Well, it’s over for another year. And it was a big success (again). Not only did we have more games on the video side – we had several more vendors on the pinball side, a great series of seminars, and seemingly lots more word of mouth (definitely more social media and related online promotion/podcasts/etc. too).

Here’s some of the results – take a gander!

Video from the show floor;

Additional video walk-thru’s during the show;

Review from the ‘Seattlest‘ blog;

The Stranger’s SLOG review;

Seattle Weekly slideshow;

Seattle Times article;

Seattle Times show video;

Online photo galleries: here and here;

Dave Okert’s SMAC photo gallery (mostly video side of show);

candybowl

The 3rd annual NW Pinball Show is next weekend, June 11-13, in the NW corner of The Seattle Center in Seattle, WA (by Key Arena). All machines and seminars are included with paid daily admission. All-weekend passes are available too.

Schedule and Seminars/Speakers;

Online Ticket sales available through Monday, June 7;

Recent Podcast about the show on The Mixtape;

Bottom Line? Come on out and PLAY.

candybowl

Picked up an old arcade game for my buddy – Wizard of Wor. This game dates back from the latter arcade classic era, 1981. It shares the same robotic speech as Gorf from the same era (both of us actually have one of those machines, although mine currently languishes in my dad’s barn in OR). Basically the game consists of either one/two people in what seem like land-going spacesuits in a maze, zapping weird creatures, some of which are invisible at times (you can see them on the radar screen below the maze, though).

Once you clear the maze, other bad guys appear you have to zap of course (e.g. Warlock) – and then the Wizard himself may or may not appear. The game also has organ-style music at the start and end of each maze-zapping session, in addition to the weird voice.

Good stuff. This is also a convenient moment to shamelessly plug the upcoming 3rd annual pinball/arcade show here in Seattle next month, weekend of June 11-13. Come one, come all!

candybowl

I’m not watching any other trailers for this. I’m just glad they made a sequel! Dec. 17 2010, welcome to Cinerama…….

candybowl

So a lifelong friend and I connected for some old-school gaming this weekend. And when i say ‘old school’ while not quite as old as say, Frisbee, Monopoly, or Go – these were still pretty old videogames. He has an extensive collection of old (mostly 70s-80s but a few are even older) videogame consoles – the same ones we used to play on the big ol’ 25″ tv in his basement back in the day. We actually had an Atari ‘flashback’ console for those – it has a ton of games built into it instead of plugging cartridges in and out all day – and it even has a few previously-unreleased and prototype Atari 2600 games as a bonus, which is pretty cool (and I’m sure doesn’t hurt sales ).

So after some Atari, we hauled out the Bally Arcade, then sidetracked to a couple (real) arcade games – we both have several of these – a couple of mine are at his house) – then off for pizza. Then back for more Atari, followed by Colecovision (played through nearly all the cart’s he had, although the controllers on that system haven’t stood the test of time well – they were all but impossible to use) and then back to Atari with a brief sojourn in C64-land. We also surveyed several other systems he has around, but ultimately forgot to get around to hooking them up.

Then of course the required pilgrimage to Fry’s in Wilsonville, followed by a quick dinner and then to Ground Kontrol (an actual arcade in Oldtown Portland with 80s-90s videogames and about 20 pinballs – great stuff!).

We got done around 945 pm. And the good thing is, there are plenty more games for NEXT time We need to get back to more C64 – and then some older PC and Amiga games we used to play for hours on end.

Ah, memories…..

candybowl