I'm planning to bring XM Pro - one of the more underappreciated sterns of late.

Add MBrSE to the list! Doing the show special.

Might be looking for a Comet...

Looking for a Bad Girls if someone is wanting to sell.

It would be nice to see a hard topped pin up close.

It will almost assuredly look great. the problem is you're supposed to play them, not just look at them.

What's the link to inquire about/view Marco's show specials? Or should I just email him?

Email him .

Friend is looking to get into the hobby and has ~$3k to burn at MGC. I recommended Getaway for him, but if there are any other titles out there that are in that range, shoot me a PM please! Would be nice to get another friend in the addiction. Err.. hobby.

I am planning on bringing my home-brew Ghost in the Shell again. I have been trying to make some updates, but between Laptop issues and LCD drivers not working been wasting a lot of time. So no new playfeild this year, just some new code and other minor changes. i hope to rebuild my left ramp if there's time.

Gornkleschnitzer sounds cool can't wait to check out your game.

Still not sure what im bringing. Unlike the past 7 years, im more than likely will only bring games to get in the show, and presold games. Oh, and Predator will be at the show, as I made that part of the sale of the game, that I wouldn't sell it if it didn't make it to MGC this year

possibilities are 1 or 2 of these
Totan
Cirqus Voltaire
Whitewater
Strange Science
Stern POTC

Current things for sale that I could bring if presold
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Strange Science
Stern POTC
CFTBL
STTNG
Batman Forever

I also have CGC show games if preordered,
Attack from Mars Classic (with color upgrade) 5500
Attack From Mars Special Edition 6800
Monster Bash Classic 5500
Monster Bash Special Edition 6800

There's a chance my Getaway will be up for sale then. Check back with me closer to the event. All depends on how much fun I'm having with it after I tear it down, shop it out, etc.

Thanks! It'll be interesting to see the last year's improvements on yours as well. Perhaps we can get our homebrews set up close by, along with any other custom builds that might be brought in.

We will make sure that happens. Can't wait to try out both of these machine! Thanks for bringing them guys!

I've been announcing updated deals for bringing machines recently, and I have a bunch more to come. Today, the Color DMD one went up on our Facebook site, and it can be found here too:

https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/game-bringer-benefits/

Long story short, you get $50 off if you install and show a machine with a Color DMD during the show! Info on how to go about getting one at the link.

I have another four or five deals to put up there, I just need more time in my life to make it happen! We're working on getting more special things to those who are willing to bring their games and make the show happen Thanks for all you do!

(And, if anyone is bringing a used Houdini, I'd like to agonize over wanting to buy it I've decided...)

dont...

not worth even the agony unless you can grab a HUO for under 5k (which may be possible based on how they continue to trend)

I just realized that sunday the 14th is when game of thrones airs. Looks like I gotta get my pin out fast as possible on sunday evening to get home for our party LOL.

I would plan for ample time. I am sure load out will be vastly improved this year (2nd time at new place will help and hopefully no blizzard), but it will take time and any show games (I think you are getting one) have to stay till the very end.

damn, looks like i am skipping MGC this year then. Dan should have thought this out beforehand....

Just kidding. I (The King in the North, as my brother like to call me) will be there for the duration of the show.

I’ve only been in the hobby just over a year. Taking a game to a show seems like a lot of work. Then worrying about it staying working. I’m tempted to go and bring my back to the future, but thinking this may not be the year to go. You have to have a BTTF at the show, right?

It really is not much work IMHO, esp for the benefits (fun to share your game, plenty of pinheads to help fix if something goes down and what better place to get it fixed, the afterparty!, meet lots of new people, and be part of the show is really cool)

Load the game and set up is easy.
Stop every so often to check on it.
Load out at the end.

Maybe a 2 hr time investment for bringing a single game and so much fun to support pinball!

