Sequim, WA
I'll go ahead and put my show write up here.
Went with my son Killian. It was a treat because I've been trying to go for years but it always coincides with one of my wife's 57 cousins' fucking high school graduation. I saw some cool ancient video games I loved as a kid that I might have played if I was alone like Red Baron, Gondo...whatever, and Rampart, but my son was having none of it. 100% pinball. Kid didn't want to stop for lunch/dinner on Friday and he's usually a caloric vacuum cleaner.
I wrote up what I thought about Predator in its own thread.
Metallica was as good in my limited plays as I had read. Funny thing about it is, taken as a whole it looks amazing. I'd say it's probably one of the better looking games I've seen. But in a strange reversal of typical pinball art, the closer I examine it the less I like it. I'm no fan of the style, and think it in no way fits the band. So, I stand back and think, "Man that's fucking gorgeous!" and then I get close and peer through the glass and think, "Oh, that element there is stupid. God, look at that one, so juvenile. Oh, and that's pretty weak there too." Haha. It's like Python Anghelo in reverse.
EM Standouts for me:
Ice Show (six outlanes, no inlanes/slings, 2" flippers, and fun!?)
Nip It (100% fun, not "for an EM", but 100% fun as in, "this right here is a fun ass pinball machine")
Games I'd never played but were great:
Fathom (wasn't even in that great a shape and this was a blast, would love to own one)
Flipper Football (really fun, kept breaking, but had great time with soccer loving son)
Best Sterns that I had never or rarely played:
Tricked out Tron
Transformers Megatron
Metallica
Worst games that I had never played:
Avengers Hulk (on 5 ball and desperately wanted to walk after 3, boring as hell, and, what I could see of the playfield through all the ugly plastics, unattractive)
Cirqus Voltaire (beautiful and boring, game lasted forever, ugly toy raises slowly up out of the playfield constantly, etc... don't see the draw, maybe need more plays but would not do so if it wasn't free)
My Son's favorites:
Big Guns
Nip It
Demolition Man
Flipper Football
Transformers
Metallica
Haunted House
Tron
Vulcan
We entered three of the SPBM's free tournaments and won all of them. That was kind of cool. We got 22+ million on the Parent/Kid split flipper Tron event. He was right and I was left and I swear to God he carried us. We're not talking especially deep fields here, but it was fun anyway and netted us $100+ worth of passes to the museum.
I learned that I really need to give EMs more of a chance. They're fun.
I was very proud when a guy waiting to get on Tron watching my son play said, "Wow, he's got some real skills".
Pinball Bulbs is the real deal. The machines they did at the show looked fantastic.
What the hell is Video Game Scoreboard? Poor people. I didn't see anyone at that booth except to pick up hand cleanser. I wanted to give them a pity hump but I was afraid I'd get stuck listening to them feverishly pitch whatever... they were selling? since someone actually stopped to pay them attention.
Met no one from Pinside because am an idiot and forgot to ask for details.
Lots of kids, lots of families, lots of women. All kids were well behaved except these two weird balls there on Sunday. They were running around bumping into people's hands as they played, pointing over the glass, etc... They cornered me and my son on World Cup and I had to keep shooing them off my fingers. One of them kept narrating and giving me strategy hints by gesturing towards shots and asking questions. He finally said that they had this game at home and I thought, "Damn, these are pinball kids and they don't even know how to behave around pinball?" So I said, "Don't you want to go play a game at the show you DON'T have at home?"
"No," he replied, "it's always broken!". Finally the mother came to try and collect them and the older said, "No I'm going to play three player with these guys", and my son looked at me with wide eyes and said, "No. Way." Haha.
Anyway, it was a great time for my first ever pinball. Me and the boy played pinball for about 16 hours, won three little tournaments, met SkitB, I got to goof on Gary Stern who didn't seem to appreciate it, got to hear my son say his new favorite game of all time is Demolition Man (which is one of my own favorites) and that "Metallica didn't feel cheap and fake like the other Sterns", and I developed a depper respect for EMs.
Looking forward to next year!
