TEXAS PINBALL |
Date: March 28th - 30th, 2014 In the first part of our report we mentioned the two Medieval Madness machines set up in the main show hall. On Friday morning we had a chance to take a closer look and play one of the two games. Both had protective white plastic on the lock bar and side rails, although this was removed later in the day to reveal the gold-effect finish.
The machine played just like an original Medieval Madness and there were very few cosmetic differences. In fact the game looks almost identical to an original. At least on the top surface.
We said the playfield looked the same from the top, but that's certainly not true when you look at the underside, where a single large PCB dominates.
The single large, game-specific board is aided by three generic 8-outpt driver boards.
Before the show opened on Friday afternoon, there was an attempt to set a new world record for the number of people simultaneously playing a game of pinball. The previous record was fairly low at around one hundred, but this is more due to the complex steps needed to verify the total number of players. A accountancy firm was hired to audit the number of players, the show hall had to be cleared of players and video records kept of everyone re-entering the room, and independent marshals were posted around the room to verify when players started and completed their games.
Verification of the official number of players will take several weeks, but unofficially it appeared there were around than 270 machines being played, so a new world record appears to have been set. You can see the whole record-breaking attempt in our video below. The show officially opened a few minutes late due to the world record attempt, but visitors then got to enjoy a huge number of quality pinballs and assorted video games. We'll have a full report from the show floor in Saturday's report, but Friday also saw the start of the seminars at the Texas Pinball Festival. First to take to the floor was Randy Perlow from ColorDMD.
Randy spoke about the origins and workings of the ColorDMD system, the developments which have been made in the past two years, and their latest Sigma colour-changing display which can synchronise with the colour-changing speaker LED kits available.
The only other seminar on Friday evening took place at 8pm and featured Steve Ritchie.
Steve presented a slide-show of pictures taken at the Stern Pinball factory, and introduced the many workers on the factory floor who produce a modern Stern pinball machine. He then answered question from the audience about the role of whitewoods in testing game designs, whether he would consider creating an updated version of one of his earlier designs, and whether it is possible to create pinballs in places other than Chicago.
Following Steve's seminar, Steve was joined by John Borg, Dirty Donny and Gary Stern in an autograph session.
We will be back with much more from the Texas Pinball Festival in our Saturday report including a full rundown of the show machines and many more seminars.
© Pinball News 2014 |