TEXAS PINBALL |
Date: 19th - 21st March 2010 Additional photography by Ken Kemp of PinballRebel.com We're back in the city of Grapevine, a couple of miles from Dallas/Ft Worth airport for the 2010 Texas Pinball Festival which is once again being held at the Hilton DFW Lakes Conference Center.
THE SHOW FLOOR The show took place in the 14,400 square feet Texas Grande Hall on the hotel's lower level and the registration desk was just inside the entrance.
Show entry cost $30 for the whole three days, or $15 for just the Friday or the Saturday. Because Sunday is a truncated day, finishing at 2pm, entry for that day alone cost $7. A $5 discount was available for pre-registered buyers of the weekend pass. The desk staff also sold entries to the various tournaments taking place and raffle tickets for the regular draws. Although the show itself didn't open to the public until 5pm on Friday evening, the tournament area had been open since 10am for players to begin their qualifying in the Texas State Championship, the Modern Pinball Tournament, the Kids Bump 'N Win Tournament, the Classic Tournament and the Electromechanical Tournament.
The Texas State Championship and the Kids Bump 'N Win Tournament were played out on five Spider-Man machines.
The Modern Tournament took place on two Big Buck Hunter Pros while the Classic Tournament was held on Nitro Ground Shaker.
The Electromechanical Tournament ran on a Kings & Queens. While those early qualifying rounds were taking place, set-up for the show machines and stands continued in the hall.
By the time all the machines had arrived and been set up, we counted a total of 195 pinballs available for show visitors to play.
In addition, three pinballs were set up for display only on traders' stands so they were not available to play, and there were also four pitch & bat games, two slot machines and one puck bowler out on the floor. Videos were not left out either, with some great restored classic arcade games in their own row.
We did our survey of the pinball machines when the show reopened on Saturday morning. While some of these games were switched off, they may not have been faulty but were merely yet to be switched on by their owners. Our list of 195 games includes all the tournament and prize machines.
The pitch and bat games were: Base Hit, Pitch & Bat, Grid Iron and Slug Fest while the display-only games were: Spider-Man, Monster Bash and Creature From The Black Lagoon. One of the most striking pinball machines at the show was Alan Lewis's Black Hole.
This machine was heavily modified with plasma disks on the pop bumpers, a half-mirrored acrylic playfield, LED inserts which are only visible when lit, a ball launch tube incorporating a skill shot opening and rotating black hole.
To fit all this in, the cabinet was built up and the playfield glass raised by four inches.
One of the regular attractions of the Texas Pinball Festival is the row of classic Stern machines and this year was no different.
There were 19 machines in total, including a prototype Gamatron next to the production version. Here they are as they were arranged, left to right.
Apart from the machines, there were plenty of vendors selling everything from machines to LEDs, and it was LEDs which continued to have the greatest impact on the look of games on the show floor. Several machines were set up as showcases for LED lighting and while they all looked very impressive and colourful, the strobing effects still put off many owners from using LEDs throughout their games.
The vendors at this year's show were:
There were two machines to be given away at the show. This Bally Vector would go to the winner of the Kids Tournament.
On the other side of the tournament area stood the second machine which could be won - a Bally Party Zone which was the grand prize in the raffle.
Tickets for the raffle were $4 each or 6 for $20 and regular prize draws took place across the three days for the show for translites, t-shirts, caps and other assorted pinball-related items. Proceeds went to benefit the American Red Cross.
On Saturday, the day was supposed to start with the swap meet held in the hotel's parking lot at 8am. Unfortunately, something happened to prevent the swap meet taking place.
Heavy rain all morning meant all but the hardiest sellers abandoned any notions of selling parts. A couple did persevere and a collection of backglasses quickly sold to a single buyer, but few ventured outside to see what was on offer. So the action continued when the main hall re-opened at 10am, while upstairs there were a series of seminars about different aspects of pinball.
Pinball Art - John Youssi
John initially only wanted to produce backglasses and didn't want to get involved in playfield, cabinet or plastics art. But once he had worked on a couple of games he felt confident enough to tackle a full game's art package. That came to pass when he was introduced to game designer Pat Lawlor to work on his Whirlwind game. John said he frequently used photographs of either himself or members of his family as the basis for his art. Here's one of him posing for a proposed backglass for No Good Gofers, along with the sketch of the version used in the game.
It wasn't only John and his family though. Here, game designer Dennis Nordman models for the Bigfoot character in Whitewater.
Talking about his more recent work, John described how the departure of the leading character from the show CSI led to multiple version of the artwork with and without various characters from the show.
