Pics from the Houston Show

[R3LL1K]

I guess the problem was I didn't know where it was. lol

 

[YellowDog]

I guess the problem was I didn't know where it was. lol

So what else is new. The hotel was so disorganised they couldn't make up there mind on anything. The "insecurity" guards tried to make us move the swap meet out front, but when asked how we were supposed to move all the trucks and trailers out front (if you parked out front, you know how narrow & winding it is). They called back to the front desk and were told to "just let the babies stay where they are". Plus the signs they (the hotel) were supposed to put out to direct people to the swap meet never materialized. So it was no wonder the only people doing any swapping were those of us that brought stuff swapping with each other.

ken

 

[R3LL1K]

That sucks. I'm sure if people that were looking for games knew they where the swap meet was then there could have been some new owners of arcade machines. Oh well.

 

[demogo]

This was my only complaint with the show, and has been for the last five or six years I have been attending. For some reason, possibly being too young to have actually been in arcades in the eighties, Keith thinks that arcades were like nightclubs, with flashing strobe lights and music turned up as loud as possible.

It would have been nice to actually *hear* the games themselves, rather than have to listen to music from '70s TV shows and such. Games located next to a speaker, and there were *lots* of speakers, where almost unplayable due to the high music volume level. Even putting an ear directly on a cabinet failed to pick up some games' audio, as mostly what was heard was music reverberating off that cabinet. For all I know, all the video games had the audio muted or turned down as low as possible.

I found this to be the case for the entire six hours I was there Friday night.

Otherwise, it was a great show. Not actually counting, it looked like there were fewer video games there this year, but a better selection and certainly better maintained than some previous years. There seemed to be more pinball machines, and more that I enjoyed playing this time. (Maybe because the extra pinballs overflowed into the adjacent room that didn't have speakers. )

And *finally*, after many years, Kieth's Varkon and Joust pinball were working fully while I was there! They always seemed to have "just broken" when I arrived years past...

Agreed -- the expo was a blast in more ways than one.

The music was so loud it was unbelievable and games like Joust were physically painful to play because there was a speaker close to it. And my daughter fell in love with Joust and wanted to play and play it... So I asked if the music could be turned down a bit and it was... but it went right back up again later.

I passed several families walking around with kids that were griping about how loud it was too.

We finally just left, driven out by the music and the need for food (there was none brought in this year, unlike last year).

My $.02: the games themselves make beautiful music that you just can't find anywhere else. There's very little need for music, and if you want to play music it should be in the background, not overwhelming everything else. I had to yell to the people standing next to me so I could be heard.

And it was still a lot of fun in spite of all that.