HOUSTON ARCADE EXPO 2021

With international visitors now allowed to travel to the US, we wasted no time and got on the next available flight to get to Houston and make our first visit to the Houston Arcade Expo.

The show is held at the Houston Marriott Westchase, which is a large business-orientated hotel on the west side of the city.

The complex includes several conference rooms, but it is the Grand Pavilion and the Grand Foyer which are hosting the Houston Arcade Expo this year.

Thursday

We got to the show on Thursday afternoon to check out the set-up ahead of the public opening of the show at midday on Friday and will be updating this report across the whole weekend with all the latest news.

The Grand Foyer will host multiple stands from vendors and individuals. Amongst those with tables allocated are Dirty Donny Gillies and Sam J. Jones (a.k.a. Flash Gordon).

For the games you have to move next door to the Grand Pavilion.

The Game Preserve had a large structure to build and put in place.

The adjacent Marco Specialties stand was suitable impressive with multiple new Stern Pinball titles, including many new Godzilla machines.

Incidentally, Pinball News Editor, Martin Ayub, will be interviewed for MarcoTV on Saturday afternoon and you should be able to watch it soon afterwards.

There are plenty of other pinballs already set up, with more constantly arriving.

Further into the hall there are lots of customised machines. Here are a few which caught our eye.

It’s the Houston Arcade Expo show, so it’s not all about pinball. There are plenty of classic video games too and multiple console and PC/Mac games too.

The Space City Open pinball tournament is being held at the show. Run by the Space City Pinball League, it is hosted in the Richmond Room which is just off the main hotel lobby.

The tournament starts at 5pm on Friday, but machine set-up and configuration was under way on Thursday afternoon.

Friday

The Houston Arcade Expo opened to the public at midday on Friday, although there was still some set-up work taking place in both the Grand Foyer and the Grand Pavilion.

At the desk, guests could buy single or multi day passes, as well as T-shirts and posters.

There were also banners detailing the musical and seminar performances across the three days. With a stage and a DJ desk, there would be plenty of music to accompany the games.

With vendors selling replica weaponry (and this being Texas), there was another banner detailing the rules to keep everyone at the show safe.

The registration desk is located at the entrance to the Grand Foyer which is where many of the vendor stands are located, away from the noise of the arcade machines in the Grand Pavilion.

‘Dirty’ Donny Gillies had set up his stand near to the entrance.

It’s a diverse selection of vendor stands at the show – especially in the Grand Foyer – and we’ll take a closer look at what they were selling or promoting a bit later, but let’s go into the main show hall – the Grand Pavilion – to see how that looked at midday on Friday.

Most of the pinballs are located in a block in front of the stage and loading doors, although there are plenty more scattered throughout the hall.

Marco Specialties had their collection of new Stern Pinball titles set up.

There is also a raffle to win a The Mandalorian pinball with tickets costing $25 each or five for $100. The draw will take place at the close of the show on Sunday afternoon.

Texan hardware manufacturer and game developer, Multimorphic, were also here to showcase some of their latest products on two of their P³ pinball platforms.

Their second P³ was running the Sorcerer’s Apprentice game, but also included their new alternate generic cabinet/backbox artwork.

This Ghostbusters game had a bunch of mods as well as coloured balls installed.

This Stern Star Trek also had a load of mods, but in this case each one had a corresponding QR code so you could get more details and potentially buy them yourself.

Later in the afternoon more games had arrived, including a selection of pinballs from Joystix.

The Space City Open 2021 began at 5pm on Friday with players split into two qualifying groups – Red and Blue. The Red group played six 4-player matches first, with the Blue group following at 8pm. Qualifying continued on Saturday at 9am when the Red group played another six rounds of 4-player matches, with the Blue group doing the same at midday.

The machines in use for the tournament were:

• Avengers: Infinity Quest (LE)
• Diner
• Elvira’s House of Horrors (LE)
• Gold Wings
• Hot Wheels
• Johnny Mnemonic
• Jurassic Park (LE)
• Pool Sharks
• Red & Ted’s Roadshow
• Stargate
• Total Nuclear Annihilation
• Wheel of Fortune
• Whirlwind
• Whitewater
• World Cup Soccer

The top twelve players from both groups qualify for the play-offs which start at 4pm on Saturday with players ranked 9th-24th playing three 4-player games.

The top two from each group advance to round two where they are joined by the top eight ranked qualifiers to play the same format. This continues to the semi-finals in round three (eight players), and the final four play their final around 10pm.

The tournament is being streamed live by Top Rope Pinball and you can follow the qualifying results on the Matchplay website for the Red group and the Blue group.

One aspect which helps make the Houston Arcade Expo stand out is the schedule of live music across the three days. On Saturday evening there were several musical performances, starting at 6pm with The Harp Twins who, true to their name, are twins Camille and Kennerly Kitt who play a selection of popular tracks and their own compositions on their electric harps.

Their performance took place in The Rose Room, which is where the show’s seminars and movie screenings are held. The Harp Twins are appearing each of the three days of the show, and this first appearance drew a large highly-appreciative crowd.

Later on in the evening, the music shifted to the main stage in the Grand Pavilion where we especially enjoyed Atari Matt’s crazy 8-bit music and video displays and 8-Bit Zero’s jamming to an electronic backbeat.

Pinball game designer, musician and DJ, Scott Danesi, was also performing a set on the main stage and will be holding a seminar about his game designs in The Rose Room on Saturday at 6pm.