After his seminar, John sat at the back of the seminar hall signing flyers, translites, backglasses and posters. You can hear all of John's talk by clicking on the play button or the link below, or you can download the MP3 file by right-clicking on the link and saving it to your computer. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
Got problems hearing the audio? Consult our help page for assistance.
Restoring Your Worn Playfield with Direct Ink - John Greatwich
John explained the process he uses to prepare a playfield before any printing can occur - starting with the sanding down to remove an existing paint or grease, sealing it, repairing any damage and putting down a white base coat. The playfield is screwed to a think layer of MDF to ensure it is perfectly flat before printing begins. Once printed it is has automotive clearcoat applied to protect the finish.
His focus now is on obtaining more art files so he can expand the range of playfield prints he offers. He currently has Space Shuttle, Sorcerer, Eight Ball Deluxe and High Speed and has no problems with licensing since he is only repairing existing artwork on an existing playfield and not creating a new product. Experiments with printing backglasses onto glass continue but are not yet ready for commercial products. Depending on the results, it may result in translites being made for older games instead of printed glasses. John concluded his talk by drawing tickets to give away the two playfield prints he was showing, and said there would be further draws for prizes when he returns home to Halifax, Nova Scotia. You can hear all of John's talk by clicking on the play button or the link below, or you can download the MP3 file by right-clicking on the link and saving it to your computer. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
Got problems hearing the audio? Consult our help page for assistance.
Chris continued by examining the various parts of a pinball machine, describing what each section does, where they live in the game and what maintenance they will require.
While he offered some basic repair tips, Chris stressed how important it was to leave tasks beyond your skills to a repair professional. Which is where Evan took over - as that repair professional. He talked about simple maintenance and troubleshooting any game owner can undertake, including getting a manual if the game didn't come with one and understanding the self-diagnosis system built into newer machines. He said most of the problems in a game come from switches, so it is important to know how they work and how to adjust them. Talking about board problems, both Evan and Chris talked about how in most cases it is cheaper and better to repair an existing board than to buy a replacement board. Only some early Gottlieb boards and those severely damaged by battery leakage might be considered not worth repairing. You can hear all of Chris's and Evan's talk by clicking on the play button or the link below, or you can download the MP3 file by right-clicking on the link and saving it to your computer. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
Got problems hearing the audio? Consult our help page for assistance.
LEDs have some clear advantages over regular incandescent lamps, Brett said, using typically only 20% of the power of a lamp, producing very little heat and having a generally longer life span. They still cost more than regular lamps but the gap is closing. Brett then turned his attention to how pinball lighting is driven and how the general illumination circuits are nearly always AC voltage. This produces problems when using LEDs which only conduct in one direction as they are only turned on for a short period of time during each cycle of the voltage waveform, which produces a noticeable strobing effect unless steps are taken to reduce it. One way is to convert the game to use DC voltage for the general illumination circuit. Some manufacturers' games will still work fine if the AC voltage is converted to DC including modern Stern, old Stern and Bally as well as Williams systems 3-11, but some - notably WPC games - won't work. Brett then examined why this is, looked at some possible solutions to this and workarounds.
A similar problem appears in those games which use a lamp matrix, where the lamps are intentionally strobed very quickly with a higher voltage and use the persistence of the lamps filament to make it look as though the lamp is lit continuously. This doesn't work very well with LEDs. Brett said he's done a lot of research into ways to reduce or eliminate this strobing effect but as yet there is no easy solution. Future solutions will include new aftermarket driver boards which are designed to work with LEDs, more built-in components inside the LED body or possible changes to game software to strobe the lamps in a different way. But for the moment there are no easy fixes. You can hear all of Brett's talk by clicking on the play button or the link below, or you can download the MP3 file by right-clicking on the link and saving it to your computer. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
Got problems hearing the audio? Consult our help page for assistance.
On Friday there was a mini-tournament called Draw Your Partner, where randomly selected pairs of players teamed up to beat another pair and progress to the next round. The winners of this event were Derek Fugate & Bill Bloodworth who beat Shawn Ryan & Eric Fisher in the final, with Dean Grover & Carey Fishman coming in third.
The second mini-tournament took place at 1pm on Saturday and this was for parents and their offspring in the single-elimination format Parent Child Tournament. Entry cost $6 per pairing and the winners would pick up a commemorative plaque. At the head of the field were Mark and Joshua Henderson, who were followed by Adam and Escher Lefkoff, followed by Craig and Andrew Hassell in third.
