Photo TR: Midwest Gaming Classic

[Cameron]

Hey,

 

I grew-up in arcades, turned it into a part-time (but very serious) job while in college, and then finally a career. A big part of my life has revolved around arcades, and so I really enjoy shows like this. I've done reports in the past covering Pinball Expo here in Chicago, but the Midwest Gaming Classic is not just for pinball - it's video games, consoles and PC game too. The Midwest Gaming Classic is a really fun show. Aside from the three huge halls full of games (all on free-play), I really loved the museum of old equipment (a lot of which was working).

 

A big draw for me this weekend was seeing the presentation by two former co-workers (and current friends) who are working on custom EM (electro-mechanical) pinball machine / art piece .. but I'll get to that in the next post. First up are a bunch (and there are a lot) of photos I snapped walking around...

Welcome to the Midwest Gaming Classic!

Josh and Zack Sharpe, who are among the top ranked pinball players in the world, play a game of "Zen Pinball" on NBA Fastbreak. (Those two Fastbreak games were linked too, which is tremendous fun).

Some old EM and early solid-state pinball.

Classic video games are not forgotten either.. Centipede, Kangaroo, Berzerk, Captain America, etc..

A whole room full of vendors selling classic console accessories and used cartridges. There were some great finds in here!

One vendor had these cool light-up posts available for pinball machines. (A lot of people are putting LEDs in their games, but they look awful - however these posts could be one way to make them look somewhat nice).

There is even some old EM parts available (although certainly not what you'd normally find at Pinball Expo, but still fun to look through).

No, I'm not a giant - this is an itty-bitty version of Dig Dug! (Fully working, it was very cute ).

Classic console competition area .. people were competing at Tetris, Frogger and various Mario games.

An Apple ][GS setup with Arkanoid! I sat down and played a game, and actually got goose-bumps. I played that game so much when I was a kid - really made me nostalgic and even a little misty-eyed.

A Timex Sinclaire 1500 - one of many amazing old system set-up as part of the museum.

For the Timex Sinclair above, check out the 16k memory upgrade! (Note that the actual jpg file is 49k ).

One of two banks of networked iMacs, for Quake tournies during the day.

A working Vectrex! This thing is so awesome, with a little vector monitor. Now be honest - if anyone doesn't know what a vector monitor is, I'll gladly explain it. They are super cool..

Intellivision! Several of my friends had these when I was a kid, and we spent many hours playing during summer vacations.

The Adam "Family Computer". This came with a full keyboard, printer, and had duel (cassette) tape drives for storage. This hooked up to your TV, it was cool.

Bally Arcade!

The Osborne 1 was the first successful portable computer. (Seriously!)

The Game Gear was a COLOUR hand-held game system ... loooong before Gameboy Advance.

Free WiFi set up all over the hotel to encourage spontaneous hand-held competitions.

The 100% home-brew Bill Paxton pinball machine, which has been Ben Heck's on-going project for many years. I've seen many home-brew games over the years, but was really blown away by this one. More info here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/17/ben-heck-completes-the-bill-paxton-pinball-machine-reasserts-su/

The playfield of the Paxton pinball - it was really fun to shoot.

Elvira - Mistress Of The Dark, is always happy to see me

Some of the trophies for the pinball tournament.

[Carnage]

The Adam "Family Computer". This came with a full keyboard, printer, and had duel (cassette) tape drives for storage. This hooked up to your TV, it was cool.

 

Nice! We had an Adam/Colecovision combo when I was a kid. I fondly remember playing Buck Rogers and Mousetrap on it.

[Cameron]

As I mentioned, a big draw for me at this show was seeing the still very much in development "Whoa Nellie" pinball project. This is being lead by Dennis Nordman and Greg Freres. Dennis was the game designer for such amazing pinball machines as Elvira (both of them), White Water (still one of my all-time favorite pinballs), Pirates Of The Caribbean, Doctor Dude, etc. Greg Freres is one of the most talented and creative artists and game-guys in pinball, including Elvira (again, both of them), Medieval Madness, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc. Both of these guys are immensely talented, and make an incredible team (working with them on Scared Stiff was just fantastic).

 

Being highly creative guys, these two really don't like being idle. Each had been thinking of doing stuff independently for some time, and happened to start talking about it at the Northwest Pinball And Gameroom Show last year. They penned many ideas before finally settling in on something with the look and feel of a classic 50s/60s game. Now Dennis has recently been getting into "fruit-crate art" (back in the days when fruit was delivered). This is classic, fun artwork, very much in the style of the 50s/60s games. After getting together many more times, they arrived at:

 

Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons

 

They are working with an old Continental Cafe (CC) machine, which is an electro-mechanical game from 1957. Greg and Dennis have designed a new playfield layout, but will re-use all the CC components and rules (EM games are tough to re-program - and that's beyond the scope of point of the project). The artwork is very much in the fruit-crate style, and the whole machine actually looks like it's made from fruit-crates.

