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Pinball Expo

Mfresh

Mfresh

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Joined
Oct 7, 2012
Messages
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Location
Marlow on Thames, Bucks
Alias
Paul
For anyone interested in what's happening at Expo in Chicago:

I got here yesterday and the place was strangely deserted. An early bit of controversy was that John Popadiuk showed up at a pre show dinner which has got many people on Pinside riled....

Today the setup starts.

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So far they've been bringing in a load of Stern games for the competiion area - lots of Game of Thrones, and a Kiss machine which is very... bright. And a Whoa! Nellie BJM IMG_2386.JPG

And they are starting to set up the games room - although it is pretty small.
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Andrew Heighway and co have turned up after missing their plane yesterday, and one Full Throttle has a smashed glass.

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Just been over to Twin Peaks (basically a Hooters copy) with Martin Ayub, Andrew and Jonathan Joosten from Pinball Magazine to look at puppies and check it out as there is going to be a Full Throttle competition and party in there tomorrow night.

One of the girlies was quite smitten with the idea of pinball so she has been made the "house champion" and the winner of the competition will have the right to take her on for the overall prize - that's the plan that was ade at the time anyway. Seems appropriate for a motorcycle game. I don't think she got the job becaise of her brains, and I am not convinced she has ever played pinball before, but she seems a game girl....

Andrew seems in a good mood - there is no doubt he had a couple of things to reveal - he's on at 6.30pm local time tomorrow, which is half past midnight in the UK.
 

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I think overall the Kiss art package is AWESOME , cab and playfield. What's the story with the cable into the backbox ? Is this how the SPIKE system games are ?

Cheers for update, and yeah ...keep em coming ...with loads of pics :thumbs:Can't wait for the Heighway announcements :clap:
 
Up at 5am - thanks jet lag - and waiting for breakfast to start. Why cant the septics do decent bacon instead of that stringy stuff they have?

Not complaining though - off to visit the new Stern factory this morning. Martin has rental car and has offered a lift to beat the Expo hordes who are being shipped to the factory by bus.

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What's happened this year is that Stern - under pressure from the new investors, I gather - is clamping down on what they show off, and cameras and competitors - anyone working for JJP, Heighway etc - are banned.

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I suppose its understandable that Stern doesn't want anyone pinching their unique monochrome DMD technology...

I'll take a closer look at that long thing coming out of the back of the Kiss, and definitely try to snatch a pic of the Hooters chick. (And don't even think about rearranging the words in that last sentence...)
 
Nick @mufcmufc showed us at NLP what happens with the new Stern 'board set' (one tiny board) when you are in test mode and open and close the door. The board has really bright LEDS on both sides that glare with the intensity of the sun as the coin door is opened.

Did you meet any cool black dudes called Al?
 
Expo may not have the most games anymore but for the chance to meet you pinball heroes it still cant be beaten. Andy will have to put up a big sign in Merthyr - no Stern allowed!
 
Well, the school buses came to take everyone to the Stern factory

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but thanks to Martin and his rental car we got there early before the crush.

The new factory is pretty anonymous to say the least:

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but inside it was a bit different.. Much more space than the old one, and Stern really went to town for Expo guests
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with a banner over the staff microwave machines, and, bizarrely, a dj set up on the factory floor

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So, time to meet pinball heros. Gary Stern wasn't there, but he had a stand in to greet everyone, along with the gorgeous Melony

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Steve Ritchie was by the door welcoming everyone
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and George Gomez was around

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along with Rick from Planetary Pinball (just to the right of the word PINB in the banner)
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(Stern had said no photography, but they relaxed that a bit when everyone arrived and said we could take pictures before the tours started, in case you are wondering.)

Then they did a few speeches and introduced some of the staff. George Gomez got a laugh by introducing someone (didnt catch the name) and said that he was the computer graphics guy. "You may ask why we have a computer graphics guy," he said. "Well one day I promise we'll have a new display."

So what did we learn?

One thing I spotted was GoT and Kiss machines with Stern official topper accessories. The Kiss one has letters that light up in some sort of sequence, and the GoT one is basically a castle with a dragon on top that flaps its wings. I couldn't get too close to them, but here's what I got:

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So then the tour started, with my group getting Greg Freres as a tour guide.

Then we learned that the Game of Thrones code name before launch was Politico. Kiss was Star, and Wrestlemania was Dudes.

Looking around the factory you could see lots of GoT, Kiss, Metallica and MMr being made, or lying around. There were also quite a few Iron Man, TWD, and a few Mustang. The elephant in the factory was that there was no Wrestlemanias in evidence at all, as far as I could see. If there were any I missed them at any rate.

A couple of other things I noticed:

When they were testing machines, they run through switch tests, with the playfields hooked up to what looks like colordmd screens. Dont know why they weren't hooked up to regular dmds - maybe they are more robust. Who knows?

There were also a couple of intriguing beast machines that were in the engineering bay, including one machine marked TWD Pro/LE hybrid. Couldnt get near it to get a look at what it was though.

So there you have it.

The tournament starts in about half an hour, The Big Lebowski guys are on at 5, and then Heighway at 6.30.

Thanks for reading - I hope it's of interest!
 
Maybe as the factory is a production line all the production staff have to take lunch break at the same time? If they only had 1 or 2 microwaves its going to be a long old lunch break if a couple of dozen peeps all want hot food!
 
You know what - I'd just be happy to meet the awesome Steve Richie again!! :)
 
He was asked if he would take on the Predator license if the Alien project goes well and Heighway has a good relationship with Fox. His answer was that you have to be open minded, but cant talk about that specific title. So he didn't rule it out, but didn't say that he was looking at it either.

Big Lebowski /Dutch Pinball: there have been hardwar and software changes. They no longer have the license to the original songs for various technical reasons so have had to do their own music.

There will be 6 rug modes, various character modes (Walter, The Dude, Jesus, Maude, etc) . The title is very nearly ready. In fact the first twp production models were shipped to their offices for testing and their are a few problems that need ironing out.

There will be an online service so you can download updates, and it will monitor how many plays your game has had etc so the idea is that if they know a part fails after 10,000 plays they will warn you when you are near that level so you can order a replacement if you want to.
 
Mfresh said:
Big Lebowski /Dutch Pinball: there have been hardwar and software changes. They no longer have the license to the original songs for various technical reasons so have had to do their own music.
Click to expand...

Oh man! :-o That is a massive blow. Almost enough to kill it for me, the music is such a big part of the film. Thank god I didn't preorder
 
No pictures of Hooters girls possible I'm afraid, so I got the next best thing.

I give you the very friendly and slightly nutty Koi Morris!

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There was free beer and greasy fried food, lots of people stopped by, and quite a few Americans I talked to are planning on getting FT or, more commonly, Alien.

There was one FT with the static backbox, one with the miniscreen in the backbox, and one with the big screen. The difference is amazing - with a lot of people milling around, the big screen one was an eyeball magnet while the static screen on was totally ignored. Also there is more to look at than I had realised by looking at the playfield screen. The images scales up really well and its much easier to take it all in on a big screen. AH reckoned having a bog screen would be a $600 upgrade to a base machine, or about $150 more than a small screen. No brainer really if you are getting a backbox screen I would have thought - and of course once you have it you have it for all your games. At the moment it just mirrors the playfield screen, but that doesnt always have to be the case.

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One other thing - Andrew said that Circe's Animal House may be revisted in the future, but current plans are that games 3, 4, 5 and 6 are all licensed.
 
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