Qualifying for the five main tournaments (Texas State, Modern, Classic, EM and Kids) continued all day Friday and into Saturday. The Texas State closed at midnight on Saturday, the Kids qualifying ended at 4:30pm, the Modern ended at 5pm followed by the EM at 6pm and the Classic at 8pm. All but the Texas State held their play-offs and finals once their qualifying had ended. The Kids tournament took place on the same Spider-Man machines as the Texas State, which meant the machines were set up to be fairly tough on the competitors. That didn't phase the winner, Joshua Henderson who not only collected his second plaque of the day but also won the Vector machine. Second was Escher Lefkoff and third was Jack Pace.
After the Kids tournament came the playoffs for the Modern Tournament. In this and the remaining tournaments, there were a certain number of qualifiers from the qualifying round and these were spilt into two divisions - A & B. The top half of the qualifiers played in their tournament's A Division while the lower half played in B. No players ranked in the top 100 by WPPR points could qualify in B, so if they were in the bottom half of qualifiers they sacrificed their place. The cost of entry was also the same for these tournaments - $5 bought two games on the selected machine. For the Modern Tournament, all qualifying and the play-offs were played on Stern's latest game Big Buck Hunter. The top 8 qualifiers played in the A Division play-offs and those in places 9-16 played in the B Division. In the top A Division it was Donavan Stepp who best controlled the game and took first place along with a plaque and $150. Second was Adam Lefkoff who also got a plaque and $75 while third was Martin Ayub with his plaque and $50.
In the B Division it was a win for Chris Compton who won $75 and his plaque. Second was Keith Shahan who picked up $50 and third went to Grant Mortenson who received $25. Following the finals of the Modern tournament at 7pm came the finals of the Electro-Mechanical Tournament which, like the qualifiers was played on a Gottlieb Kings & Queens. The A Division consisted of the top 8 qualifiers and was won by Robert Gagno. Derek Fugate came in second and in third place was Mark Beardsley. Cash prizes were the same as in the Modern Tournament above.
After that came the play-offs and finals for the Classic Tournament, played on the Bally Nitro Ground Shaker. Once again, the 16 qualifiers were split into 2 divisions and the top A Division was won by Lynn Lyons who beat Donavan Stepp into second place, followed by Adam Lefkoff in third. Prize levels were the same as the previous two tournaments.
In the B Division it was a win for Jeff Rank who held off competition from Mark Beardsley who ended up second and Tim Riehl took third spot. With those tournaments completed, only the Texas State Pinball Championship remained to be decided. Qualifying continued until midnight on Saturday and towards the end there was a rush to play the last few qualifying games. But there was no favoured treatment and even special guests had to wait their turn to play.
When the final games finished just after midnight, the top 32 proceeded to the play-offs starting at 8am the same morning. They qualifiers (in alphabetical order) were:
For the play-offs on Sunday morning, players were paired up and the highest placed qualifier could choose the machine to play (where there two or more available) from any of the five Spider-Man machines, the single remaining Big Buck Hunter or the Nitro Ground Shaker. The lower placed qualifier then got the choice of play order. The B Division reached its final first and it was tournament head Ken Kemp who triumphed over seminar presenter John Greatwich in the final to win the division and the $200 prize. John received $100 while Steve Trujillo took away $50 for his third place.
Then, to close the tournaments, the final rounds of the A Division took place. In the final between Donavan Stepp and Martin Ayub, Donavan won the first game following a great fight back on the last ball, starting on 16M and ending by cruising Martin's 96M total. Donavan easily won the second game to retain the title of Texas State Champion. Martin Ayub was second and Greg Davis won the play-off for third place against Don Brownback who ended in fourth. Donavan took away a $500 prize pot and a plaque, Martin received $150 with his plaque and Greg won $75.
Once all the tournament has been decided, the show continued until its 2pm close time. However, there were still some further awards to be made for the best machines at the show in various categories. Each year the show organisers recognise the best condition machines and the best presented games brought to the show by presenting awards to the owners. These presentations were followed by the draw for the top prizes in the raffle.
A Funhouse test print and a Wheel Of Fortune playfield were given away before the big prize - the Party Zone - was won by Carey Fishman.
The raffle draw brought the show to a close and machines were soon packed away, ready for the journey home.
That also brings our coverage of the 2010 Texas Pinball Festival to a close. Many thanks to all the organisers for putting on another great show. We'll leave you with this look around the show on Saturday evening once the lights went down. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
Got problems seeing the video? Consult our help page for assistance.
© Pinball News 2010 |