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2014 Texas Pinball Festival - March 28th-30th


Albert

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The 2014 Texas Pinball Festival will be held the weekend of March 28th-30th with a HUGE 40,000 square foot game room! This year's show will be held at the Embassy Suites Dallas Frisco Hotel and Conference Center in Frisco. The show's organizers plan to fill this space with more than 400 pinball machines, classic video games and other game room goodies set up on free play for everyone to enjoy the entire weekend. Leave your quarters at home!

 

Vendors, collectors and hobbyists from the surrounding area and beyond will be bringing parts, supplies, game room memorabilia, pinballs, slot machines, jukeboxes and video games for sale. Lucky winners will take home door prizes and someone will take home a new pinball machine from the show's annual raffle. You can also participate in the pinball tournaments held throughout the weekend, as well as the outdoor flea market and swap meet Saturday morning.

 

The Texas Pinball Festival opens its doors Friday evening at 5pm and will stay open until 1am on Friday and midnight on Saturday. Please visit the Texas Pinball Festival site to learn all about this year's show!

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Sweet! This looks exiting, and not a long drive from where I live. I'm a big pinball fan and have been dying to play tables in real life without severe condition issues. They said the event pricing for one night (Friday) is $25. I doubt I'd stay for the whole weekend though. It would be sweet to bring my fiance, stay the night in Dallas, and tour the city on Saturday. Do we need to purchase tickets in advance, or just show up at the door? I'll need a bit more info before I book reservations. Also, do we need to bring "fistfulls" of quarters, or are they on free play?

Edited by stardust4ever
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Wish I could attend. A couple of the local players here usually go to this.

 

Oh, and 400 machines? That's just crazy. They must have some serious help! We just ran an event a couple of weekends back with about 40 machines, and that was a lot of work. I can't imagine doing 400. Yikes!

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Sweet! This looks exiting, and not a long drive from where I live. I'm a big pinball fan and have been dying to play tables in real life without severe condition issues. They said the event pricing for one night (Friday) is $25. I doubt I'd stay for the whole weekend though. It would be sweet to bring my fiance, stay the night in Dallas, and tour the city on Saturday. Do we need to purchase tickets in advance, or just show up at the door? I'll need a bit more info before I book reservations. Also, do we need to bring "fistfulls" of quarters, or are they on free play?

The games are all set to free play, so you don't have to drop a single quarter into machines while you're there. However, if you want to play the machines in the tournament area, you do need to pay to enter the various tournaments. So, paying $25 for one day or $50 for the weekend is a great value, especially given the machines are generally in great condition, and when problems arise, they usually get fixed right there on the floor. I would buy tickets in advance, as they will be going up in price soon (the $50 weekend pass will be $60, for instance). Definitely worth it if you enjoy pinball and don't have the opportunity to play very often.

 

..Al

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Oh, and 400 machines? That's just crazy. They must have some serious help! We just ran an event a couple of weekends back with about 40 machines, and that was a lot of work. I can't imagine doing 400. Yikes!

That does seem like a pretty high number to me, but 40,000 square feet is a huge amount of space, and you could very easily fit that many machines in there with room to spare. The fun part is getting individuals and businesses to commit to bringing the machines, and then hoping people don't back out. I'm sure the actual list of machines varies until the day of the show. It is impressive that so many machines are moved to this one location for the weekend. It's a lot of work just moving a single pinball machine or arcade game, and some vendors bring tens of machines. Pinball machines in particular are a huge pain to move, especially if you remove the legs and fold down the head, which I always do when moving a machine. Plus, pinball machines, due to their highly mechanical nature, aren't always appreciative of being moved around and transported, so it's not unusual for things to be broken once they arrive at the show!

 

..Al

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. Pinball machines in particular are a huge pain to move, especially if you remove the legs and fold down the head, which I always do when moving a machine. Plus, pinball machines, due to their highly mechanical nature, aren't always appreciative of being moved around and transported, so it's not unusual for things to be broken once they arrive at the show!

 

..Al

I wouldn't recommend hiring Burt Reynolds or his sidekick (from Speedy and the Bandit) as the truck drivers! :lolblue:

 

Albert, I know this is mainly a pinball, not a video game convention, but will you be manning a booth there?

Edited by stardust4ever
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I go to this every year and it is a blast. If you are going to be there Al, I've got another deposit of cart shells that I can give you.

 

FYI that there are usually MANY classic arcade games also there and available to play/purchase. However, the classic home gaming scene has not really been represented in past years.

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Albert, I know this is mainly a pinball, not a video game convention, but will you be manning a booth there?

Are you setting up a bunch of consoles like you do in Houston?

No. I've approached the organizers of this show about setting up a section of classic gaming consoles as I've done at the Houston Arcade Expo for the past five years or so, but they aren't interested. They want to keep this a pure arcade event. In the past this was more understandable as they didn't have a lot of extra space, but now that they are at 40,000 feet I thought they might reconsider. The classic consoles and computers are very popular at the Houston show, and I don't feel they take away from the arcade games at all. It's their show, though, and I respect their decision.

 

I go to this every year and it is a blast. If you are going to be there Al, I've got another deposit of cart shells that I can give you.

Yes, I will be there!

 

..Al

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No. I've approached the organizers of this show about setting up a section of classic gaming consoles as I've done at the Houston Arcade Expo for the past five years or so, but they aren't interested. They want to keep this a pure arcade event. In the past this was more understandable as they didn't have a lot of extra space, but now that they are at 40,000 feet I thought they might reconsider. The classic consoles and computers are very popular at the Houston show, and I don't feel they take away from the arcade games at all. It's their show, though, and I respect their decision.

 

 

Yes, I will be there!

 

..Al

besides the Houston ArcadeExpo and Portland.....what other shows does AtariAge setup at?

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besides the Houston ArcadeExpo and Portland.....what other shows does AtariAge setup at?

Over the years I've setup booths at:

 

Midwest Gaming Classic

Oklahoma Video Game Expo

Classic Gaming Expo

PhillyClassic

Austin Gaming Expo

vgXpo

 

Besides the Portland Retro Gaming Expo recently, I have attended the Classic Gaming Expo (CGE) the most of the above shows, and CGE was the first AtariAge attended. Didn't make it to the 2012 show, so the last time was in 2010. I see there will be a CGE this year, though, with "new management", per se.

 

..Al

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How crowded are the machines? Is it like going to an amusement park and waiting 30 minutes to ride a ride?

In past years, you might wait for someone to play a few games on a very popular machine but there have almost always been open machines you can move to and play right away. This is a new venue, so I'm not sure how confined the space will be this year. Last year was great and things were spread out enough so that you didn't feel like you were right on top of each other all the time.

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Very Cool! It's only a skip and a hop away from where I live. Does anybody know if there will be any homebrews or Reproduction carts available at this event?

There won't be anything for classic game consoles at the show. The organizers focus on putting together a great arcade event, so that's pretty much all you're going to see there. As I mentioned above, I've spoken to the organizers in the past about adding a classic console area, but they really aren't interested in doing so at this time.

 

..Al

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Last year was great and things were spread out enough so that you didn't feel like you were right on top of each other all the time.

The venue last year was interesting. It was a huge change from the previous year, where it was very packed and tough to move around at times. Last year was a huge venue, with a ton of space to easily move around. But it felt somewhat disjointed and not very organized in terms of game placement. I think this year they will be tightening that up a bit to find a medium between the prior two years. The floor space is similar (45,000 in 2013 versus 40,000 this year), but it looks like they plan on having more equipment at this year's show. Should be a blast!!

 

..Al

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