SMAC arcade at Norwescon, April 2011

mc300baud

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 26, 2006
Messages
3,763
Reaction score
101
Location
Tacoma, Washington
so here's the story. over the last twenty years i've been attending and helping to run Norwescon, an annual general sci-fi and fantasy convention in the Seattle area. the last couple of years i've brought a game to drop somewhere in the hotel just for the members (3000+ of them!) to play. some of you may have seen my thread last year about dumping my Gorf in a hallway for the weekend http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=129115.

this year i was asked by the convention committee to put together an arcade in an extra, unused room. there aren't not many of those around as we take up just about every bit of the hotel and then some so i was somewhat surprised when asked. for better or for worse the space is just a mostly-empty hotel room stuck between the convention security office and the hospitality suite. location-wise it ended up being pretty great as it was central to much activity with good visibility and gave us a relatively easy load-in/out route. the hotel engineering department even added a 50-amp drop box to the room just for us.

i wasn't going to bring all the games all by myself and the convention already transports a crazy amount of stuff in for the weekend so i reached out to the membership of SMAC, the Seattle Metro Arcade Collectors group. a bunch of guys responded and offered to bring a couple of games each.

i used a simple layout program to determine that we could fit about 16 games in the room. we ended up with 15 as a fairly large proportion of the games were 2-player and needed a bit more space.

our line-up for the weekend ended up being:
Armor Attack
Asteroids Deluxe
Centipede
Championship Sprint
Clowns
Donkey Kong
Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters
Frogger
Galaga '88
Joust
Ms. Pacman
Qix
Star Trek
Super Spacefortress Macross
Zookeeper

the DK is a raffle prize for the NW Pinball and Gameroom Show and we used it as an excuse to heavily advertise for the show in June. otherwise, the games all belong to SMAC/KLOV members.

i also ran a round-robin tournament on Saturday (judged by djgil) with the entrants playing Armor Attack, Centipede, Donkey Kong, and Ms. Pacman. it was won by James (picture is below, with his prizes of a DK Jenga set, Pacman tee, and a one day pass to the NW Pinball and Gameroom Show.)

the arcade was well attended and got more packed as the weekend went on and people realized it was there. we received numerous compliments from both the general membership as well as the convention committee. we also hosted a panel on collecting arcade games for the beginner on Saturday and had a good turnout, almost all of whom were actually new potential collectors and not current ones showing up just to harass us.

we had a few issues with the machines but nothing terribly catastrophic (replaced the monitor in Centipede and the video card in Zookeeper.) the membership was respectful and i never witnessed or had reported to me any abuse of the games.

thanks to SMAC and KLOV members (in no particular order) Oryk Zinyo, Dokert, osver, Mr. Sell, timberterror, blinddog and djgil all of whom put in a lot of time and effort to make this happen. it was such a success that we've already been asked to return next year.

video walk-through:



smallDSC_4200.jpg

Dokert watching over the room

smallDSC_4198.jpg

timberterror memorizing some of the amazing gameplay during the tournament.

smallDSC_4208-1.jpg

our tournament winner James who doesn't own any cabs but plays classic games at Full Tilt Ice Cream (and at my house occasionally.)

smallDSC_4202.jpg

the back row. Super Spacefortress Macross was a big hit and in constant use.

smallDSC_4210-1.jpg

osver and Dokert getting a bit of play time in just before we shut everything down.

this ended up being a great experience and i think we were all glad to extend our hobby a bit more into the public eye.
 
Last edited:
It was fun seeing the room turn into a mini arcade for the weekend. It was also nice hearing people say thanks for bringing the games when we were loading out.
 
My wife and I had a great time with the arcade. She even enjoyed the small segment of the show she saw on Thursday.

Everyone was very happy to see the arcade there and it was packed everytime I dropped by. In fact, it was so busy that some people were walking away but all of them told me that they planned to return after the crowd got smaller, though I don't think it ever did. This was a great advertising opportunity for SMAC and the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show in June, and I am hopeful that many of the Norwescon members attend our show.



By the way, there is a pending announcement about the show in June. Keep an eye out for a new thread...
 
Back
Top Bottom