year and special thanks to the guys that loaned me your game for it. They were great games and a really fun line up to use! I think we ended up with 90 players this year which was 30 more than previous years but everything stayed on time. Special thanks to Brice for scorekeeping all day!

I enjoyed many of the great and diverse games on the floor this year. The vast majority played REALLY well and so nice to see the pride that many put into these games! Makes MGC extra fun when you get to play such beauties. Special thanks to Chuck for letting Troy bring Goin Nuts and Troy for bringing it!

My personal highlight was my wife not only qualifying for the main tourney but ending up in 14th place. Pretty sure she was both the highest femal qualifier and the highest female finisher! Really fun to see her do so well and make it through the first round with some great playing on Harlem.

Dan,
Is it too early to ask for next year's dates?

After a good nights sleep last night I'm ready to do it again

Troy

Another great MGC in the books. I made it home at about 9pm and I just finished getting my pins set up in the basement. I brought my Creature From the Black Lagoon and Harlem Globetrotters used in the main tournament (left side). I was having a ton of trouble with the left flipper on my creech hanging up. I had just rebuilt them and at the show replaced the flipper bushing and coil stop to no avail. It ended up being a bad coil sleeve; I've never seen a new coil sleeve cause hang up issues. I also had to replace the flipper coil in HG due to the hold winding breaking.

A few big thanks to put out there:

Dan and Gary - Thanks again for putting on the show. As much as others help out, you two guys got the ball rolling and keep the show going strong.

The arcade hall crew - Big thanks to Tully, Keith, Chris, Tom and Brian - Another good year getting the hall set up; we're finally looking like we know what we're doing. Highlight of the show is hanging out and setting up the arcade room.

Tournaments - Thanks to Neo for pingolf, Hilton for clock chaos, and Jim for running the main tournament. I thought things went very smooth this year for tourneys and a lot of people enjoyed them.

Vendors - Thanks to Rob for supplying some flipper parts I needed during the show. Also, appreciate pin vendors Pinball Life, Marco and Siegecraft.

Looking forward to the next MGC.

Happy to do it! Hope that NVRAM works out for you.

Yeeeeah ok, maybe 1,500,000 was a little high....

So who won the categories, all I've seen so far is that CCC took one home

well it is and it isn't. I was unaware that Spring break was a chopping wood type game. As you advance from ball 1, 2 and 3, scoring is easier and easier, so by ball 3, 1.5 million is pretty much handed to you. But trying to do it on ball 1 was a LOT of work. I will not be using games like that next year.

And Hilton. Clock chaos ran smooth and i'm glad we found a way to double dip finals with those fortunate enough to participate in both. But yes, we need to figure something out so we don't piggy back finals again. Personally, I think it would be easier to cut golf off sooner, than it would be for you. Since your people are scheduled time lines. I could start and end an hour earlier. Plus my finals are fairly fast, except the final 4 people. Again, was drawn out somewhat because of having to redo spring break doing ghost scoring.

and Congrats to Ken Kulig for taking 1st place in Pingolf!!!! Top 4 were.

1. Ken (unstoppable) Kulig
2. Chris Frame
3. Neo Skywalker
4. Dave Daluga

Will any of the presentations be available for viewing / download? I know many of them were recorded.

there was actually a hiccup this year which caused us to need to start chaos earlier in order to just fit the number of people that were even signed up (oops in the system which allowed 96 people to sign up for the normal 75 slots).

It ended up being perfect that we started at 4pm and that golf started at 6pm so those that wanted to arrive earlier had something to do after getting loaded in. Chaos running with slots from 4pm to 9:40 with playoffs starting at 10pm is what we will be doing for next year.

Without the constraint of having golf finals overlapping w/ chaos (assuming you stay with 11:15 playoff start time for golf) then chaos finals will be done in 1hr easy and anyone that makes golf playoffs will be all ready by your start time.

sounds fine to me.

With chaos and golf it was a bit hectic but I really had fun going from machine to machine to machine... Less time to be nervous and more time to have fun! Thanks Neo and Hilton. Full Chaos results anywhere?

Typing up chaos results and FullT results tonight and then will submit to IFPA so should be up in a few days.

i just sent dan the results from golf this morning.

