Today I went to the Australian Pinball Expo and whatever the collective noun is, the nerds were out in force (I'm a nerd myself but even I have limits). A cluster of nerds? A scrum of nerds? Who knows...
What I wasn't prepared for was the noise. A hall filled with about 100 pinball machines being played simultaneously sounds like the low rumble of what I imagine 200,000 ancient warriors in battle would sound like. This video doesn't even come close to capturing the headache inducing noise I heard today...
Anyhow, there seemed to be three classes of pinball machine theme - random sexy one's like Playboy and urm, Bride of Pinbot...
Classic themes like The Rolling Stones, Charlie's Angels, Buck Rogers, the Six Million Dollar Man (man, inflation is a killer)...
And a class purely dedicated to crap action films: Maverick, Johnny Mnemonic, The Last Action Hero, Hook and Lethal Weapon 3 (which was, admittedly, pretty awesome when I saw it at the cinema in 1992 - come to think of it, there was a lot of love for Mel Gibson in the Pinball world).
However, by far the best was the Captain Fantastic Elton John machine which looked great AND he sung pinball wizard - dude had style...
The problem with the expo was that there were more nerds per square metre than machines available so I didn't actually get to play pinball. After half an hour or so, I came home and played it on xbox instead - its a sad world...
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Hi Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteI think the answer is "a trek of nerds". (but that's just me)
I enjoyed your pinball expo post - and if you haven't overdosed on 'em already, here's my post on the Sydney Pinball Expo.
http://justonemoregame.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/the-1st-sydney-pinball-expo/
There's lots of pics, an interview or 2, and detailed info. If you were ever thinking of buying a pinnie, (I've got a "T2" myself) - I've also linked to the auction results.
Yours in pinball
Gabe
Thanks Gabe, a trek of nerds - brilliant. Check out Gabe's post for a less flippant account of the pinball expo.
ReplyDeleteIts been a while since I've had a pinball love affair. At uni, I was addicted to this Star Gate (the movie) pinball machine at a store near my house... Unfortunately, I can barely fit a bed in my flat, let alone a pinball machine..