 Boy, we sure are suckers for punishment. Exactly a week after Pinfest, Fiona and I are on the road again to Oz Comic Con 2024, one of the biggest pop culture shows in Australia. This year it is being held at Sydney Showground, and we're bringing three pinball machines (and a couple of retro gaming consoles!) to the Retro Gaming area for con patrons to enjoy. I haven't participated in such a large show before, and it's certainly a huge effort to keep carting games around so soon after Pinfest 2024. So, why do we do this? It's my hope that by bringing pinball machines to large events such as this, more and more people will discover, or rediscover, the joy of the silver ball and become involved in pinball as a hobby. My role as a "pinball evangelist" is to keep the pinball dream alive, and giving the general public more opportunities to play pinball is the best way to do this. We arrived at the Showground on Friday to set up. Our machines would be sitting in the Retro Gaming area, which is normally filled with retro gaming consoles. And when I say retro gaming consoles, I'm talking about some of the most fun you can have with your pants on! Playstations, Nintendo 64s, the Famicom, NES, Sega Genesis, and more! I love that the con organisers already had a retro gaming area; what a great way for people to reconnect with the console games they played in their youth, and share those games with their children. Plus, what better way for younger kids to experience these older consoles for the first time?
I think pinball definitely fits the "retro gaming" vibe here, so the pinball machines and consoles would work well together. Setup was a pretty simple affair, and we were done and dusted in a couple of hours. I had also spent a few days making up a sign board with various neon-style LED signs related to pinball and arcade games. I figured this would be a great way to advertise the pinball machines in the space, so I brought it along with us. So, which machines did we decide to bring? As we had just come from Pinfest, and Johnny Mnemonic (Williams, 1995) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Data East,1991) had performed quite well there, we thought it would be good to keep them in the rotation. I thought about themes that would work well with the crowd at Comic Con. Most of the original themed games probably wouldn't resonate immediately with the younger con crowd. Judge Dredd (Williams, 1993) was a good choice but it wasn't accessible to me at the moment. That left Super Mario Bros (Gottlieb, 1992) as the next in line to step up. In the end, we had three themes which I think fit well with the theme of Comic Con - pop culture. Johnny Mnemonic is a kitschy, cult movie from the 90s. TMNT and Super Mario Bros are both still massively popular even today, even though they are based on media (comics and games) from the 1980s. We also brought along one of our spare Playstation 2 consoles, as there was some space for us to have it in the Retro Gaming zone. As well as being a pinball and arcade nut, I have a modest collection of three Playstation 2s, with an assortment of games. I'm particularly fond of light gun games, and I have almost the entire light gun game catalogue for the Playstation 2. Unfortunately, there were no CRTs here to play any light gun games. But that doesn't stop me from bringing along my other classic favourite games like SSX, Crazy Taxi, Tekken 3, and Gran Turismo!  Johnny, Super Mario Bros and TMNT all set up and ready to play. Comic Con is a huge event, and I was told that they were expecting 30,000 people through the doors over the weekend. I would certainly believe that number because the Showground was packed for the entirety of the event. That meant that the pinball machine area was also packed! There was not a moment when all three machines weren't being played.
The best part of contributing the machines to the event was being able to spread the joy of pinball to so many new people. It was fantastic to see the spread of ages, cultures and backgrounds that participated. I spoke to guys who had not played a pinball machine in 30 or 40 years, and appreciated the opportunity to experience a part of their youth again. I spoke to some young kids who had never even seen a pinball machine before. They loved the flashing lights and sounds. Another highlight was seeing attendees in costumes that reflected the themes of the games. This included a family of Turtles playing TMNT, and Luigi playing Super Mario Bros. Batman also stopped by for a game, but unfortunately I don't have a Batman (Data East, 1991) or Batman Forever (Sega, 1995) machine yet! There were plenty of people dressed as Star Wars characters, too. I definitely need to get a Star Wars (Data East, 1992) or a Star Wars Trilogy (Sega, 1997) or a Star Wars: Episode 1 (Williams, 1999)!
 A whole family of Turtles playing TMNT! A couple of issues with the machines cropped up over the course of the weekend. First was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I think I have discovered a bug in the prototype code that I was running in the game. Occasionally when a multiplayer game is being played and the ball ends, the game gets stuck in the bonus cycle and never advances to the next ball. The score flashes on the display and the game continually says "ninja, ninja" like during a normal bonus countdown, but it gets stuck in this state until it is restarted. This was a little frustrating because people starting multiplayer games was quite common (most people don't understand that you shouldn't mash the start button constantly). It seems to work fine during single player games, though. It looks like I'll have to try and find someone who can code in assembly to find and fix whatever bug is causing the hang-ups. Super Mario threw a curveball when it came up with a "Ball stuck; call serviceperson" error on the display. This is usually what happens when a ball can't be ejected out of a kicker or similar mechanism. Indeed, I found that the ball was sitting in the left kick-out hole and hadn't been ejected onto the playfield. I checked the switch in the kick-out hole. It was good. I checked the coil under the playfield. It worked in test mode. I checked that the ball activated the switch reliably when it fell in the hole. It did. So, I had no idea what was causing the error. When I power cycled the game, the ball was kicked out of the hole as it should be. About 30 minutes later, the same error appeared. But this time, the ball was somewhere else on the playfield (in the right kick-out hole). Again, everything tested fine and the game spat the ball out after a power cycle. But this time, I left the game off for several minutes so memory could properly drain and the the game would boot "fresh". This seemed to do the trick, and there were no more problems. I think this issue was initially caused by some kind of stuck ball, but some problem with the game's memory resulted in the error not "clearing" from memory properly. I'll keep an eye on this and see if it ever happens again. Of course, I kept track of the machine audits for the weekend as well. Keep in mind that the machines were played pretty solidly from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm over two days — 16 hours! This is some of the most action these machines have had since they were taken out of the box. Johnny Mnemonic audits:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles audits:
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record Super Mario Bros audits before Comic Con, so I have no idea how many of them are accurate for the Comic Con weekend. The last time I recorded the audits was after Pinfest 2022, and I had taken Super Mario Bros to at least one other event where it got a lot of play (Comic Book Day 2024). Either way, I have reproduced the audits below, but consider that the true figure achieved at Comic Con is probably only 50-75% of those quoted here. Super Mario Bros audits:
I don't know what to say from all of the audit data above other than: the games got played a hell of a lot! Almost 20,000 flips on each flipper on Johnny is the most interesting statistic; this figure is normally around 15,000 after Pinfest. TMNT probably got played the most as it was on the outer edge of the Retro Gaming space, and was the most visible and accessible for patrons to play. That explains the huge number of games on it (664). All in all, Fiona and I had a lot of fun at Comic Con. Apart from talking to people about pinball, we had a good browse of all the vendor stalls and saw a number of stage shows on the various stages around the venue. There were Magic card tournaments, a PC gaming section, and heaps of artists and illustrators displaying their wares. Oh, there were lots of cool cosplay costumes to be seen, too! We'll definitely be back next year.  Fiona and I just before packup on Sunday evening. A good weekend!
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