Blackpool Play Expo 27th & 28th October

[wilbers]

Blackpool / Manchester Play Expo events

Not sure how many forum members are in the UK but there is a pinball/gaming weekend in Blackpool next week. I'm thinking of going on the Saturday as its in daytrip range for me. Pinball lineup has been announced https://www.playexpoblackpool.com/news/pinball-table-confirmed-lineup

 

[wolfson]

wilbers , have a great time mate !!!

 

[wilbers]

Had a nice day. One thing I didn't think of before I got there is when there is 1 pinball machine its easy to hear, same likely applies if you have a cluster of 4 pinball machines. Scaled up to 50 all being played at once, and its hard to hear the one you are playing. 10 of them were in smaller room "pinball through the ages" - a wooden one, right through to Dialed In (not sure if very modern machines have a different glass, when I first saw it, it looked like the glass wasn't even there) - still no idea how that is supposed to work, I just hit random things and the table changed colour, and I triggered the phone a couple of times. One thing that was telling near the end of the day is that they were nearly all played nearly continuously, but there was a gap where the 3 Zaccaria machines were - guess everyone else was like me, have 1 or 2 games on each and then leave them in favour of the others.


Got to play Indy, Star Trek, Star Wars, and many others; missed out on Addams Family and Attack from Mars though. Ended up playing for about 5 hours - had 2 hours before lunch, then had 2 sessions in the afternoon with a break in between for the chap that ran Commodore UK and a quick look around the rest of the expo. Missed out on the VR section though - I'll have to try that sometime. Also found out that they had had a similar event in Blackpool in March, so looks like its twice a year rather than an annual event, just with some variation as to what is at each one.


The Who dunnit machine had a fault and launched 2 balls at once - never did work out how to start playing it properly.

 

[wilbers]

https://www.playexpomanchester.com/news

Looking forward to tomorrow, event at Manchester is even bigger than at Blackpool. Not just pinball either (looking at the floorplan, even though there are over 60 machines, takes up less than 10% of the space), who knew there had been a Kickstarter for an updated Spectrum - never heard of it until today.

 

[Lroy]

Nice! Great to play real-life machines. I’ve only just started venturing out to get ‘hands-on’.

Found out about an event called UKPinFest. It’s being hosted in Daventry in the Midlands and runs for three days. I booked a hotel and plan to make the most of it!

http://www.ukpinfest.com


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wilbers]

Funny what you can see when waiting to play a machine, but not see when its right there in front of you. Had 2 games on NBA Fastbreak, and when I came back to it later saw the extra flipper and ball in the backbox. Fun table, even though I still don't know what half the shots do.

Found something out, I'm not fan of music themed pins played so far, but really like The Addams Family. Twilight Zone, the jury is out - had 2 games on it (always seemed to have a queue) so don't know what most things do - kept having the ball tipped off the bit with the black & white circle and down the middle - was I doing something wrong, like aim not to hit the ramp that goes there in the first place? Activated magna flippers once, thought whoa, whats this and by then the ball and dropped back to the normal playfield.

 

[wilbers]

PS, also been playing Hitman 2 on PC and who did I stand behind waiting for a machine, yes Agent 47 aka barcode man - absolute splendid job for the CosPlay did take me a moment to realise it wasn't just someone dressing very smartly!