The load out at the end of the show last year was horrendous, don't let anybody fool you. I'm not playing on bringing any machines this year because of it. At the Sheraton it was much easier. I understand this venue has tied the hands of the organizers, but it just isn't worth it to me.

I am very hopeful that load out this year will be better, the MGC team has more control of the process. The weather last year made it horrible which no one could have anticipated. You should still bring a game to get the benefits, it is very worth while!!

Load out wasn't fun last year for a number of reasons, but Dan and the site have worked hard to make it better.

For those of you choosing not to bring a game - keep in mind that if everyone had this attitude, it wouldn't be much of a show. Everybody doing what they can is what makes the show special. If you like having a local Wisconsin pinball show, then local collectors need to support it.

I've been bringing games to the show since 2007 and been working the arcade hall since 2010. Sure, it would be easier to just attend and enjoy, but I want a local Wisconsin show to thrive and know it takes a lot of support to make it happen.

If you cannot bring a game to share, consider helping in other ways, such as score keeping for tournaments.

I look forward to meeting the king in the north.

Anyone think a show would ever come to Minneapolis?

I can't bring a game this year but could help out in other ways. Where do I get more info about volunteering? And what if any are the benefits? Free admission?

Unlikely, but with the kalahari I'm the dells finishing their 212,000 sq facility I would like to see one there.

I thought you were bringing three?

I honestly did not think it was horrendous. It took longer than when things were at the Sheraton but that is expected when you are at a bigger place in downtown MKE and up a few floors. The fluke snow storm really is what made it so painful IME. It also sounds like things are going to be vastly improved.

All considered, it was still worth it to attend the afterparty IMHO. No game = no afterparty so that is always enough to make the decision for us to bring multiple games. We also really like supporting the local show and think it is so much fun to be able to bring pinball to the masses. The handful of parents and kids that played the games I brought last year and took the time to say thanks was more than enough payment for us Feels good to see the kiddos so happy to play a nice game they have never seen before.

I will say that I really hope people that bring multiples hold on to the extra after party passes tightly this year. Kind of sad when you see a bunch of free loaders in having fun at the after party and they did not bring a game. I heard there are some changes to help lock that down better. Hope those are still happening as the show cant happen without the support of the local/ regional community.

Shows don't usually come to places; somebody there has to start one. MGC was in a high school cafeteria 15 years ago. Just think, you could be the Dan Loosen of Minneapolis! Pick a weekend that doesn't already have a midwest pinball show, and when it can't possibly snow (tough in the twin cities).

Man...I'm really sorry to hear this Mark. I know last year was a cluster for many reasons, and we are going to give it our all to not let that happen again. Please do not let our growing pains ruin the show for you.

I'm going to be "bringing" a Batman 66 thru the show special with Marco.

Do I need to register that anywhere or will show special buyers be preregistered with the show to get the "bring a machine" benefits?

Because I like the oldies, will most likely bring a Williams Hot Tip

If it's like last year... the show special buyer's had a "unboxing party". At that time, you simply find Tully or whomever is manning the table and he'll get your info and set you up with labels, wristbands, party tickets, etc.
It's relatively quick & painless.
And you'll just go to Marco's table, introduce yourself (show ID), and they'll show you to your box/machine and direct you to where to set it up. (maybe go to Marco's table first.. then register. It's all pretty self-explainitary once you get there in the controlled chaos)

I asked this same question in both threads and haven't gotten an answer yet either.

Hoping we get a definitive answer soon.

It's definitive... What he said! Quick & Painless!!
Tully

Doh. Visited the website. Couldn't be clearer. Sorry.

2019 will be the fifth year of 2D Con, a Twin Cities-based gaming convention. This year it is being held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Minneapolis. I plan to go and bring a couple of EM pinball machines.

https://www.2dcon.net

Two MN guys right here saying they don't want to bring a game. That isn't how shows happen. Someone starts a show over there and I will bring at least one game.

Fwiw: I didn't say I don't want to bring a game I said I can't. My one game is in pieces for restoration...

