This morning, we ran out of our “list” of brunch places to visit… so we went with an easy option of just grabbing something from the hotel restaurant. After that, we decided to split up for the morning. Liz went to visit a few yarn shops while I ambled around downtown on my own.
Ben ended up arriving about 5 minutes after me, and luckily for us… we had no problems at all with registration. Aside from our name tags being missing. All that rushing made for a really stressful start to the day.
The Game Hall is essentially an old school arcade, filled with pinball machines. Each machine is set on “Free Play,” so no money is needed. The Game Hall was closed off for the morning’s tournament, but opened on Friday at 1PM. And get this: it remains open until Sunday morning. So if you felt like playing at 3AM… you could.
Wizard Mode is an upcoming documentary on Robert Gagno, a young man who has autism and is also an up and coming pinball player.
On Saturday, we had plans to hang out with Ben and Allison for a noon lunch. To our surprise, Chris was also over there when we arrived (he had swung by to play some pinball, as two of his machines are stored out in their garage).
Thankfully, the terms of the bet weren’t so complex as to require the use of spitshake.com. The overall wager was very straightforward – at the end of each game, the person with the highest score wins. After all our tokens are done, person with the most wins is the victor. The loser then has to change their Twitter profile to say something about how the other person is the greatest video game player in the world, name-checking the winner using their full name and Twitter handle.
Over the weekend, I ended up catching a ride with Chris and Leslie to the suburbs, where we went to go pick up not one… but two pinball machines that Chris had purchased, out in Hoffman Estates. We got some coffee, a rental van, and headed off to some random guy’s basement.
Though we had some big plans, the large group outing to this year’s Pinball Expo was a little smaller than anticipated (due to weather and scheduling conflicts). So this Saturday found just me and Chris, driving up to Wheeling to get our pinball on. I didn’t notice this until just now, but in the pic above… the two kids are…
A week or so ago, Ben sent out a company-wide email announcing the latest Emmis Interactive contest: Flipping Out (Search for the Next Pinball Wizard). Like so many of our other office tournaments (The Pingmaster and Rock, Paper, Scissor), this one would also be set up bracket/elimination style. And, of course, it would come with its own custom trophy for…
On Monday eve, Chris got a little early Christmas present: a Comet pinball machine. Likely fueled by our recent excursion to the 2009 Pinball Expo, Chris got permission to store his new purchase over in our Annex area, at work. While it was transported over, the entire machine wasn’t assembled yet. During lunch, I ventured over to watch as Chris,…