CollectFest 2025

Another pop culture show? You bet! This one was a big one. CollectFest is a new show for all things collectable, whether it be collectable cards (Pokemon, Magic, etc.), comics, action figures, coins, stamps, video games, or anything in between. It's exciting whenever a new collectables show appears as it shows how much demand there is for these pop culture events around Australia. CollectFest had done shows in Brisbane and Melbourne, so Fiona and I put out hands up to contribute some pinball machines to the Sydney event in Darling Harbour to round-out their Experience offerings. We were excited about this because the CollectFest team were really keen on the retro vibe of an arcade, which is exactly what we wanted to give to patrons of the show.

The difference with CollectFest compared to other shows was that, during our early discussions with the organisers, we had decided to bring three machines to the show as that was the maximum that we could fit in the van. The show was taking place in Darling Harbour, so making multiple trips to move more machines was not feasible. During later discussions, the organisers advised that they wanted to make this a bigger experience for show guests. Could we bring more machines? "Sure", I said, but we needed a truck to move any more than three. "No problem!" said the organisers, who organised a moving truck for us, and then asked "how many machines can you bring?". Well, I had fourteen games in total, but only eight of those were in reliable working order. So, I said "eight", and that was how many they wanted me to bring! This included most of the machines I had purchased over the last ten years, including:
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• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Data East, 1991)
• Super Mario Bros (Gottlieb, 1992)
• Tee'd Off! (Gottlieb, 1993)
• Judge Dredd (Williams, 1993)
• The Getaway: High Speed II (Williams, 1992)
• Fish Tales (Williams, 1992)
• Demolition Man (Williams, 1994)
• Johnny Mnemonic (Williams, 1995)

So it was going to be a line-up representative of classic pinball games of the 1990s. We were all for it! The day before the show rolled around and we set about loading the games into the truck. With this many games, it was best to load them in on their backsides, and strap them to the truck walls. There was a fair bit of jostling and pivoting to get them games in the right positions, and we lost a few nylon cabinet gliders along the way. But, once they were strapped in, they were good for the hour-long journey into the city.
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Games strapped in and ready to go.

Getting them into the exhibition space was a big effort. This took several hours, as we had to roll each machine in on a trolley, put them on their legs, erect the backbox, put them into position in the line-up, adjust the leg levellers, and play test each game. Not a big deal for two or three games, but a huge task when you have to do eight! Plus, it was raining when we were unloading the games, so we had to take extra steps to cover the games with a towel while we were fiddling around with them on the truck and tail lift. Moving pinball machines in the rain: not fun! 

We also purchased another item for the show, which was a huge programmable LED sign (Temu), supported on an adjustable metal frame (also Temu). We wanted to advertise the high score comp, display high scores, and put other messages on for show guests to read. This looked really cool when raised up above the games.
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Machines set up for the show (left)

Machines set up for the show (right)

Once things were set up, we headed to the hotel so we could get some rest before the show opened on Saturday morning. On the Saturday, we headed to the convention centre, finished levelling a couple of games, and we were ready for the two days ahead!

The theme of the exhibit was basically a free play arcade for show patrons to enjoy. The machines were played constantly throughout both days, and there were only a few moments on Saturday afternoon and in the early afternoon on Sunday where machines were vacant for a couple of minutes. Otherwise, they had people playing games on them throughout the show's duration.

Busy times at the arcade!

It was packed like this all weekend.

The highlight of the show for me came on Saturday morning. A news crew from Channel 10 had turned up to do a story on the show. They wanted to get some footage of the pinball machines. Camera crews love pinball and arcade games for this; they are flashy and colourful and look great on camera. The reporter, Daniel Doody, did a quick interview with me where he asked about my collection and the machines we had at the show. Unfortunately that part of the interview was cut from the final footage, but the questions about my high score on Tee'd Off! (Gottlieb, 1993) made it in! Check out the news report here!
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Getting interviewed about my love of pinball.

The reporter getting some practice on Tee'd Off!

Screenshot from the interview.

I had plenty of time to chat with people as they were waiting for games or inspecting the machines. The conversations generally revolved around two main themes:

1. People were excited to see pinball machines at the event and enjoyed the nostalgia of playing them again for the first time in years.
2. Parents loved having an activity they could enjoy with their kids at the show.

It was great to connect with people who had a love of pinball or fond memories of particular machines. For example, one patron remembered playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at an arcade when he was a kid; it was his favourite game. Another had several machines of their own, and loved being able to play a few others he did not know much about. I had several people asking me if my Super Mario Bros (Gottlieb, 1992) was for sale, too. Unfortunately, I don't think I will ever part with it!

The most interesting part of the exhibit for most show-goers was the high score competition. The show organisers had donated cash to be given to those who placed first, second and third in the high score comp. The prizes weren't too shabby either, with $300 for first, $175 for second, and $100 for third. I decided to use Judge Dredd (Williams, 1993) for the comp as the game was working well and it was not a one-dimensional game to play in order to achieve a high score. For example, you can do quite well on Dredd if you complete some of the modes, or you can try for multiball jackpots. Many people gravitated towards the game in order to get a high score, and multiple people came back several times in order to try and beat their score. 

