AUTUMN COIN-OP SHOW 2021

The Autumn Coin-Op Show is the little sibling of the annual EAG International which is usually held each year in east London at the massive ExCel Exhibition Centre. This smaller Autumn show (also known as ACOS) has been hosted at various venues in the capital but, after skipping 2020 due to the pandemic, has arrived at the 1,260m² ILEC Conference Centre in west London’s Earls Court, adjacent to the IBIS London Earls Court hotel.

The ILEC is a much smaller space than the ExCel, allowing just 28 exhibition stands on the main show floor, plus a couple outside in the lobby area. There is a central bar and plenty of seating to enjoy the refreshments or hold an impromptu meeting.

While the spring EAG show is a market place for the operators looking forward to the upcoming summer season, the demand for new coin-op equipment heading into winter is somewhat lower. Nevertheless, there is a continuing need for fresh indoor entertainment in family entertainment centres (FECs), inland arcades and single-site locations.

ACOS last two days and we were there on the first day to see what pinball was present and if there were any other products of interest.

There were actually three pinball machines, two of which were available for visitors to play.

The first two of these were on the Electrocoin stand and featured the first appearance in the UK of Stern Pinball’s new Godzilla design.

Electrocoin is the sole UK importer of Stern Pinball products and handles most of the trade sales. The Godzilla game arrived from Elk Grove Village just in time for the opening of the show.

Both titles were Pro models which made sense as this is a more of a show targeting operators than home buyers. Godzilla is Stern’s first title to include the Insider Connected system, but this game wasn’t connected to the internet as far as we could tell. The action button on the lock bar wasn’t functioning either.

Of the two we found Godzilla to be the more fun title, with a good variety of interesting shots. There is clearly work still to do on the display and lighting animations, but even without all the innovative features of the Premium and LE variants it shot well, had a good ruleset and was our ‘go-to’ game. After a reasonable first attempt with 140M, the second game went much better.

The third pinball at ACOS could be found on the stand of Game Payment Technology.

Game Payment Technology is a cashless electronic payment system developed by the amusement and gaming industries in the UK to create a way to pay for games on amusement or gambling machines, and also pay out any winnings.

They had this Led Zeppelin Pro machine on their stand, fitted with their payment system to show how cashless credits could be purchased using their app.

While the term ‘coin-op’ has traditionally referred to non-gambling equipment, there as been a steady increase in the number of ‘slot machines’ at coin-op shows. The EAG show in the spring includes quite a large number of low-stakes slot machines even though the bigger ICE London show held a few weeks later is the main target for the high-stakes casino slots manufacturers. ACOS also had a high proportion of slots amongst the products on display.

Fortunately, there were still plenty of other types of amusements to keep us entertained, including shooting games, pushers and assorted skill games.

There were no more pinball references or particular games of interest to report, so we’ll end this article with our usual video walk around the show in the exclusive Pinball News Six Minute Tour.

If you’re interested in seeing more new coin-op products, we’ll be visiting the much larger IAAPA trade show in Florida next month and will bring you a full report from there, right here at Pinball News.