To put it mildly, I'm disappointed in how you're characterizing this. I don't think that I'm "fooling" anyone and saying that last year was great, however two major things need to be looked at:

First, 98% of the problem with the load out last year was horrendous because of the blizzard. If we had been in the same situation at the Sheraton, it would have both completely destroyed the show (the tent would not have been able to stay open on Sunday, and instead of us losing thousands of walk up attendees, it would have been impossible to run what we promised) and the load out would have been just as big of a cluster if not more so.

Along with that, we were not allowed to do things the way that we wanted to do them. While we would not have been able to make everything perfect last year - mainly because of the blizzard - we ended up being told we couldn't do certain things.

Considering both of those things, the line was still gone less than three hours after it started. In fact, if you discount the first 30 minutes (because we had no line until 5:30), the line was only a thing for about two hours.

That's still unacceptable to us, and it absolutely sucks when the venue is suddenly telling us that everything we had planned to do won't work and they will just do things so we can't communicate to anyone what is going on because their system is f-ing broken. Which it was. As some people who were working the docks know, there were times the docks were completely cleared of cars picking up and we weren't allowed to have more people bring things up because the center put us on a clock for NO REASON and was allowing up five cars every ten minutes. So if they were five guys picking up a single machine, we'd have them over and loaded in three minutes and then STAND AROUND for seven minutes.

ALL of that is different because I was absolutely not going to put up with that again. And honestly, afterward they acknowledged the problem but then said that to fix it, they wanted to run the dock entirely the next year. I made it extremely clear that if we did that, we were not resigning.

Before I explain how it will work this year, let me also point this out - If it wasn't snowing last year, we could have loaded both trailers and additional vehicles at the end of the ramps. This would have been an about 20ish foot walk but would have allowed us to load 10-20 cars at a time per dock, or 30-60 at a time. That change alone probably would have solved everything, but no one wanted to do that because it meant they were plowing snow with a pinball machine, which wasn't something people are willing to do (because duh). While I can't guarantee that we won't have a snowstorm again, based on what the weather is usually like at that time of year, we shouldn't have one, and if we don't, that should make most of the rest of what I'm about to describe moot.

Additionally, it turns out we can load out the second level in a whole different spot. Last year, the second level alone had multiple trucks, multiple cars, and due to the distance they were going they were some of the groups that had to end up parked at the dock for longer periods of time. They have a different spot altogether, so this won't be an issue and should greatly reduce issues upstairs.

As for the actual changes, here is how it will work this year... (Vendor hall is similar, if anyone needs to know that, I guess PM me)

You will bring your machine or machines to the back of the hall when they are ready to be picked up and you will check them out with one of our guys who will confirm they are yours, confirm where they are, and give you a pass up to the dock. They will also be able to tell you if there are any anticipated issues at that particular time, so like if we know there is a slight backup we might say hey, everything is good, you may want to give it just a few minutes or whatever.

Now that you've got this pass, you go to your vehicle and drive to the dock. At the very entrance to the dock, your "pickup ticket" will be checked. This ensures that we don't have any situations (like we did last year in a couple cases) where people bring up their cars and then go break down their stuff.

At the top of the dock, a second person will sort people into two lines - one line for the vendor hall, one line for the game room. At the front of that line, the person there will direct you to move to the dock where things are ready to be loaded.

Upon arriving, you load up your game. Additionally, we will have a "load out help team" of four people (just for the game room alone) to help load vehicles with games. They are professional movers, and load all my games (and have for years), and helped Chris load Kingpin up last year too. They do not HAVE to help, however, for anyone who wants to move things themselves.

As soon as you're loaded, you'll be able to go.

