Texas Pinball Fest Is A Blast
We love to get out to trade shows and festivals whenever we can. It's important to meet people in related industries and learn what we can do to improve our customer experience. This year we were lucky enough to attend the Texas Pinball Festival live in Frisco, Texas.
The Texas Pinball Festival is held at the Embassy Suites Conference Center in Frisco. For one weekend out of the year this conference center becomes a 40,000+ square foot game room! Pinball enthusiasts from all over the US come to Dallas and fill this space with more than 400 rare and classic pinball machines, video games and other game room goodies set up on free play for everyone to enjoy the entire weekend. Vendors, collectors and hobbyists from the surrounding area and beyond will be bringing parts, supplies, game room memorabilia, pinballs, video games and more for sale. There's so much to do with panel discussions, meet and greets and tournaments to name a few.
We had a great time walking the festival floor checking out all of the games people brought. We saw a great selection of games at one of our favorite vendor's booths, Stern Pinball. They had A LOT of new games out for people to play, including The Mandalorian, Godzilla and RUSH. They had lots of fun stuff going on, including interviews with their game designers and prize giveaways. Stern makes home versions of their popular pinball machines that we proudly carry in our stores.
There was also Chicago Gaming Co, which had very fun games on display. We got to play Cactus Canyon for a while. This is a remake of a wild west pinball classic from Bally. The shoot-out mini-game on this one was so much fun. Spooky Pinball was also there all the way from Benton, Wisconsin. They had their Halloween pinball machines out for the festival, which we waited in line to play. This pinball machine is based on the horror movie of the same name.
It wasn't just pinball manufacturers that were out at the fest. There were also people who brought out pinball machines and arcade cabinets from their own personal collections. We saw everything from Batman, Ghostbusters, Alien and even a custom-made Big Lebowski machine. People were waiting in line all day to play one of these Guns and Roses pinball machines to try and capture the best score for the weekend.
Universal Billiards has attended the Texas Pinball Festival in previous years as a booth exhibitor. We worked with Valley Dynamo to laugh their new concept which was a very fun Pitch and Bat pinball game. We had a great time showing people the concept and watching people play the game. This year Valley Dynamo brought out their latest concept called Jet Pong, which reminds us of beer pong. It was incredibly fun to play.
We had so much fun at the Texas Pinball Festival and can't wait to come back next year!
