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| PINBALL EXPO 2008 |
| Date: 1st - 5th October 2008. Welcome to this third part of our Pinball Expo 2008 coverage. In this report we'll look at the games and vendors in the main exhibition halls. After the Bumper Blast welcome party on Wednesday evening, the main exhibition hall was closed on Thursday during the seminars while games and vendors came in and set up. The official opening was at 6pm when attendees got their first chance to play the machines and buy pinball-related items. Just inside the main door was Mike Pacak with his huge selection of flyers, manuals, translites and assorted pinball parts.
To the left of the stands were a number of Mike's rare machines including Jolly Park, a prototype of IT's Orange County Choppers video pinball, a solid state Spirit of '76 and a Pinball Expo dedicated Flip Out.
On the other side of the corridor was Graphic Dimension's stand where they were offering custom artwork including some Corvette cabinet decals.
Phoebe had a couple of her restored games for sale at the end of the row along with a number of restored playfields.
The hall was largely filled with vendors selling NOS and used pinball parts, but a number were promoting their own circuit designs. Great Lakes Modular was one such company, selling their range of replacement circuit boards.
Another was Marco Specialties who were busy pushing their PinScore replacement displays from their stand at the back of the hall.
Rottendog Amusements were also set up at the show with their range of replacement boards.
Away from the pinball electronics, enhancing your game seemed very popular with several companies offering ways to make your machine stand out from the crowd. Z-Plating could make it shine with their product line of chromed and plated metal parts.
Pinball Decals could do the same for your machine's coin door.
But if you were setting your sights even higher, what about one of these backbox toppers which presumably came from slot machines. Each machine had a single ball tournament running on it.
Over on the left side of the hall, Pinball Inc had a long stand from which they were selling their expanded range of new pinball plastic ramps.
If you were after a wider range of assorted pinball parts, there were several vendors at the show who fitted the bill.
There were several other vendors with stands at the show including Nighthawk Games, Clay Harrel, Scott Sheridan, Orbit Pinball, HSA Pinball, Pingame Journal, BC's Pinball Amusements and Pinball Exchange. Classic Playfield Reproductions were also due to appear at Expo but due to problems crossing the border from Canada to the US they were unable to attend. The large number of vendors and the new venue resulted in a slightly smaller number of playable games in the main hall, down from from last year's 71 to 60 this time. These are the games available to play in the main hall on Saturday afternoon:
As we saw in the Bumper Blast report, the second hall was devoted to publicly playable machines with no vendors.
That allowed lower lighting levels and more machines than the main hall - 73 in all when the survey was taken on Saturday afternoon.
That makes a total of 133 machines, although that number varied throughout the show as machines arrived or were sold and removed.
You've read about the show but now you can see it for yourself with our exclusive Pinball News Four Minute Tour. Simply click on the play button below for a walk around the show floor. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
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All of which brings this part of our Pinball Expo report to a close. We'll be back soon with more from the show soon. |
