Top show boys. For those of you that didn't make it, here's a bit of a
personal recollection, no doubt PinballNews.com will cover the event in
a bit more detail.
Firstly, you missed a full-on weekend. Whilst it was first and foremost a
pinball show, a couple of big vendors were present, Williams Leisure and a
pool table and air-hockey company. Williams had some very clean vids,
Defender, Gorf, Asteroids, SI, Galaxian and several more, as well many
jukeboxes, pinballs and 'monsters'.
Machine setup on Friday, from 7pm to 11pm, was hard work but very good
humoured, followed by beers on the Holiday Inn patio. People were still out
there until 1 or 2 am...I forget. No time for sleep though, setup continued
from 7am until 10am and was a lot easier than last year as most machines
were on their legs at that point.
On a personal note, I was to run the score system for the team competition
and was having a minor nightmare. MartinA was providing the PC that I used
to run the webserver and database, and my PC was the 2nd display. We'd had
an early test a week before which went fine. (Although at that point I
hadn't actually written any of the system...)
Initially, the network wouldn't talk, then there was a firewall killing
stuff, miscellaneous webserver-not-serving issues, locked databases,
problems getting power to 2 PCs, 2 monitors, printer, video camera and that
was just my side - there was a separate High Score Competition running in
parallel also, in the same area. As you can imagine, there were a million
boxes, banners, bags, beer glasses as well as us becoming a bit of a bag
store for everyone else. I managed to get the system working about 20 mins
before the team competition started - phew!
That was pretty chaotic too. None of us had done this before - Eddie Mole,
the large handful of stewards/refs or myself, and of course many of us had
never met before. The competition format and software was new (and
unfinished and untested), and you wouldn't believe the number of emails
Eddie, Martin and myself exchanged in the weeks before. Little surprise
then that we were about an hour late in starting, although people turning up
over an hour past the start time didn't help.
So, all the planning of which teams started playing first went out the
window and the teams that were *there* went first, and on it went. 13
4-player teams in all, and the first round took a couple of hours. What was
great to see was the amount of people that, whilst others were playing, were
still crowding the area and chatting. From those I've spoken to, most people
in the competition didn't play many of the other games in the hall that day
as they were hanging out in the competition area. Good job it was a 2-day
event.
The High Score competition, which was run last year also, had a 4-man
play-off, 2 Germans and 2 Brits. (The Sunday was 3 Germans and 1 Brit - Sean
Rowe - but the Germans did buy a lot of entries!) As always, results will
soon be available on PinballNews.com, and contribute to world championship
ranking.
The show closed just after 6pm, excepting the team competition, which was
going to the wire. The final was best of 5 games, and of course, the 5th
game was the oddball one that everyone was trying to avoid - Totem. Again,
Pinball News, soon, for the results.
I think everyone got back to the hotels around 8pm and eventually most of
the crowd ended up round the Harvester, probably 25-30 people, with the rest
going for a curry next door. Then, over time we all ended up in the Holiday
Inn lounge where there were an average of about 20-25 people until 1 or
2am...I forget.
Luckily, the regular Pinball Poker on-tour session that got underway at
about 11pm was a good night for me, as I luckily cashed in both games. I
think I wound one or two people up by taking most of the 2nd pot and then
going to bed :-D, Sorry boys, I was shagged, but you are welcome to come and
win it back from me any Thursday in the regular Pinball Poker, somewhere
around London. I'm normally easy money.
If it's any consolation, at the ending presentation on Sunday, when there
was a load of raffle prizes still left, and Nick said 'stick any Charity
contributions in this tumbler, highest contrib gets a prize', in went the
remaining poker winnings. Never got my prize though :-( (Although I do
currently have the tumbler and the contents ;-)
Visitor kick out time at 4pm, and the machine breakdown session started.
There were plenty of people getting stuck in for that and we were all out of
there by not long after 8pm. No fun going home though, had to avoid the M1
as it was closed after an accident, but was home (St Albans) for 10pm.
The show was so great because so many people took it on themselves to put in
so much effort. Give yourselves a pat on the back.
Cheers,
Phil
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