What this should do, and I invite any constructive criticism to tell me anything we've overlooked, but we believe this should be a solid system. I expect that even in the case of a snowstorm, we should be able to load any car that pulls up to the dock with a game one per minute, meaning 60 cars an hour if we're only using five spots. If, as we expect, we can stagger cars just below the dock, our capacity for load out is expected to be 120 cars per hour. And, this is *just* on the game room side. The Vendor side we expect it will take a little longer because they usually have more boxes and stuff to properly fit in, but our estimates there are in the case of a snowstorm, 20 cars an hour. Without, 40 cars an hour.

The two dock areas, not including any truck loading or second floor loading, should be able to accommodate between 80 cars (in a blizzard scenario) and 160 cars (in a "normal" scenario) per hour.

To put that into capacity comparisons for last year, last year we were only allowed to have five cars of any type pull up every 10 minutes, so our capacity was 30 cars per hour.

Last year, the waits that were so frustrating were for about a peak of 2:30 minutes time, which means that in that time we accommodated approximately 75 vehicles. This year, in a worst case scenario, we expect the same number of cars will be able to be accommodated in less than an hour. And again, those 75 that we accommodated in that time included groups that we found new, better options for.

We do have more vendors this year, but that should not impact game pick up in any way as the lines will be separate.

(I used to be a capacity expert, this is where it comes through for the better or worse with all these stats... but it also gives us a working base.)

I'm not positive that it will be perfect, but I am positive that we are doing everything within our power to make it significantly better. What the center did to us last year was unacceptable, and those who know me know that we wouldn't let it work that way.

I also truly believe that this year we will make this system better than what we had at the Sheraton. One of the toughest parts about game pick up at the Sheraton was that it was very hard for us to track and maintain pick ups of machines perfectly. With this system, it will be far easier for us to track and help get things out to vehicles when they are ready to go.

If you don't believe it, I totally get it and there is nothing that I can do beyond this to change anyone's mind. I'm sorry that some people feel that way, and we'll do our best in the future. Again, last year was NOT perfect, and I'm not trying to 'fool' anyone into thinking that it was. But, if anyone knows how we operate, I also don't allow places to make a 'fool' out of how we operate things, and I am doing everything under my power to make it as smooth as possible this year.

The Wisconsin Center isn't a perfect venue. But if the show was at the Sheraton last year, I guarantee we wouldn't be talking about a show coming up right now.

Oh gosh, that's funny!

And yeah, it's crazy where we came from.

I actually have been approached by some people about running an MGC 'offshoot' in the Twin Cities. I'm not opposed, but we've got to get this show to work this year first before we can consider anything else It is SUPER hard to move a show, and if we did start or help start something up there, I do want to make it clear that it would be no where near MGC level for a number of years at best. It takes a lot of local volunteers and relationships to build up something like this - people are stunned when I note that we have more than 1000 people involved in some way with running the show (including bringing games like you guys do!) - but it's true! Starting in a new city would be starting nearly from scratch...

I was talking with some people about this, and there are a couple perceptions here that I want to address - and I'm totally not calling Hilton on this because I've heard it from a number of people, it's just his message reminded me about it...

First, the rules for the after party have actually never changed. When we started the after party in 07 or 08, the idea was to reward people who brought the stuff that was set up all day and allow them to play, and meet up with, the other people who brought the stuff. That idea has never changed, and as a matter of fact we grant tickets in the exact same way as we did - if you are a person that makes the room happen, you get a ticket.

The way we dole them out is this - for any one arcade video or pinball machine you bring, you get a ticket. People who volunteer for us all day and work at the ticket counter or whatever also get access (if you earn a "staff" badge from us) as they don't have time to see the show. Finally, the group that sets up the console museum gets badges.

Now, there has been some confusion about that. Guy who brings an NES and sets it up to let people play does not count as a museum person. The museum people are a group of about 30 people who bring and set up all 200+ TVs and consoles, and then maintain them all throughout the show. The group that gets the tickets there spends 12+ hours on Friday setting up (and usually on Thursday too). This group likes to play and enjoy the consoles at night, and has always done the same thing (with the same wristbands, actually), but they enjoy what they brought and set up. Now they are in the same room.

