Vintage Flipper World (Ann Arbor Pinball Museum) 2015 Event

[Crawley]

I'll start posting a few.

Actually was kinda disappointed in the pictures when I saw them. Took my wife's camera this time instead of the one I regularly use. She was going on of how great the camera takes shots in the dark, and she showed me some, and while her pics looked pretty damn decent most of mine came out a blurry mess.

But I still have a few I can post where the quality isn't too bad.



So here we are around driving down the dirt road to VFW. Last year it was a bit freaky to turn on to a dirt road not knowing exactly where you are going. So no biggie this year - although I think I freaked some kids out coming around a corner and them seeing me driving holding a camera in front of me.



And here it is VFW where pinball nirvana awaits inside this pretty plain building.



They got posters for this year. Not too shabby.

Should have asked if there were some for sale. Know there were some T-Shirts for sales. Not sure what else.

Note: Can only post 4 pics for post so moving on to the next post.



Forgot that I lose an hour going from Chicago to Michigan so I ended up arriving about an hour and a half late on Friday. Still as you can see not too many cars. The lower turnout on Friday's make playing a blast as there is 0 waiting. I use the tactic of trying to hit as many popular tables as possible on Friday. Then on Saturday when there are many more people, mainly playing the popular tables, I'm hitting up all the less popular or strange ones.

 

[Crawley]

Should also mention this year they allowed people to camp overnight. Last year there was one guy that did it so this year they opened it up where if you camp overnight you get to play all night.

Wish I was a camper. :/



There were 250+ pinball machines at the show. You basically had 4 different rows of pins (pins on either side of the row) and from all era's. From the 50's woodrails to pins released in the last few years. Just about every pin was in mint condition offering the best pinball play you could ever experience. Many pins I've played at shows are so slow compared to how these pins play.

I think this shot was taken on Saturday when I got there right as they opened. There were hardly any people there so got the pick of whatever pins I wanted to play. It didn't last though as about two hours later the place was pretty packed.



I have to start with Solar Fire. This is basically a Black Knight clone with some terrible space theme art but man is this table fun.

The upper table play isn't as annoying as Black Knight but like BK locking the balls and getting multiball started is a challenge. Add to that the sounds are pretty damn decent. Played this quite a bit - again.

You can see Black Knight and Pharaoh there as well as a bit of Jungle Lord on the left. Each of those tables are the two-platform Black Knight style clones. So its neat that VFW organizes similar tables (and tables from the same era) all together. You basically play one table to the next see the different takes on a single theme. Solar Fire is still the best out of all those tables though.



Zaccaria tables got some additional love this year with Time Machine and Pinball Champ '82. On the opposite wall was Farfalla and Devil Riders - where were there last year.

I had played Time Machine before at one show but never seen Pinball Champ '82 before so it was great to play that. Particularly since its my favorite table from ASK Homeworks Zaccaria app.

 

[Crawley]

I have to talk about Af-Tor.

Now I know what you're thinking. That backglass looks terrible. Correct! But the table is actually pretty neat.



Af-Tor was the first, and only, table made by Wico Corporation back in '84. It has the distinction of being the first pinball table to use an alphanumeric display.

It also has the strongest and the most lively pop-bumbers I have ever seen on a pinball table. When the ball winds up in there and the bumpers go off the action play on the ball just brings a smile to your face.

Another neat thing about the table is on either outlane there are drop targets blocking the lanes. So if the ball if going out you get one save, essentially like a kick-back, before you have to restore it. There's 2-ball multiball for the table that's not too hard to get - although if you lock one ball and then drain the locked ball drops also, meaning you have to start from scratch to get the 2-ball multiball going again.

I kept going back to that table as I've never seen it and it was pretty fun to play.



Anyone heard of this table before? Gamatron by Pinstar?

Me either but it looks oddly familiar.

Here's a picture of the table layout.



Can you guess which table this is?

I can say I didn't notice any difference in the gameplay from the original table. The rules seemed to be the same so no idea why this table exists.

Ok that's it for today. I have a bunch more pics from the show of several odd tables I've never played or heard of before, a table with some of the strangest flippers, and other neat stuff that occurred during the show I was able to get pics of.

 

[Locksley]

Nice pics ExTork, Crawley!
As someone said earlier, you got some nice pinball events and even more nice machines.

I saw a private collector going to have something to celebrate our national day, 15$ and buns included! Yes, I am going for the buns...

Good humor too, nice to see as the world turns political correct

Keep 'em coming!

 

[Extork]

Some of my favs... Only 50 more pics to go...






And my friend has 50 more pics. Good thing it only takes me 10 minutes to upload 4. (My photobucket is fidgety)

 

[Extork]

Speaking of my bud. He's all about bowling, so...


But we agreed that it got old after about 1 game. But still a neat idea. This is what he wanted to keep coming back to..


We used to have the same exact machine when I was a kid. So even though it was fun, I had gotten my fill of it years ago. But this was new... And nothing against my friend because anyone would look silly playing this...


It looked like this on the inside. The picture doesn't really do it justice. But basically those neon tankers and buildings are on a belt, and you have the ability to steer. And you can bomb them with rockets made of yellow lights on a fixed track. Cool stuff. He blew me out of the water 1300 to 800. But I felt like I was doing good

 

[Extork]

I feel like we only scratched the surface of what could've been played. Even though we spent about 7 hours there Saturday, it just wasn't enough. It was a sad ride home

 

[Crawley]

Maybe the warning sign above the door was for this... Don't hate me guys, but I just wasn't that impressed. And I have nothing against EMs. We were crushing some Hot Shot. Maybe it's just the fact that I wasn't able to start multiball?

