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Sunday, June 13, 2010

Games Last Call for Pinball

Posted by The Stranger Testing Department on Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 10:36 AM

And last call for a bunch of old-school stand-up vids, too. If you're looking to awaken deep memories of long-forgotten video games (whoa, Major Havoc? Boot Hill? Sea Wolf!), then head to the free-for-all at the Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show, where $15 will get you infinite free play in both the pinball and video game rooms (which have the enthusiastic, geeky vibe of a gun show and PAX, respectively).

You've only got until 3pm today, but that's probably plenty to slake your nerd thirst (and besides, you should probably get outside at some point). The pinball room was packed much of yesterday, but it was easy to get on video games, which are a relatively new addition to this show. The game list is impressive on both sides, and this is a rare chance to see oddities like the laserdisc-powered Firefox (based on the 1982 Clint Eastwood movie, of course), Tutankham (okay, so it does exist outside of Xbox Game Room), and the Budweiser-branded Tapper, before it was nerfed to "Root Beer Tapper" for the kids.

You can catch the end of a tournament, maybe watch some world-record attempts (look for cameras on tripods), and sign up for some cool raffles—but of course the main reason to go is endless free play on every game.

The inventor of this famous blue joystick gave a talk yesterday.

Lindsey Renaud
The inventor of this famous blue joystick gave a talk yesterday.

(More pictures after the jump.)

Lindsey Renaud

Lindsey Renaud

Lindsey Renaud

Lindsey Renaud

Lindsey Renaud

Lindsey Renaud

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Comments (7) RSS

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I stumbled across a Firefox once and found it rather marvelous.

Posted by gloomy gus on June 13, 2010 at 10:52 AM

I love, too, that Firefox is exactly the kind of game I never would have played as a teenager, because I'd be worried it was too expensive and punishing to learn (like many of the laserdisc games). But finding it for free is such a treat. You are a braver man than I for playing it in the wild. —Paul

Posted by The Stranger Testing Department on June 13, 2010 at 11:17 AM

Paul, I must confess I stole all the money I used to play as a kid - no new game involved any risk to me at all. Larceny not bravery led me to be a Firefox enthusiast.

Posted by gloomy gus on June 13, 2010 at 11:42 AM

And how fitting, given Firefox's tagline: http://superheroesofvideo.files.wordpres…

Clint Eastwood would have been proud.

Posted by The Stranger Testing Department on June 13, 2010 at 11:54 AM

TAPPER!!! Holy shit! Was it one of the machines with the little beer tap controller?

Ahhh... sweet memories....

http://www.avclub.com/articles/tapper,25…

Posted by Urgutha Forka on June 13, 2010 at 12:56 PM

It was kind of annoying how they kept resetting all of the games, thereby removing the high score list every once and a while. Given the emphasis on record breaking at the show, I thought it would have been fun to keep them going for the weekend (maybe even having prizes for the top scorers at the end of the show). At least I had the High Score on Tapper for about 30 minutes.

Posted by kentdoggydog

on June 13, 2010 at 3:42 PM

The Seattle Center shut the power off at night, that's really the only resetting that went on Kent. Sadly a lot of older games didn't have any sort of battery or chip backup to keep high scores. There's high score and multigame kits for most old games these days, but hobby purists often want to keep their games as original as possible. Fun show and great turnout!

Posted by dan10things

on June 14, 2010 at 8:33 AM