I should've dialed in the setup/leveling better too. Home now and leveled the way I had it here before, I'm consistently putting up 3-6mill on ball one.

At Mad Rollin 2016 it will be objective based and I will by then also have the ROM update for single-ball (on launch) play. Will go much faster.

This was my wife's and my second MGC and the first time we did all three days (last year we daytripped Saturday).

Friday night was a lot of fun. We started with Clock Chaos at 4 PM. CV was the only machine that I had played before, though I had also played a CFTBL on TPA. After we finished our entries we were asked to help test games for the event (no objections there ). Pingolf was a lot of fun. I really like that format because it has a more fun, laid back feel than other tournament types. Also got some games in on LL, GB, RZ, TH, and WOZ since the lines were much shorter than they would be later in the weekend. Domino's pizza tasted way better than I remember. It was fun night of playing pinball and hanging out with friends with it not being too crowded. I think I will be doing the Friday night in the future.

Saturday started out with getting woke up to go down a friend's room for bloody marys. Great way to start off the morning before breakfast. I was hesitant about doing the main tournament on Saturday from hearing about how long the waits were last year, but people convinced us to check it out so we did that first thing. Got through our six entries in under an hour, so that was good. Then we went to check out the vendor hall. Plenty of games available, but after seeing the prices that some games go for I am very glad that I got the bulk of my collection several years. I did manage to find a few games that were still at a price I am willing to pay. The vendors were all very friendly and more than willing to cut you a deal. We also checked out some of the homebrew NES games and my wife played some of the locally developed mobile games being showcased. We also wandered down to the basement and I tried my first attempt at DDR. I was terrible, but was still fun. And then of course we had to try and play the rest of the games in the hall. CCC was a lot of fun and so was TX Sector, unfortunately the sound wasn't turned up. I had never played a Zaccaria game and was happy that there were several there. Also finally got to check out Gay Paree, which is owned by my brother's father-in-law. Of all the games we played, my wife particularly enjoyed JM, GB, GOT Pro, BOP 2.0, STTNG, and Winner. We did not have after party tickets, but hope to be able to check it out in the future once I get some games to bring. I have heard good things.

Sunday started off with my wife and I doing the split flipper tournament. Then we quickly rushed over to get entries in on FullT before that competition ended. We also tried to get in games in the hall that we still wanted to check out. It seemed like it was more crowded on Sunday than on Saturday. Not sure if that was due to more people or because the were less games, maybe a bit of both. Also grabbed some neat posters from the Nintendo booth. We were both a bit tired from the fun filled weekend, so we left a few hours before the end on Sunday.

All in all, I would say that this is a fantastic event and quickly becoming my favorite gaming convention. You know a con is worth going to when you cannot possibly do everything you want to do in the time allotted. Even though we hit the game hall hard this weekend, there were still several machines that we never got a game in on. Plus there were interesting seminars, arcade games, console game tournaments, board games, and plenty of other things to do. We get to try again next year. Thank you very much to everyone who helped make this event possible.

This show gets more amazing every year. I don't get to see as much of everything that I'd like, since I'm pretty busy from my first step onto the property to the last. What I do get to see is the great people involved with making it all happen. The passion for making this show so great is unprecedented. So many people working their butts off to make the best show possible. It's a labor of love for many, and it's great to see everything come together and the huge number of people that truly enjoy themselves throughout the weekend.

It was great to see, hang out, and chat with old friends and new. Great to meet those I've not met before, play some awesome games, and drink some awesome beer and other spirits. Thanks to everyone that helped out, thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth and supported my efforts with board work or buying parts.

Special thanks to Hilton and Madison Pinball for the loan of Full Throttle for the charity tournament. Last I heard they raised $170 for the local no-kill shelter. Taro loves you!!

See everyone next year!!

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

Same here. I pretty much only care to collect SNES stuff. I'm always really interested to see what Earthbound is going for - it's one of my favorite games, and I have it complete. They had one complete copy there that I saw, listed at $850!! I had to say I contemplated putting it up for sale when I got back and just grabbing one of those ROM flashed cartridges (how are those legal??). The only things I really look to buy are the Mega Man X2 and X3, but they're never ever priced under $100 for just the cartridge. I'm wondering if the bottom falls out of that market after those ROM cartridges - it's really the first I've ever heard of them, and seeing their presence made me question whether I want to continue collecting.