 

The goal is "kinetic art", rather than a full-on, hard-core pinball - however it still has to play well and be fun; and they hope to offer these for sale before the end of the year. They have built up one playfield (called a "Whitewood" since there's no art), and this is primarily to test the geometry of the shots and flippers. Not all the switches are installed, but it does flip - in fact at the show we got to see it flip for the first time! Very exciting ..

 

Greg has been maintaining a fantastic blog, which I encourage anyone to read who's even remotely interested in pinball and game design. There's also a Facebook group.

 

Cameron.

The game on display at the show - this is still very much a work in progress.

A print-out of Greg's sketch for the backglass. This will eventually be screened directly onto glass using the 4-colour process. (All modern pinball machines have the art printed on material called a translight - which is durable and practical in a commercial environment, but nothing looks cooler than art directly on glass).

The playfield - called a Whitewood since there's no artwork. This has been built to test the geometry of the shots, bumpers and slings. You'll notice that several switches are just drawn on, they will be installed in Whitewood 2. (At Williams we typically built 4 whitewoods during development, which is why the games shot so well).

The original wiring harness is pretty much un-changed (other than being lengthened in some places in order to account for components which have been moved).

Part of the brains of the game - of any electro-mechanical machine. Now I am honestly not mystified by any piece of software driven technology, and can figure out how pretty much any application, game or embedded device works ... but these EM games are total black magic to me. I love them!

The "Whoa Nellie" cabinet - designed to look like fruit crates. The cantaloupe artwork on the bottom "crate" is going to be changed to water-melons since the green will pop more against the wood. All of that wood was aged by Dennis using a variety of crazy methods (including dragging it through gravel, and even setting it on fire!). It looks so awesome. They will also figure out some sort of rubber mounts between the machine and the bottom crate so that you can still nudge. No, the game will not have tradition legs

Note the awesome detail around the flipper buttons. Remember that this is all new wood that Dennis really worked over to "age" it. They also spent a lot of time making sure that the buttons and lock-down bar all feel good while you're playing (even though everything is made from wood).

Dennis flipping the game for the first time in public, in front of a large crowd. I got to play quite a bit too, and it really flips so well. Dennis was initially concerned that there might not be enough action in the bumpers, but it really works so well (most of the time there's a small amount of action, but around once or twice a game there's a lot of action - and it feels really good). He even has a long shot from the left flipper to the upper/right corner of the playfield, which is super fun (there was some concern that the old style flippers wouldn't be strong enough, but they work very well).

And of course, I have to plug the t-shirts

[thrillerman1]

GREAT TR!!! I would LOVE to attend this show. Thank you so much for sharing the photos and trip report!

 

Oh and by the way, I know it's a long shot, but have you ever seen a neon Atari sign for sale at any of these conventions? I'd love to get one for my home game room but so far the web is not helping me find one.

 

I'm looking forward to your part 2 of this report.

[mcjaco]

My Mother was dead set against video games when I was a kid. But my Dad finally got her to give in one Christmas when the ColecoVision hit the shelves. I have such fond memories of that system that I still want to buy one just for sentimental sakes. There was nothing cooler than Turbo! or Zaxxon, or my personal favorite, Burgertime.

Edited March 30, 2010 by mcjaco

[dandaman]

Where's the Vegemite?

 

Awesome TR Cam. Since it was electronic consoles, would H2Overdrive have been present?

[Hercules]

Game Gear > Any Gameboy ever

[SharkTums]

Oh man, I loved my Game Gear. It's gotta be around somewhere still. Ristar was my favorite game on it (never was a Sonic fan on any system).

 

Thanks for the interesting Photo TR Cameron!

[cfc]

Intellivision! Several of my friends had these when I was a kid, and we spent many hours playing during summer vacations.

 

Sea Battle and Burgertime rule!

[esvadj]

Great trip report, I love that stuff also. I had a lot of those early console games including the Vetrex.

 

Back in the 90's I got a few EM pinball machines from some auctions. I never fully "shopped" one, but I would clean them up and trade them for arcade games. In retrospect, I wish I had hung on to the pinball machines. Instead I have a shed with over 35 full size arcade machines in various states of repair.

[larrygator]

Great thread Cameron!

 

Intellivision! Several of my friends had these when I was a kid, and we spent many hours playing during summer vacations.

 

Sea Battle and Burgertime rule!

 

I still have my Intellivision stored in my mom's basement, I wonder if it would still work. I don't have the original console, and the later version of the console didn't play the Activision games which blew since Carnival was my favorite game of all time. Yes, Sea Battle was awesome. It only took me 2 years to figure out how to work the Mine Sweeper. I also loved Astrosmash.

Edited March 31, 2010 by larrygator