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| PACIFIC PINBALL EXPO 2009 |
| Date: October 2nd - 4th, 2009 After all the set-up and preparatory work, the Pacific Pinball Expo opened officially on Friday morning at 10am. Entry cost $25 for a single day or $45 for the whole three days.
The doors to the show remained closed until 10am each day, by which time a sizeable queue had built up.
Fortunately, there was great weather outside for those who had to queue in the parking lot. And for those staying at the nearby Embassy Suites, it was only a short walk across a bridge to arrive at the Marin Center.
The show organisers had negotiated a special rate of $109 a night at the Embassy Suites, which included a cooked-to-order breakfast and a 2-hour manager's reception where residents could enjoy drinks and cocktails with no charge. The corridor leading past the seminar room and into the main hall was decorated with posters depicting the different fashions used in pinball artwork through the years.
The shows and the museum like to highlight three aspects of the game - the science of pinball, the art of pinball and the history of pinball. The first show included a number of scientific demonstrations, while it was pinball art in the spotlight last year. For 2009 it was pinball's history which became the focus of the show and the seminars. The posters continued that historical link with a journey through the many and varied fashions depicted in pinball artwork.
Once inside, visitors could begin enjoying the huge number of games set up.
The left side of the hall contained mostly electronic machines, while the right was almost exclusively electromechanicals. The range of solid state and dot-matrix machines seemed much improved over the first show and although the very latest game NBA was not present, a good selection of the more recent titles was available and remained busy throughout the weekend.
The dot matrix machines were certainly the most popular, with queues forming to play a great number of them. The solid state machines were also very popular. There does seem to be something of a revival of intetest in these '80s games and the range at the show was quite impressive, giving most visitors the chance to try something new to them.
The sheer number of machines is breathtaking, as are the views looking down row after row of warmly glowing games which disappear off into the distance. The EM machines were nowhere near as busy as their electronic counterparts which is partially understandable due to their relative quantity. It's also slightly disappointing too and presents the organisers with something of a dilemna. Do they increase the number of "popular" machines - i.e. the dot matrix machines - or do the try to press the educational value of the EMs and try to demonstrate how much fun they can be?
Perhaps some kind of tour through the EMs to demonstrate how certain features were added, developed and how other machines are related would increase their popularity, as there's clearly a lot about pinball's history to be learned from them. We counted the machines on Saturday evening and reached a total of 339 set up for visitors to play, either on free-play or in the tournaments.
In addition, a further 16 were for display only as part of the history of pinball exhibition.
* Machines which were not working or switched off when the list was made Some of the historial machines were available to play, while others were behind a velvet rope and so out of bounds.
Right next to the hall entrance was the organisers' desk while around the outer edge of the hall were quite a few vendor stands.
These were the vendors we either saw or found notices on the tables for:
Most of our time at the show was spent in the seminars room. For the first time, the seminars were given their own room which turned out to be just the right size and was sorely needed to keep the seminars away from the noise of the main hall, which is where seminars were held previously. The vast majority of the seminars were well attended and all were well received. Ron Chan was in charge of arranging them and took charge of them to make sure the speakers had the facilities they needed. Feedback forms were handed out before each seminar and collected after, with all those who completed them entered into regular draws for show T-shirts.
Pinball News was there for almost every seminar - the ones we skipped were repeats of previous seminars and were in no way related to the free drinks at the Embassy Suites - and thanks to Ron and the whole show team, we are able to bring you every seminar to either stream or download.
For simplicity, we've moved them to a separate article which will be online shortly. Most of the seminars were also filmed by the team from 30lbs Skunk Productions who are producing a pinball documentary and can be seen on the left side of the picture above. Meanwhile, back in the main hall, apart from the extensive selection of machines to play and the numerous vendors, there were also a number of tournaments in which to compete. All tournaments were held in the back right-hand corner of the hall and were organised by Keith Elwin.
The main tournament was split into two divisions - novice and expert. Both required an initial $5 per player registration fee which could either be donated directly to the Pacific Pinball Museum or could be converted into 6 raffle tickets. Prizes in the expert division were cash, taken from the entriy fees, while the winner of the novice division would win a Dealers Choice pinball machine. Once a player was registered, entries to the tournament cost $5 for two attempts. The aim in the qualifying round was to get into the top five scores on one or more of the machines chosen for each division. Each top score achieved earned a place in the play-offs and the more top scores you got, the more places you earned. That could mean you end up being drawn against yourself, which would give you a bye into the next round. Qualifying ran during show hours from noon on Friday until 11:30pm on Saturday and the machines used in each division were: Novice - Straight Shooter, Bucaneer, Diner and The Sopranos. Expert - El Dorado, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Flash Gordon and Fish Tales. In the expert division, the final came down to a battle between Keith Elwin, Neil Shatz and Andrei Massenkoff. Keith had achieved enough top scores in the qualifying to earn himself two places in the final, versus the single places for Neil and Andrei. They all played a game on each of the four machines above and points were awarded, with 4 points for first place, 2 for second, 1 for third and 0 for fourth. The points were then added up across all four machines to give each player their total. Keith's two places were treated as separate players and not combined.
It turned into a fascinating finale as on the third and final ball, Neil tilted his ball and in trying to put the machine back in place, inadvertently tilted Andrei's final ball as well. That created a problem which was solved by Andrei playing one additional ball, the score from which was added to his titled game's score. Andrei was in the lead going into that last game and with Neil automatically collecting a zero for tilting another player's ball, Andrei didn't really need to play to win the tournament as he was guaranteed third place which turned out to be good enough for first place and $560. Keith's two players in the final took second and third for a total of $420, while Neil was fourth and took home $70.
In the novice division it was a win for Brian Goldstein who took home the Dealers Choice machine as his reward. In second place was Julie Grey, while third place went to Todd Seaver and Joshua Warren was fourth. Julie collected $308.70 for her second place, Todd received $154.35 and Joshua won $51.45. Apart from the expert and novice divisions, there was a kids division, a split flipper touranement and a "bingo" competition where players crossed off various squares as they completed certain features or reached specified targets. The Split Flipper tournament was won by a team of Keith Elwin and Mike Mahaffey who collected $98.25 for their troubles. We'll update this report with the other results as soon as we receive them. Throughout the show, a series of announcements were made over the hall's PA system. Most of these were to welcome new visitors to the show and announce the upcoming seminars. Others were to announce awards and presentations being made to various attendees at the main desk and to announce the various vendors at the show. We'll be back with more details soon, but in the meantime you can take our exclusive Four Minute Tour (two minutes just wasn't enough) of the show on Saturday evening by clicking the picture below. Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.
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