GOLDEN STATE PINBALL FESTIVAL 2018 – FRIDAY

Hello and welcome back to Lodi for continuing coverage of the GSPF 2018.

It’s another hot sunny day but inside the three show halls it’s decidedly cool for the continuation of the set-up.  More and more machines began sporting the yellow Post-It notes indicating they have been leveled and are ready to play.

A little further back into the Chardonnay Hall are the two machines which are prizes for the raffle.  Draws are held on Saturday and Sunday and tickets cost $5 each.  The winner of Saturday’s draw gets to choose which of the two machines they would like.

In addition to the two raffle draws, there is a silent auction for a wide range of items – both coin-op-related and more generic products.

ColorDMD had a nice group of games featuring their multi-colour displays.

Meanwhile, over in the Cabernet Hall, the tournament games were getting some final tweaks before the start of the pin-golf.

In another corner of the same hall, the Pacific Pinball Museum had their Mini-JuJu Airstream containing five pinballs.

The show opened at 1pm, but games were still being set up as the top of the hour approached.

Finally, with minutes to spare, the last finishing touches were made.

As the doors opened, there was a lengthy queue of guests waiting to enter.

The first of the Pinball University talks began at 2:30pm on Friday with Rob Anthony of Pinball Classics demonstrating his soldering techniques.

Rob demonstrated how he removed the RAM chip on a Williams WPC CPU board by desoldering it so he could install one of the NV-RAM non-volatile replacement RAM chips.  He had an overhead camera so he could show the audience exactly how he used the iron, while explaining the ideal temperature and types of bit to use.

Download the audio of this seminar here

The second Pin-U talk was by John Mohr who presented his Five Cheap Tricks To Fine Tune Your Solid-State Game.

His tricks included ways to repair flickery lamp sockets, how to re-use connector pin headers, and using an inductive amplifier tool designed to find signals in wiring looms and use it to trace the audio signal through a sound board.

After his talk, John took the audience to the back of the hall where he demonstrated some of his techniques on a real game backbox.

Download the audio of this seminar here

The third session at Pin-U introduced the audience to the new Kill Bill custom pinball and its designer Dennis Van de Pas.

Based on a Bally World Cup Soccer, the new game adds a number of shots to the playfield, changes the way the ramps and scoops work, adds more ball locking positions, and completely rethemes the artwork.

Dennis spoke about his influence from games such as Twilight Zone and Attack from Mars before explaining why he chose World Cup Soccer as the basis for Kill Bill.  He described all the hardware changes he made, the new shots he added and the extensive supporting ruleset.

He concluded by moving to the game and simulating shots to trigger many of the modes and multiballs.

Download the audio of this seminar here

The final session taught novice and intermediate players how to improve their playing skills.  Our hosts were three local tournament players, Jon Olkowski, Louise Waggensonner and Eric Waggensonner.

They showed video clips of various maneuvers including trapping the ball, bounce passes, post passes and nudging skills, then invited members of the audience to try them for themselves using a Guardians of the Galaxy machine set up next to the stage and fitted with an overhead camera.

Download the audio of this seminar here

That’s all for Friday’s action for now.  The show is still continuing, so I will update this report later tonight before starting on Saturday’s action in my next installment.