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<\/a><\/a><\/a>The venue for Flip Expo is still the same –\u00a0Salle Serge Reggiani<\/em>, a large municipal hall on the eastern outskirts of the town – but the show has expanded into the adjacent sports hall – called Gymnase Leo Lagrange<\/em> – too.<\/p>\n We arrived shortly before the doors opened at 10am on Saturday 21st April and there were queues of visitors outside both halls awaiting the official openings.<\/p>\n Both halls had separate registration desks, so some visitors took advantage of the shorter queue and entered the show through the second hall.\u00a0 The price was a mere \u20ac4 ($4.89\/\u00a33.50) per person per day, which is achievable thanks to the municipal council offering use of the halls for free in return for attracting a large number of visitors to the town.<\/p>\n The gymnasium was home to all the vendor stands, and there was an impressive selection of vendors selling many different gaming-related products, although the emphasis was definitely on pinball.<\/p>\n With the gymnasium being used for the vendors, the Salle Serge Reggiani was home of the free play games and the tournaments.\u00a0 However, several vendors were either distributors for one or more of the major pinball manufacturers, or they were selling their own machines.\u00a0 So, there were quite a few pinballs to play in the vendor hall too, including most of the more-recent titles.<\/p>\n The first one we encountered was a Stern’s Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em>, but sadly it was on pay-to-play and hence remained virtually untouched all weekend.\u00a0 Thankfully, it was the exception and all the other games were set on free play.<\/p>\n Probably the most interesting new game there was the Olympic Goblin<\/em> from Phenix Pinball.\u00a0 This has the feel of a home-brew game but also could be a commercial product if marketed and priced correctly.<\/p>\n The playfield is a simple affair, with four top rollover lanes, feeding three pop bumpers, below which are three banks of three drop targets.\u00a0 There are two flippers above which are two passive slingshots which don’t include any kickers.\u00a0 Scoring is on a seven-segment LED displays to give the game a retro early solid-state feel, which is Phenix Pinball’s intention.<\/p>\n The game runs on one of Pascal Janin’s<\/a> CPU\/driver boards with a PinSound audio board to make this a true French production.\u00a0 Gameplay is quite simple, with four stages to complete by shooting the lit drop targets, followed by a three-level wizard mode.\u00a0 The artwork is a little rudimentary and we have doubts Phenix Pinball will be able to put the game into production using the ‘Olympic’ moniker since that title is closely controlled by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but it could be a fun cheap game for home or family location.<\/p>\n The other new game here was Jersey Jack Pinball’s Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em> which was the recent topic of discussion when JJP announced that they had been forced to remove a couple of prominent mechanisms from the game due to reliability issues and had replaced them with simpler alternatives.\u00a0 One was the three-ring spinning map and the other was the opening\/closing chest which locked balls inside.<\/p>\n There were two Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em> games at Flip Expo and both features these animated mechanisms.<\/p>\n Pinball News’ Martin Ayub teamed up with Jonathan Joosten from Pinball Magazine to interview JJP’s Jack Guarnieri about the changes.\u00a0 Jack was the special guest at Flip Expo this year and we cornered him for an interview, finding a nice quiet grassy spot behind the gymnasium for the interview.<\/p>\n You can hear our joint podcast here on Podcast Garden<\/a>\u00a0or with the player below.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>