Having said all this, I think that the perception changes that have happened about there being so many more people at the after party and we as a show must be doing something different is that over the past 10 years, we have changed significantly from a show that a ton of vendors brought a ton of stuff to, to a show that now a ton of collectors bring a game or two too. And, by the way, that's awesome.

I was looking at my notes, and when we were in the smaller hall at the Sheraton for instance, one year we had 120 machines. Of those 120, more than 20 were brought by myself, and another 50 were brought by vendors or large groups. That means, if we had 5 vendors bring those 50 machines, not including myself or Gary, we were only giving out about 55 after party tickets. Thus, tickets handed out back then were less than 50% of the machines, so it seemed like there were way less people.

Today, the way the market works is significantly different. Vendors that brought games last year that were not already spoken for was less than 50, and we had somewhere around 400 machines on the show floor. That means we were handing out somewhere around 350 legit after party passes, which is like a 87.5% of machines got a pass, which makes it appear significantly different than it was.

Additionally, we have always allowed in VIPs, although truth be told, we don't even tell most of them that aren't from the arcade and pinball world about it. When we started the after party, this was generally only one or two people. Last year, Stern Pinball alone had more than 40 team members at our show. Between those, it's actually possible - or even probable -that we were higher person count than machine count right away.

This appearance, I think, is what has raised a number of the questions about how so many people are getting in. I know that the vendors all still keep their passes unless you buy something from them on the show floor as a way to entice sales. Beyond that, we can't stop someone that brought four machines from giving their three extra passes to people that didn't help, but we've always been okay with that method.

Hope that makes sense. None of this will change, and we will continue to do our best to keep it pure.

We are making a number of changes to the after party itself to make it run smoother, from *I'm also teaching them how to do the beer stuff right* to fixing the food situation so we're not having to wait so long even if it's snowing like crazy, to adding a few new features and bringing a few old fun ones back I am finally almost through the huge list of other behind the scenes stuff I've been doing so I can focus on that, and so we'll have a bunch more soon too

Yeah, don't change it..... If I bring three machines, and keep one pass for myself, and give two of my buddies passes to hang out with them at the afterparty, You can believe all three of us are going to be attending the afterparty. Hell, if I wanted to sell the passes, that should be my right as well (not that I would ever do this). Not really sure where the freeloader part of this comes into play.

If there are 500 machines in the room, I would expect to see 500 people, I am not sure how it could be any more simple.

The MGC crew: Chris, Tom, Tully, Eric, Mike, Keith, Kingpin, and many others I'm forgetting...these guys bust their balls all weekend and yet will help you when you're unboxing, loading up, trying to find tools, all kinds of shit. You guys are an army of awesomeness.

My frustration is with the venue and the situation which happened last year, and I won't comment anymore on it. I hope it improves this year.

I am usually just sitting on a kiddie ride watching others work, but thanks for including me with the 2018 WI State Pinball Champion (and his bodyguards).

I understand if you can't trust me on this, but I will simply put it this way - Had it not changed, we would not have gone back.

Things are *significantly* different.

I'm bringing CSI, not for sale

agree 100%

The freeloaders are the guys that sneak in without a valid wristband, make their own fake ones, just skirt the security, etc...
Happens every year and sadly a few that are regulars in the pinball community but not supporting the show (nor are their buddies and then giving them wristbands)

You should 100% get a wristband for each game you bring and do what you want with them.

I was also super happy to see guys like Troy/KP that bring tons of games telling people to step up and help if they wanted a band. Some of those guys have been very giving (their choice but I think it is much better for the show if all the regional people that can bring, actually do so) and I like seeing them tell people to either buy one of their games to get a pass or step up and do some work to earn it.

I hope the show is bigger and even better this year. The only way that happens if we all step up to make it happen.

I always commend you Tim for always being awesome and bringing mutliple games!