Showing posts with label COAPF show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COAPF show. Show all posts

Friday, June 6, 2025

Ontario Pinfest 2025 report

Last weekend we loaded up for Pinfest!  2 days of pinball in Wasaga Beach, Ontario.  I was asked to setup and run a pinball history booth, like last year's editiopn.

loading up the trailer.  My friend brought Elektra and Bali.

 Here is the history booth setup, just before opening:

full booth

this was the stuff I brought to sell







 

There are two walkthrough videos that pinball channels posted, but unfortunately neither cover the history booth.

 



 

 

I picked up a few things.  Most notably, this Ski-Doo (formally, Ski-Doo 23) pinball machine from 1932.


an extra copy of Terry Cumming's wonderful Pinball Ad Catalog vol 3.  


 a 1000 piece pinball puzzle, via the charity auction

 

Bought this Sky Kings for a friend of mine that grew up with this game.


I was given a few lovely prints of restored backglasses.



 

And some items for scanning... 

Marketplace vol 13 no 12, 1974-06-30

Canadian Coin Box 1983-07

they are all quite brittle, but I was passed a stack of Billboard issues from before WW2


schematics for Gottlieb's Around The World (1959)
I don't own this game, I just want to expand my collection of digitized Gottlieb schematics



I was passed these interesting light sockets.  Does anyone know what they are from, or clues to the manufacturer or era that might have used them? 2 have a jeweled dome.


 I was also given this project Contact, and have already found someone to take it.


 

View from the corner


 

Highlights from the show ...

These two played like a dream.  Counterforce and Asteroid Annie

 
2 brand new releases, raising money for the local food bank.  Evil Dead was great but I have a hard time finding my shots on Spooky pins since I barely get to play them.  The ramps felt wide and the other shots felt tight.
King Kong was the LE and it was a delight to play.  Absolutely loved it and I think it's going to be a hit.  Elwin has done it again.  With how much the upper flippers get used, I think this might be one of those games that plays extremely long in tournaments, like Godzilla.  But for players that aren't the worlds' greatest, it's perfection. :)



The Simpsons homebrew debuted here and it was AMAZING.  Highly recommended.  In fact, here's a video from Pinball Shenanigans going through it.  I was lucky enough to get a similar extended tour through the machine with the creator.


 


Tempest's vector output was also running through that oscilloscope for part of the show!  And what a beautiful Mappy.

 

Some decent scores on these next 3.  All super fun.




the ideal pitch-and-bat game. You need that handle for batting satisfaction.

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This blog stands in protest against the USA's horrific policies to try and eliminate trans people from society.  Trans people have always existed, in every society, but this fascist administration has declared a war against reality and says that trans people can no longer be allowed to exist.  Trump's executive orders say that trans children cannot be safe at school, in their home, in public, or at hospitals.  Trump officially declared transness existing as a primary source of CHILD ABUSE.  Trump's orders are a decree to destroy all traces of trans existence from society, to punish every trans person and those that love them, and declares that all trans people are subhuman threats and liars who should not be allowed to exist publicly.  He is attacking children, he is attacking families, and he is delighting in his sadism.

This blog stands in solidarity with all of the youth who are being terrorized by a fascist president who has declared them to be threats that must be eliminated.



Please read:  Utah Republicans ignore study supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. It's research they demanded

Please read: The New York Times’ Inaccurate Coverage of Transgender People is Being Weaponized Against the Transgender Community


Wednesday, December 11, 2024

scans: Canadian Coin Box, Canadian Vending, and Star Tech Journal scans

A nice potpourri of scans here. Thank you as always to those who donated and sold these to me, and thanks to Detchibe for scanning.  Most of these were pickups from the COAPF show in June.

Let's start with a Canadian Vending scan. Chronological order! This issue has an interesting article on the Japanese vending machine industry.

Canadian Vending 1970-12

here are the pages about vending machines and Japan:






Canadian Coin Box scans:

Canadian Coin Box 1971-12


Canadian Coin Box 1978-03


Star Tech Journal scans

Star Tech Journal 1990-08

Star Tech Journal 1991-05

Star Tech Journal 1991-08

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For my readers in the USA: The incoming administration has laid out plans for an eliminationist policy against trans people in your country. They have already written hundreds of laws to try and make trans people existing illegal, their health care the illegal, their schooling impossible, their history banned, and providing care for trans people has become illegal in some states with governors demanding parents be jailed if they support their trans child.  They have now set their eyes on eliminating trans people at the federal level. This blog stands in solidarity with trans people, in the face of this authoritarian evil.