Not for lack of trying though! You guys were busy. I didn't see you mention the museum. The first time I walked in there the nostalgia was almost overpowering! This year the museum really made me miss my Amiga 500. Glad you guys had a great time!

Actually, they did!

Running the seminars, I spend almost all of MGC at/behind the bar.

Lindy, who has been bartending for us every year we have been at the Sheraton, said the hotel ordered five extra kegs of Spotted Cow, just for MGC. They were gone by Saturday late afternoon or early evening! At that point, she was serving lots and lots of bottles of it...I guess I wouldn't have been surprised if those were gone by Sunday!

It's pretty funny...everyone that lives north of the "Cheddar Curtain" thinks nothing of Spotted Cow. Yes, it's a great beer, but is readily available in the area. However, it is *not* available south of the border! With many people attending the show from the Chicago area and elsewhere, it's a true novelty!

-Mark

Great job running those seminars Mark! Video looked great when I had to watch the TV because it was so packed for the Diebolds. Audio was phenomenal too. Except for poor Jerry from Multimorphic. Ever figure out what was causing that?
Also, not sure if you saw but someone asked if the recordings would be available sometime.

Thanks!

We were fortunate enough to have a small budget this year, to upgrade/replace the projector and screen, with two 55" TV's and a camera.

Much credit also goes out to Jason, who provided the lighting and sound, as well as making introductions.

I'm not sure what the issue was during the first part of Gerry's seminar. We used the exact same set up the night before, without any issues, and didn't have them later on, either!

Dan will have to answer the question on the recordings...we have a few memory cards of seminars that need to be dumped onto a computer, be edited, and then uploaded somewhere.

-Mark

Dan/Mark: Let me know if you need help with this. My daughter has taken an interest in video editing (I'm more of an audio guy with a background in radio). She just finished editing ALL the video she recorded for the boys basketball team. I bought her a nice Sony software package but the poor girl had to use a less than stellar web based program but still did a great job. I would of course help her as she is 15. Might take a bit as she has school and track and I of course have work. But the price is right

just wanted to say hats off to all of the people that made the midwest gaming classic possible.

this was my first jump into vending (outside of the little KoC shows) and although I'm still exhausted (even with an extra day to recoup before heading back to the office job this morning), it was a blast. non-stop customers who were for the most part, very friendly and easy to deal with. all of the other vendors were fantastic too!

the stern sized run-dmd clock was up and running all weekend and got plenty of looks of amazement from non-pinball people

the only thing that I would change (if possible) is the way the vendor tent is constructed. I spoke with Aaron Katz, and he mentioned that they may try and go with a semi-permanent structure for next year (which I would be 100% in agreement with

I was interviewed on channel 12 (WISN) news with Van McNeil on saturday morning, right before the show opened and not 5 minutes later, all of the condensation from the heat rising inside of the tent and the cold weather outside caused a mini storm front to move across 2 of my 3 tables literally raining down on all of my expensive collectibles. fortunately, quick hands and cool heads prevailed and we were able to move things out of the way for the next 90 minutes until the mini-rainstorm finally dissipated.

Speaking of vendors. Does anyone know who the vendor is with the WW2 father who helps out? I gave my oldest $90 to spend in the tent and the father sold him a $120 Halo Xbox (plus accessories) for the $90. It made my son happy and taught him to at least try even if you don't have enough money. I wanted to thank them personally but they were gone when I got there.

confirming > $171 raised for the shelter. After I catch up on life later this week I will make the donation and post the reciept.

Thanks again for letting us host the launch charity event Rob!

Thanks to the guy who brought Gay Paree, great "theoretical" dollar game.

Anyone have one for sale?

Mega Man X2 and X3 will never be cheap because they didn't make very many compared to X1. It will be interesting to see how well those rom cartridges do. I personally think Nintendo should have come out with the ROM Cartridge themselves and library collections, like 10-20 games per rom, for $50. I think they would have made a killing but who knows, especially with mobile gaming.