Pinball Expo at Oakland U

smisch

Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2010
Messages
808
Reaction score
7
Location
clinton twp., Michigan
Whos going and what days?

Trying to figure a day with the wife, we went last year during weekend. There were quite a few pins down then. Maybe Thursday?
 
Just got home from the show. It was a good time as always. No vids at all. A whole crap load of pins. Spent about 7 hours in there myself. Make sure you guys watch the 10pm Fox 2 news. They were in there interviewing and recording people. My younger son made it on tv for about 15-20 seconds while he was playing No Fear!
 
No vids at all.
I brought 4 last year -- Tempest, Qbert, Centipede, Robotron. The organizers isolated my games off in some room on the opposite side of the building where hardly anybody got to play. Was a complete waste of my time and effort bringing them.

Seriously, inform the show organizers if you think the show should expand to include early 80s classic vids. I think it people would enjoy it but with the way it was organized last year it's clear they had no interest or commitment to vids. I'd think there are enough people into vids locally that you could setup an area with classics.
 
I brought 4 last year -- Tempest, Qbert, Centipede, Robotron. The organizers isolated my games off in some room on the opposite side of the building where hardly anybody got to play. Was a complete waste of my time and effort bringing them.

Seriously, inform the show organizers if you think the show should expand to include early 80s classic vids. I think it people would enjoy it but with the way it was organized last year it's clear they had no interest or commitment to vids. I'd think there are enough people into vids locally that you could setup an area with classics.

Yep I played em! IIRC the Tempest had some transistor issues with some picture collapse and the Centipede had an issue too but don't remember. Yeah I'm not sure I'd let the general public play my stuff at a show like that.
 
As far as I know Tempest and Centipede were rock solid. The other two arrived fine but failed from being powered 4 days straight. Qbert blew +30v supply, fixed it on-site, then blew a trace on the soundboard, then blew the monitor. Robotron developed a reset problem. No problems with the public; just hardware failures that I never saw with home use.

Tell the show organizers if you're interested. Clearly they're focused on pinball, have a truly half-assed attempt at vids, and left me with a terrible experience. But maybe it's worth trying again sometime with more local vid collector support.
 
As far as I know Tempest and Centipede were rock solid. The other two arrived fine but failed from being powered 4 days straight. Qbert blew +30v supply, fixed it on-site, then blew a trace on the soundboard, then blew the monitor. Robotron developed a reset problem. No problems with the public; just hardware failures that I never saw with home use.

Tell the show organizers if you're interested. Clearly they're focused on pinball, have a truly half-assed attempt at vids, and left me with a terrible experience. But maybe it's worth trying again sometime with more local vid collector support.

Sucks that you had such a terrible experience last year joey. I played the Qbert and Tempest last year and had a blast with them! I was hoping they would have the 2 extra rooms this year, but the guy said they weren't able to get them and just had the big room upstairs and there was no room for any vids up there.

As for retailers, I think there were 6 or 7 of them. Stern and Marco Specialties on one wall. Pinball Wizard, Abel Electronics, the guys that make Virtuapin, and the guys that made Big Juicy Melons were on the wall where the main entrance is. And on the back wall there was a really big booth that was selling parts and playfields and translistes, didn't look close enough to see who it was, but they had a ton of parts for sale.
 
Back
Top Bottom