The following is an excerpt of an email I had sent to another collector:

The time of wait and see was around 2017-2018 when Republican operatives openly planned to create a moral panic about LGBTQ people and especially trans people. They launched a massive propaganda campaign and the media accepted it at face value.  The time for action and solidarity was 6 years ago when they called all LGBTQ people pedophiles, sent bomb threats to schools, and sent death threats to our community leaders and healthcare providers. 

Before this latest open disinformation operation, LGBTQ people were enjoying more acceptance, rights, and freedoms than ever before. Those are being clawed back and an entire population gets to experience the utter dehumanization of having your rights revoked by a sneering majority.

Recall Rush Limbaugh laughing on his radio show as he daily celebrated every death from HIV/AIDS by name. They again revel in their cruelty.

I wish I had the luxury of distance, but I have to protect my family and friends from the death threats sent to us by literal nazis.  People are making plans for their entire lives being destroyed, for incarceration, and a huge uptick in the already normalized violence.

My continued presence on this blog is a reminder that we need to find moments of joy even amongst the sadistic terror of rising authoritarianism.

Never comply in advance.  Please stay safe.


banner via United Church of Christ


Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Pinball Expo 2000 seminars

Back at COAPF in June I was given a stack of tapes.  I had mentioned the archiving projects to a vendor and he ended up donating them all.  The videos were all digitized, and now the audio tapes are too.


Pinball Expo 2000 lectures cassette tape set
Chicago, Illinois
October 19-22, 2000

Illinois Pinball Company with Gene Cunningham
Germany Conversions From Geiger by Heri Elden
Steve Kordek an Informal Chat
Repro Plastics & Decals Made Easy with Roc Agwral 
My Design Experience with John Trudeau
Displaying Your Backglass / Translite with Mark Bakula
Gary Stern
Pinball Art 101 with Keith Egging & Rob Hayes
Repairing Data East Sega Games with Clay Harrell & Rob Hayes
This Old Pinball with Shaggy & Baffo/Norm
Debunking Old Pinball Myths with Tim Arnold
Fireside Chat 2000 with Greg Kmiec

12 tape set
digitized by Nateo87
Audio has been normalized, and the audio speeding up at the very end of the final lecture was like that on the tape.



 

 

 Pinball Expo 2000 seminars - case cover art

Download and/or listen to the Pinball Expo 2000 seminars at The Internet Archive.

 

Monday, July 29, 2024

Videos: digitized pinball VHS tapes and much more (good videos part 4)

I brought home a number of goodies from COAPF in June.  Thanks to Swizzle @ Gaming Alexandria for digitizing these first 5 VHS tapes for me.  We've included scans of the cases.

Who's ready for some lo-fi pinball b-roll footage?  We've got bunch of digitized VHS tapes and a whole bunch of other great videos beneath them.  (Prior video posts: 123)


Pinball Fantasy '96




Bingorilla Number 2 (Winter 1997)




Bride of Bingorilla (Number 3, Spring 1997)





System 1 Super Show (Number 4, Spring 1998)





Girls Don't Make Passes at Boys with Backglasses (Number 5, Spring 1997)



Note: the game "Big Dick" had to be removed from the video to allow it to be on Youtube.  When this gets uploaded to The Internet Archive it will be the unedited version.





Let's round out the Tim Arnold videos with the first in the series, though someone else digitized and uploaded this one, years ago:

Pingame Gerbil #1 (1996)



Technology Connections pinball series

Another important video series is a brand new 3-part series by Technology Connections, explaining how a 4-player EM pinball machine works.  Even if you're familiar with pinball tech, this overview is a great example of concise technical communication, and a good review of the theory of operation.






More videos!


A very rare payout golfing game


28 minutes of gameplay of  United's Singapore bingo machine:


Two videos diving into the ultra-rare Army Navy:



An engineer who has never had experience with EM pinball machines explores a bingo pinball as her first one...


First reporting on videogames, 1973:


Tour of Rob Berk's 1000+ machines at Past Time Arcade:


Footage of Pic-Pac, Namco's robot band:



Wonderful video on a collector from France who specializes in table games and pub games:

Prior video posts: 1, 2, 3