The winner of the high score comp was a younger guy named Callum. He had not played pinball much before but the thing that allowed him to win the comp was his curiosity. He asked me what it took to get a good score on the game, so I told him about the modes and how to achieve multiball. This game him a goal to go for, and he ended up taking the high score spot by getting a few jackpots in multiball. It just goes to show that a good score in pinball has more to do with your knowledge of the game rather than base pinball ability. Congratulations on the high score, Callum!
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Competition on Judge Dredd...

...was fierce!

How did the machines behave during the show? Overall they behaved really well, which impressed me considering the amount of play they got. We only had a few of small issues that needed attention.

1. When we set up the games, we realised that Super Mario Bros was missing two balls. We had forgotten to take the balls off the playfield before we packed the game up, so we figured they had fallen into the cabinet somewhere. No such luck! We eventually found one of the balls on the floor of the truck. It must have rolled out of the cabinet when the game was on its backside. So we put that ball back in, but could not find the third ball. We installed a spare ball, and went on our way. A few hours later, there was a problem with Super Mario Bros. It was kicking two balls into the shooter lane at the start of each ball. This is classic behaviour of a game that has too many balls installed. When we checked the trough, there were four balls in it, instead of the three required. The missing ball had somehow found its way back onto the playfield, and was confusing the game. The solution was simple (remove the extra ball!) but we were scratching our heads as to where the ball had been hiding for the last few hours! Moral of the story: remove the balls before you tilt the cabinet on its end!
2. We found a destroyed LED flasher on the playfield of Johnny Mnemonic. I removed it before it got flung somewhere and jammed up any playfield mechanisms. After a quick search, I found that it was the Crazy Bob's flasher behind the Crazy Bob plastic. Since the LED was destroyed, I put a new one in and we were back in action.
3. A minor bug was found in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles code. For the last couple of months I have been beta testing some new TMNT code in development by Chad from PinballCode. This code has a bunch of gameplay improvements and bug fixes included in it, which unfortunately introduced a couple of minor bugs. One of these bugs was the game getting "frozen" during attract mode with no feature lights lit and a blank display. The game would start and play as normal, but would revert to this frozen state at the end of the game instead of going into its normal attract mode. I let Chad know about the bug and it was fixed soon after. It will be included in the next code revision. Awesome work, Chad!

Otherwise, I was impressed with how Judge Dredd held up in particular as it was the competition game, was getting a lot of play, and was getting quite hot with all four flippers being spammed all day! No major issues to report on any of the other games, which is what I would hope after each of them have been restored!
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The destroyed LED, retrieved from the playfield.

Here's where it came from! An empty socket above Crazy Bob's.

I recorded some basic audits on each of the machines over the course of the weekend. They are reproduced in the tables below. Note that the "games started" audit is from Williams machines, and records games that don't get finished. The "Total plays" audit captures all games that finish all their balls.​

Game	Games started	Total plays	Right flipper	Left flipper
Demolition Man	425	341	15,308	15,046
Fish Tales	422	343	16,595	17,270
Getaway	304	277	18,988	15,974
Johnny Mnemonic	315	253	15,884	13,792
Judge Dredd	427	407	18,044	17,941
Super Mario Bros	-	376	-	-
Tee'd Off!	-	323	-	-
TMNT	-	328	-	-
TOTALS	1,892	2,649	84,819	80,023

While the Gottlieb and Data East games couldn't tell me how many times each flipper was activated, if we take the average of the Williams games, that gives us 16,964 for the right and 16,005 for the left flipper. That would give us a total of over 263,000 flips on all machines over the course of the show. That's nuts! It's interesting to note that the number of plays is very similar to Pinfest, with 250-400 games being completed on each machine. 

By the end of Sunday, Fiona and I were both exhausted. But we still had to spend several hours loading the games up and carting them home. Once we got home, we crashed into bed, and then woke up early the next day to unload the truck.

So, was it all worth it? Absolutely. 10,335 people had walked through the doors of the show, which meant that we gave 10,335 people the chance to experience and learn about pinball that otherwise would not have had the opportunity. Plus, the segment on the news featuring the machines spread our love of the silver ball even further. This is all great publicity and outreach to get new people into pinball. It did come at a cost, though. While it was free for us to exhibit our games at the show, and we were able to use the organisers' truck to cart our games around, we still had to pay for accommodation ($470), food ($100), fuel ($56), truck tolls ($54) and other incidentals. With the games all being on free play, we were out of pocket, but I hope that this small personal sacrifice helps pinball live on!
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All smiles at the end of the show!

And more smiles!

And more!

Of course, next month is the biggest pinball show of them all in Australia: Pinfest! We have a couple of games to finish getting ready for it, so we will be hunkered down for the next month getting that done. If you know of any other pop culture shows coming up soon that would be interested in having pinball machines at their event, please let us know! Below are some general shots of the chaos of the event and the popularity of the pinball machines. If we can keep them this popular going into the future, that would be great!
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