Saturday

Action at the Houston Arcade Expo 2021 began with the swap meet in the hotel’s car park.

Following the nature of the show, the swap meet offered items from all kinds of gaming.

Today’s seminars started with a workshop on live streaming games from Fliptronic. This was follwed by Gerry Stellenberg from Multimorphic explaining how their P³ pinball platform works and its advantages over a traditional single game model.

The seminar schedule ran all afternoon with talks about video game development and the history of games, followed by a gaming trivia quiz and a cosplay contest.

At 6pm Scott Danesi held a talk about creating your own homebrew pinball. With many of the newest industry game designers coming through that route, homebrew game design is now recognised as the best way into the business.

Scott also talked about the different operating systems and their relative advantages/disadvantages when it comes to creating a pinball game, before taking questions from the audience about how they can create their own game.

Saturday was also finals day for the Space City Open tournament.

The twelve qualifiers from the Red and Blue groups who would take part in the play-offs were:

Red Group	Blue Group
Jim Mueller Wesley Johnson Lee Moscaritolo Collier Whitefield Bob Matthews Robert Byers Jack Revnew John Speights Ken Kemp Trey Keng Jon Stewart Preston Moncla	Colin MacAlpine Steven Bowden Mark Meserve Randy Abel Jokton Strealy Chris Doyle Phil Grimaldi Chris Palis Carey Fishman Scott Davids Brad Holliday Brian Foytik

After three elimination rounds, the final four were Colin MacAlpine, Robert Byers, Lee Moscaritolo and Jim Mueller.

The final was played on three machines – Stargate, Red & Ted’s Roadshow and Jurassic Park.

Colin achieved first place in the first two games, giving him an unassailable lead going into the third, but with everyone else tied for second it was all to play for.

Robert had a commanding lead after the first ball, which he held throughout to win the last game and claim second place overall. Colin took second place on the third game, followed by Jim and Lee who ended up third and fourth respectively overall.

Trophies were presented by Tournament Director, Phil Grimaldi.

Sunday

The show opened to the public at 10am and initially it wasn’t too busy on the show floor, with plenty of popular titles available to play. Here’s our aerial view around the Grand Pavilion thirty minutes after opening.

Meanwhile, in the tournament room where the Space City Open played to a conclusion last night, it was time for the final rounds of the Interstellar Showdown Women’s Pinball Tournament.

Qualifying had taken place on Saturday at the Belles of Space City stand at the back of the Grand Pavilion. The top eight players qualified for these finals which began at 9am on Sunday morning.

The tournament was very well supported with 44 players taking part. The eight who played on Sunday morning were:

• Alana Johnson
• Dawn Hayes
• Kelli Raisler
• Lisa Shore
• Maritza Chirichigno
• Rowela Fiore
• Tiffany Simmons
• Tracy Abrahams

The final was between Alana Johnson, Lisa Shore, Maritza Chirichigno and Kelli Raisler and it was played on three machines – Hot Wheels, The Avengers: Infinity Quest and Jurassic Park.

In the final, Kelli took first place after a win on Hot Wheels and second place on the other two games. Maritza came back from two third place finishes to win the last game of the final on Jurassic Park and take second place overall. Lisa won on The Avengers, but two fourth places on the other games put her in third overall. Alana’s second, fourth and third could only get her fourth place overall.

The Houston Arcade Expo wrapped up around 2pm with a closing ceremony presented by show organiser Keith Christensen.

A series of best-in-show awards were then presented for the top arcade, pinball, console, overall best in show and a special award honouring Dan Ferguson, the eclectic collector and curator of the Lone Star Pinball Museum who we were fortunate enough to meet in 2016. Sadly Dan passed away in December of 2019 soon after an organised tour from the Houston Arcade Expo, so this award honours his memory by recognising the selfless work in the coin-op scene by someone in the greater-Houston community.

Next came a draw to find the winner of a multicade cocktail video game. The winner wasn’t present at the show but he will be able to collect his prize at his convenience.

Throughout the show, guests could purchase tickets from the front desk to enter the grand prize draw to win a The Mandalorian pinball machine. Tickets cot $25 each or 5 tickets for $100, and entries were placed in a metal drum.

Now was the time to draw the winner.

The honour of picking the winning ticket went to this reporter who curiously enough had just played the prize game and set a new Grand Champion score, so could verify it’s a great game to win. After rummaging through the entries one ticket was selected and the owner congratulated on his win.

Once the closing presentations and draws were over, the organising team distributed assorted toys and gifts to the audience.

Will all the gifts given out, the show was over and it was time to start the tear-down.

The Houston Arcade Expo has a unique vibe which sets it apart from the myriad of other pinball shows in the US. This is mainly due to the comprehensive schedule of musical performances, but also due to its roots as a more general gaming show and not a pinball-specific one.

Over the years the pinball element has grown, but overall it probably occupies a minority of the space on the show floor. But then pinball doesn’t exist in a vacuum and influences from alternative genres of amusement, be they coin-op or home-based, tend to converge and provide inspiration for new directions. Having a wide spectrum of game platforms not only appeals to more visitors, they are given the opportunity to step outside their own genre and try others. Guests who attend to play home consoles games, for instance, may well try some of the pinballs or arcade videos and get into those scenes too.

So, that brings our coverage of the Houston Arcade Expo 2021 show to a close.

We end this report with our exclusive Pinball News Thirteen Minute Tour video walkthrough of the Grand Foyer and Grand Pavilion rooms with all the special guests, vendors and games.