You know I didn't even realize the other building was housing a bunch of EM machines for the tournament till I read about it and then saw this picture. Missed playing all those tables!

Last year there were a few pinball vendors in that building and since I don't own a pinball machine I didn't bother to walk over there and check it out this year. Would have loved to play Firepower and 4 Million B.C. My loss.

 

[Extork]

You know I didn't even realize the other building was housing a bunch of EM machines for the tournament till I read about it and then saw this picture. Missed playing all those tables!

Last year there were a few pinball vendors in that building and since I don't own a pinball machine I didn't bother to walk over there and check it out this year. Would have loved to play Firepower and 4 Million B.C. My loss.

Yeah, I just wish I took more pictures in there. Cause I don't even remember what all EMs they had in that room. But I did bounce around from table to table. Someone was selling an Airborn Avenger. It was kinda cool. But I spent most of my time on Rollercoaster Tycoon. There was also a T3, and Sarship Troopers. They must've had the volume cranked on that SST. But they also had this guy in there...

 

[Crawley]

So in the back room you had these 3 stand-up pinball machines (there's a 4th one to the left of Baby Pac but doesn't quite count as pinball). Last Year Granny and the Gators was down so didn't get to play that one till this year.

In the video screen portion of the game you control a guy in a canoe going down a jungle river. You avoid/kill aligators, watch out for cannibals shooting blow darts, and try and pick up bags of gold along the way. Every once in awhile you'll see off to the side of the river a little inlet that says "To pinball table". If you go in there then you start playing the pin portion of the game.

Like Baby Pac Man the pin portion of the game is pretty basic. So not a whole lot to do there. And its slow ball play so I spent forever in there not really sure what the purpose was.



You can see the Granny controller here. You have to alternate pressing the left/right paddle buttons to move your canoe down the river. There's two flipper buttons on either side of the cabinet you use for the pin portion. No idea what the Fire or Power buttons were for.

It was a neat to play but with the simplistic arcade and pin portion it didn't hold my interest.



Here's the bottom half of Williams' Time Warp. The game uses the banana flippers. They definitely take a bit of getting used to. I never got to a point where I felt I was making accurate shots.



But you could hold the ball like this, have it roll down the little scoop portion of the flipper and fling it up pretty good.

It didn't quite go where I expected it to go (damn physics) but was neat to play with these style flippers.

 

[Dedpop]

How to kill the fun in a pinball game ?
Banana flippers.

 

[Crawley]

Black Belt was another oddity. I've never seen the table before and it's not your traditional pinball machine.



I took a bunch of shots of the table but this was the one that was the least blurry.

In any case you see that badass 80's dude in the middle? You basically have to defeat him by hitting all the targets around his legs and between them (ow!). There's also two other flippers at the top half of the table. The flipper on the left will flick the ball in to his side. Then there is another one kinda on the right side that will flick in to his head. The problem with that flipper is flips towards the bottom of the table (the opposite direction you normally flip). It was so difficult getting the timing right on when to flip that as your brain is like "oh wait! This one flips downwards so I should flip it right no....whoops the ball passed already".



Anyone play Skateball before? No? Me either till now.



This table was actually pretty awesome if you like drop targets (which I do). It was also super fast. I went back to play this one several times.

I wouldn't say it would be a good choice for TPA at this point but if they were going to do a B-list this would be fine for it.

 

[Crawley]

I should point out the staff at this event is fantastic. Organized, friendly, helpful, and a lot of them. I'm not sure what the ratio of staff to players are but it was pretty high. I did not have to walk far at all to grab someone in an orange shirt.

So to explain this picture I was playing a game Freefall when I had just locked the third ball on the playfield. When the ball was shot up on to the little lock ramp nothing happened. Multiball did not start nor did the game seem to realize that there was a missing ball. Typically when a ball gets stuck you just let the table sit for a few seconds and it will start it's search pattern for the ball resetting toys on the table or firing off slings or what not. This did nothing.

So I walked over and got a staff member. I explained what happened and he said he this may need a tech to look at - typically they just remove the glass, grab the stuck ball, put the glass back and you play. The tech looked at it and figured it was a unique issue and basically reset the machine which fixed the issue.

I played another game and wouldn't you know it as soon as I locked the ball the same thing happened.

So I grabbed the same guy again. And boom! All of a sudden there were like 4 staff members around this machine looking at it trying to figure out why the machine wasn't registering the ball lock.



Then out comes the table manual with schematics! These guys were ready to go the extra mile to keep the machine in play. Which they ended up doing. I don't think it was down for more than 10 minutes.



"All hands on deck! We got a burnt coil somewhere!" "Do you smell that?" "It's down one of these two aisles" "Something is definitely burning"

Orange shirts were swarming out of the break pit and heading down the two aisles indicated trying to smell out the pin that was running hot. You can see a few orange shirts in this row bending over smelling the machines to find the one that was running hot. In the far back you can barely see it but there's a group of staff members pulling out one of the machines to get a closer look at it.

It was pretty awesome to see the staff spring in to action and tackle the issue. Just such a great team effort and really impressive.



And here are the rules they post to make sure the event is as enjoyable as possible.

 

[Dedpop]

A big thank you for your pics + comments guys.

 

[Gus]

Looks awesome. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Johni3w6]

Great pics Extork and Crawley looks like a great show and a wide variety of tables.

 

[Extork]

So pumped for this year's VFW. Still gotta get tickets though. Thanks again to [MENTION=2300]Crawley[/MENTION], cause that's how I found out about this awesome event. Figured I'd post on this thread again, cause it'll be a lot like this but better