Midwest Gaming Classic 2019 - Bringing / Selling / Trading List

I am probably bringing Iron Man and Ghostbusters this year, maybe an F14 too. Thinking about bringing a few games for sale, depending on if I can get to look at them...

If anyone wants to make me a stupid offer on STTNG or MC or WCS94, I may be convinced to pull them out and repair them before the show... Not positive on any of them thay I want to sell them, but definitely thinking about it.

Also thinking about Special Force, Hot Tip, and that racing Bally game with the 6802 boardset and weird upper playfield... Sadly, these are pretty serious projects, so it would be harder to fix up.

Yes! Thank you, couldn't think of it last night!

I need to take a look at both of them and see where they are at.

Special Force was a poolside game somewhere, so while the playfield is pretty decent, the siderails are rusty as can be and it's faded to white. I had it playing at one point (it was even an MGC tournament game one year!) but then it died at the end of that year and I have only half tried fixing it since.

Motordome is in decent shape but has a crappy backglass (someone used like a 100w light bulb in the backbox, oi). From what I remember, I've got it to boot and flip, but not play a game right.

Both are wrapped up in storage at the moment, so this will require me getting to storage, setting them up, and looking at the more. As for price, I honestly don't currently have any idea. I like to fix my stuff before I sell it, but I also don't know how much time I'm going to have before the show to do that. And quite frankly, all this snow (and my kids being off school... AGAIN) makes it hard to catch up on *anything*.

Yes, actually. Our moving company can do that. Use the contact form through our web site and I can get you in touch with them to work that out

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...)

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

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.

There has been extremely limited times this has occurred.

In one year at the Sheraton, there was someone selling counterfeit wristbands in the parking lot. Security caught the people who bought them within an hour. We did not find the person that sold them the bands.

Another year, we had someone try to sneak in. That person was caught at the door and warned. He came back through the back of house. The Sheraton had him arrested for trespassing (they had warned him too).

I don't like to publicly talk about thay side of it because I look at my job at the show as removing all the friction and stress from attendees and hiding it, but these things happen and we do respond as needed. We also do our best to keep it down low so people don't know.

The guy who was arrested was arrested from the party floor. I'm pretty sure less than ten people were aware it happened. That's how we want it to be. I'm not really going to talk about it much more either, so please don't anyone ask a bunch of questions or make a big thing out of it... It is what it is.

Having said that, it Gary and I are usually so good of taking on the stress and hiding it from everyone else, just imagine how difficult last year really was...

Yup - a lot of people really enjoy opening up their games and setting them up from new in box the first time.

I personally don't really care, and of the two machines that I have gotten this way, I think I helped set up one and walked away before it was turned on.

If you want the experience, it's a fun time. If you don't, they can set it up without you. They just also can't hold set up for hours like they used to do, and we'd have boxes still waiting to be set up at 7pm on Friday when the show was open. Marco needs to actually set up their booth

I think standard tools are there.

Honestly, and this is why I keep forgetting to mention anything about the registration...

That all goes through Marco. I think some years they need the games opened Thursday night. Not sure. I know when I can open and close the halls, but it's up to them to decide when they will be around, and access to the halls are limited, so it's not like you could show up at, say, 1pm and just walk in and open up a game with no one around.

Which is a good thing of course

So, uhm.... Cool.

In other, actual show news, we're looking at adding some things for the after party this year. Thinking about giving away a Megatouch game or something like that which would be small enough to fit in a car with other machines.

Any thoughts? My friend had one of these and my son loved it, and it seems like the right size to get and not have to figure out crazy transportation stuff.

Oh hey, alao, game bringers will get a chance to purchase the new MGC NES game badge Bovinium Quest outside of the VIG package. Cost is yet to be finalized as it depends on part cost.

If you'd like to see what the game is going to be like check out https://www.bovinium.com

We're shooting for a $45 price point for regular sales at the show. The "contributor" version (should be it's own color shell) will probably be just a bit more than half that. It largely depends on how many get produced in total, and I haven't yet gotten final pricing for all the parts.

The hope is to work in some inside jokes from the show too. That's like, the last priority though as obviously game play is more important. But yes, as is the running gag this year from everyone creating for the show, the coats they are wearing specifically come from last year...

I'm leaning toward bringing some more games. The Color DMD is a strong calling.

Nice stamp mod!

And for the record, if it ever is the line for inquiring about it should start behind me.

OK!

The more Paragon, the better.

OH MAN DO I WANT THIS... ARGH...

What's it doing?

I'm really, really bad at saying no to anyone. We can't put them in Marcos booth, but could definitely work to put them nearby!

I can check with Tom if he would be okay with adding a couple more if you don't find any.

He did!

Speaking of... Friday Preview Night ticket sales have picked up a lot lately, so if you're looking for those or the exclusive event hoodies or shirts, the sooner the better. I know that VIG doesn't do much for game bringers, but it is within about 20 tickets of a sell out too.

Pretty much the rules of MGC for selling is no porn, guns, or things that infringe on intellectual property rights. Oh, and Levy says no food.

Pretty obvious stuff, really. Beyond that, I'm down with whatever!

Not long enough for me!

If things don't work out, contact me. For you, I can make some exceptions