Modern Firepower at the Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo

Sometimes it was hard to get play time on the pins, the turnout was fantastic

Atlanta's first ever Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo has come and gone, though based upon the great turnout, I'm confident this will become an annual tradition.  We had a blast attending the event, and it was a joy to reveal Modern Firepower to an unsuspecting public.

Read on for the recap and video...

Walking the show floor, a cursory count revealed a turnout of at least 70 pinball machines, and I got to play almost every single one.  There was also an equal number of arcade games, though I found little personal interest in arcades and to me they don't seem to age as well as pinball machines.

Modern Firepower was staged with the four other custom machines, all arcades, meaning it was the only custom pinball in the house.  Before the event I was looking forward to this special staging, but in reality we were a little off of the beaten path and probably got a little less foot traffic than we had hoped for.

Before the show opened, Modern Firepower hanging out with the custom arcades.

It was actually interesting how almost no one realized what they were seeing or playing.  I had several friends stop in, and even though they were looking for Modern Firepower, they walked right on by several times, mainly because the cabinet looks the part of a traditional pinball machine and blended right in.

The LCD backglass, when showing artwork, fooled almost everyone into thinking this was a real backglass with silk-screened artwork.  Well, at least until they gave it a much closer inspection.

One of the highlights of my weekend was meeting Dan DeBusschere, who (small world) had actually read this blog and already knew about Modern Firepower.  I think Dan was more surprised than most to see the game at the show, probably because his mental image of the game was an incomplete web project with no updates in a long time.  Dan had brought a collection of 8 games (pin and arcade) to the show, including the awesome Ice Cold Beer.  I don't know which was more fun, playing this very unusual pin or watching Dan expertly glide the small pinballs through the minefield of trap holes to the blinking target.  I need to add Ice Cold Beer to my collection.

Ice Cold Beer is an unusual, fun and extremely challenging pinball game.  This game really takes skill.

My favorite story of the weekend came from an older gentleman who enjoyed playing Modern Firepower, and said he has a Firepower at home.  He thought I had simply altered an existing Firepower, changing the sounds and adding DMD animations, and making the game play faster by increasing the playfield slope.  His jaw dropped (like so many others) when I revealed that the game he had just enjoyed was not a restoration or a mod, but a brand new machine, running on a Windows PC, using off the shelf electronics instead of pinball circuitry, and controlled by custom software. When he looked inside he said it looked nothing like his Firepower.

On Friday the game ran straight for over 6 hours with not a single issue, except for the fact almost no one recognized that Modern Firepower was a custom, hand-built game.  So I stayed up late Friday night producing an informational flyer, which we handed out to visitors beginning Saturday.

I also noticed a pattern on Saturday - when providing tours of the machine, every time I turned off the backglass artwork and revealed the debug screen, a crowd of spectators would gather instantly aware that this pinball was somehow different.  Eventually I left the debug screen running for a few hours, and foot traffic tripled. 

It was during this time that Jimmy Lipham discovered Modern Firepower and was very excited to see what I had created.  Jimmy has created several custom pinball machines over the years, perhaps his most notable being a Demolition Man 2000, which used a William's Pinball 2000 platform with its video capabilities.  Jimmy was also on a panel the following day discussing custom arcade and pinball machines, a topic I greatly enjoyed.

Jimmy Lipham, creator of many custom pinball machines

Jimmy seemed to instantly recognize how my solution, using both off the shelf electronics with a PC, and running my Chameleon Pinball Engine software, would allow him to jump straight to the creative stage of pinball design, leveraging my engineering and coding solutions.  Jimmy eagerly volunteered to purchase my pinball construction kit when I finally get it on the market.

Unfortunately the increased processing demands of showing the real-time debug logs both slowed game response time and caused some instability, so before the day was over I reverted back to the backglass artwork.  On Sunday I occasionally flipped the between the debug and backglass artwork screens just to catch peoples' attention and garner some more exposure.

On Saturday I met Kyle of RETRO Magazine, a new online and print mag that Kyle quoted as having 10k print subscribers and 80k online viewers monthly.  I briefly shared with Kyle my information on Modern Firepower, and he said they would contact me the following Monday to set up an interview, but a week later it seems that initiative somehow slipped through the cracks.  Perhaps we can still find a way to make it happen.

On Sunday I met Cody Melior of Jacksonville's 904 Pinball Zine and YouTube channel, and we had a nice long chat while he recorded an impromptu video interview of me and Modern Firepower.  Unfortunately Cody's camera ran out of memory space during the interview, so most likely it won't make it up online.  In addition to publishing the 904 Pinball Zine, Cody also owns a pinball vending co, placing about 20 tables in various shops. 

Cody commented that he never got to play Modern Firepower as every time he stopped by, there was a line to play, and that this would be the perfect type of game for his business as it kept people playing (and for him, paying).  Since the core of Modern Firepower is a Windows PC, we talked about how it could easily be adapted to the needs of coin operators (credit payments, remote diagnostics and utilization reports). 

We also talked about how the solution, as a whole, is tailor designed for custom pinball machines, making it easy to design and place custom themed games on customer premises.  Cody mentioned that one of his customers is a tattoo parlor, and I immediately suggested that the various tattoo artists at the shop could pen their own artwork to go on a playfield and cabinet.

During the course of the weekend we also attended an interview of legendary pinball game designer Barry Oursler (Space Shuttle, Gorgar, Solar Fire, PINBOT, Comet, Dr. Who, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, JunkYard, and more) and later Troy and I got to talk to him directly.  Barry says he's in talks to design a new game or two, and for him and the gaming world, I really hope this happens. 

In fact, if Barry were willing to design a game for my Chameleon Pinball Engine solution, I'd be more than willing to manufacture a few thousand for sale and provide Barry lucrative residuals.

Barry... Barry... hellooo?  Is this thing on?

Barry was also walking the show floor playing various games.  I'm not sure if he made it around to Modern Firepower (if anyone knows, please share!) but I really hope he did.  He listed Firepower as one of his favorite games during his interview, and I think he would have enjoyed my modern revival.

Ultimately, I took Modern Firepower to the Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo not just to have fun and show off, but to discover if there is a market for what I have created.  While I still don't have an answer, Modern Firepower garnered enough attention for a hand-built prototype that I plan to take it to the next level.  But that's for another day...