Calgary Arcade and Pinball Show 2012 - Page 2 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

TurnedTheCorner · 09-15-2012, 10:10 AM

I plan to be down there around 2:30 ish or so.

Rathji · 09-15-2012, 01:55 PM

Been at the show since just after 10. Big props to the girls at the door for letting my nephew in free even though he is 13. I am sure he is determined to spend that cash at the consession though!

Just stepped out to have some lunch at Wendy's and take a break.

Will head back and probably be there until till they kick me out tonight. Wish I had the time tomorrow to make a weekend out of it.

TurnedTheCorner · 09-15-2012, 01:56 PM

How busy is it?

Rathji · 09-15-2012, 03:36 PM

Not bad. Few min wait for most games at this point. You can wander and find an open game pretty easy though.

SportsJunky · 09-15-2012, 04:34 PM

I stayed for a couple of hours. Had a great time. I bought the weekend bracelet so I'm going to try to get back there tomorrow.

chemgear · 09-15-2012, 05:44 PM

Yeah, good crowd - thanks for setting that up!

Rathji · 09-15-2012, 07:13 PM

I was in just after 10 and home at 5;30 and took a break for lunch.

Only a few times did I need to wait more than 5 mins for a game, and that was because I was trying to knock a few off my list (Star Wars, T2, ACDC) to play each at least once. There were some power issues early in the day with hat I assume was an overloaded circuit, but it was sorted out quickly.

Cyclone was easily my favorite, but I really liked Jokerz, and got my first ever #1 high score on it. I wish the camera on my phone worked.

I was a little suprised how some of the games were not in top condition. Like Taxi didn't have enough flipper power to get up any ramps and the Cyclone game had its right flipper go lame about halfway through the day, and the ferris wheel kept stopping mid game. I guess with how old the machines are and them being private machines, you really can't expect much more.

I was very tempted on both raffles, but Mrs Rathji swore that if I tried to bring a pinball machine home, I would have slept on the couch.

Overall, very fun. Will be a yearly activity for me as log as it goes on.

TurnedTheCorner · 09-15-2012, 07:13 PM

I found it quite busy - lineups weren't bad, but the space was pretty cramped. There were way more games than I expected. All in all, I spent about 2.5 hours there. Finished Spider-Man with a friend, played some Dig Dug, Joust and Crystal Castles, got to try some T2 and Cyclone on Pinball. Good times.

Rjcsjc62 · 09-15-2012, 10:07 PM

Took the whole family and spent 2 hours there. A little crowded, but I got to play most of the games that I wanted to. I forgot how much I loved Taxi.

After 2 hours my pregnant wife was tired and my 6 year old boy was cranky. Me and the 8 year old could have spent at least 2 more hours. Next year, we are taking separate vehicles.

Good time had by all.

dino7c · 09-15-2012, 11:08 PM

went with a buddy and had a great time, I have a few pins at home but it was good to play some I haven't played in a while. Glad people still like this kinda thing

Ironhorse · 09-15-2012, 11:19 PM

Spent some time there tonight with my pin ball crazy boy. If it was up to him, we'd be buying a machine and putting it in his room. Had a great time playing some old favorites.

Unfortunate to find out that the raffle for the pinball machine was already sold out when we got there.

Montag · 09-17-2012, 11:59 AM

Great show! I had a really fun time and played most of the pins at least once. I never knew White Water and Black Rose were so much fun. I'm really looking forward to next year.

Engine09 · 09-17-2012, 01:27 PM

That was a tiring weekend, I moved 7 pins twice and then helped out at the end of the night with everything else. A lot of fun though.

The guy from Red Deer did have some great pins for sale but more than a few people were annoyed that half of them were not available to play. Nice guy but his prices are too high, I made an offer for 2 of his machines for cash and one of mine. Real world numbers, reasonable, we were so far off that it was ridiculous.

habernac · 09-17-2012, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kryzsky

That was a tiring weekend, I moved 7 pins twice and then helped out at the end of the night with everything else. A lot of fun though.

The guy from Red Deer did have some great pins for sale but more than a few people were annoyed that half of them were not available to play. Nice guy but his prices are too high, I made an offer for 2 of his machines for cash and one of mine. Real world numbers, reasonable, we were so far off that it was ridiculous.

yeah, what was the point in bringing those machines if they were window dressing? Leave them at home already if they aren't there to play.

Thanks for bringing yours. Had a great time Saturday with my son and my nephew on Sunday. He loved playing the actual Theatre of Magic game that he's played a thousand times on his iPad.

MrMastodonFarm · 09-17-2012, 07:03 PM

If they aren't going to turn them on, tell em to leave them at home. That's not in the spirit of the event.

Rifleman · 09-18-2012, 12:00 AM

Yeah, I was also a bit annoyed at some of the machines being "sale only". I wonder how much the guy paid to use that space as advertisement? If the organizer of this really can't do without the extra money, all the machines should be on one corner of the room, where we can conveniently ignore them. As it is, they were spread out over half the for play pinballs.

Engine09 · 09-18-2012, 12:57 AM

I know for a fact that the organizer wanted all pins on site to be available to play and that was very important to him. I guess the dealer from Red Deer thought it was a decent trade off, bring some for play and in turn have some only for sale.

Only got to play maybe 30 mins of pinball over the weekend but I was just having fun talking to people and working on pins. When you own these machines it just feels like sharing them is right thing to do since they all use to be on location. Glad you all had fun!

Ironhorse · 09-18-2012, 11:20 AM

What happened to the AC/DC pin on Sunday? I never did get to try that one.

jammies · 09-18-2012, 11:35 AM

I wouldn't have cared about their being pinball machines for sale only if there had been sufficient room otherwise - it was already really crowded in there, and then there is this big section that had nobody in it because all the "sale" machines were grouped together, and people would take a cursory glance, then move on.

If the sale machines had been distributed evenly through the floor, it might have relieved a little congestion. Just a thought for next year, maybe.

Engine09 · 09-19-2012, 01:11 PM

The guy who brought AC/DC was very generous to bring it down, that machine is a Limited Edition, one of only 200 built and it's worth almost $9,000. Beautiful machine, he brought it out to share but had to pack up and get going on Sun afternoon. It was the most popular pin on Sat and was running for almost 14 hours straight.

Oh, and the retailer did not give any money to the show. The organizer paid for hall rental, truck rental, generator, associated costs, etc. with the door money. The guy from Red Deer did bring a lot of machines, too bad he treated side of the room as a storefront. But I guess some of them were available to play you can't get too upset.