Three cheers for His Majesty the King! Hip hip! Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray! Ready! It's showtime! The following feature has been rated R. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. And now for our feature presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Christopher Franchi Christopher Franchi and Christopher Franchi of The Greatest Pinball Podcast in the Entire World The Super Awesome Pinball Show Three cheers? Aw, shucks, thanks. It's good to be the king. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode number 37 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show, and today it's only me. Christian and Jeff are on job interviews for other podcasts. Wah, wah. Anyway, today we've got a special episode with David Fix of the Chicago Pinball Expo, and he's coming on to tell you all about the changes and everything you can expect, all the exciting fun, action, and pinball thrills. that one person can take in one weekend in Schaumburg, Illinois. So stick around or I'll replace all your pinball machines with Thunderbirds. That's right, it's Expo time, and we need to set the table right for this interview. So how about some party music? The 37th Annual Pinball Expo 2022. at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois, October 19th through the 22nd. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Super Awesome Pinball Show, special edition, 37th annual Pinball Expo. And with me on the line, I have somebody that should be very familiar to you all because he's always begging to be on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. David Fix. How are you, sir? I'm doing good, Chris. Thank you. And no, I'm not always begging to be on the show. which seems that I'm on this show a lot. Where's my royalty checks? I'm supposed to be getting some kind of a payment back, you know, kickback being on this show so much. Royalty? I'll show you the ratings. See what happens when you're on this show. Ooh, okay. That sounds like I might have to pay you more. I don't know. This is a slippery slope here. This show sucks. Anyway, there's been many exciting changes in the Pinball Expo. One of the best shows held every year, but somehow you guys have managed to improve it between last year and what you can expect this year. Why don't you tell us about the changes? Well, sure. First of all, one of the big things that we did was, of course, we always listen to all the people who come to the show. And thank you for your candid feedback and your suggestions. And trust me, we are always trying to make Pinball Expo better. Robert and I take everything very seriously, and we do this. So, you know, every year we kick off with a bumper blast party on Wednesday night. Well, no difference this year. We're going to have a bumper blast party on Wednesday night, October 19th. But we're going to make it even better. So this year, for the first time ever, we're going to have the Bumper Blast at Interium here in Schaumburg, Illinois. And that starts at 7 o'clock to 10 o'clock, and that is for our full package attendees. We will have buses and shuttles, basically shuttle buses going from the hotel to Interium through that whole time from 7 to 10, taking all the people to a full blown out arcade. Also, Interium is going to have a beautiful pinball tournament at the same time. So check out Interium's information a little bit more for the tournament that will be held as the Bumper Blast Party. And we will still have a full line of food. The bar is, of course, open as a cash bar, so you don't have to pay for your own drinks. But for the most part, you guys are going to enjoy a beautiful arcade setup here. It is also the official test site of American Pinball. So we're excited about having this whole new Bumper Blast with a whole new image with some delicious food at Interium. They had Stern and Jersey Jack games there as well, right? Oh, absolutely. Stern and Jersey Jack all use. This is a testing ground. So there's a lot of great games there. Yes. Now let's go on to the dates of the show. So, you know, in past, we've always heard of people always asking, we have to, you know, why we have to wait until five o'clock on Thursday and five o'clock on Friday to see the show. And we want the show to start earlier and, you know, and so forth. So this is going to play havoc with some of the vendors and I'll explain why in a second, but the show will start, the exhibition hall will start on Thursday, October 20th at noon and run till midnight so that is a big change right there then on friday october 21st we're coming right back and starting at 10 a.m in the morning to midnight and then saturday october 22nd the last day of the show we're going to start at 10 a.m in the morning and go all the way to sunday october 23rd at 2 a.m and that's when the show officially ends yeah something tells me that the vendor booths all won't be open for those same hours because they got to get off their feet at some point but absolutely yeah that's some expanded hours it's a that's a lot of pinball time so you're gonna say well what do you mean by is this like you know where we are you know the vendors are in one area and the free games are over in the other area no so this year we have basically taken down the giant wall we have removed everything it is going to be a beautiful setup with vendor and free game pods dispersed throughout this entire 65,000 square foot room. And this is all part of your new location that people aren't aware that didn't make it out last year. You're in Schaumburg now at a brand new location. Yes, we're at the Renaissance. Beautiful building. You basically pull in one door and you can drop off your stuff and you pull out another door. So those who are bringing games, you're going to be able to pull right in, drop off your stuff and move on. And you're just going to have a way to set everything up and it'll look awesome. We're super excited. And how big of a truck? We've had semis pull in there, and we'll probably have a semi pull in there again to unload the mass of games that Mr. Burke is bringing over. Now we have some special games that Mr. Burke has acquired and has helped bring over. And one of them, for the first time ever, is a completely restored, flipping on the floor, Magic Girl. Well, isn't that special? So this is going to be exciting for people to put their hands on and play a Magic Girl that has been restored by the guys in the Netherlands with all new code. and the game will be 100% working. It going to be phenomenal for a lot of people That very cool In fact just to touch base one of your buddies was the artist on Magic Girl before he got a full gig at Stern and that was our good friend, Zombie Eddie, Jeremy Packard. Yeah, that was his very first game. That's what got him noticed. Yes, that's exciting. So he'll be there. So essentially, this is going to have free play games mixed throughout this large hall. We're now going to have expanded hours. We're going to have several retro vendors and tournaments. We have some special guests, Mr. Walter Day, the official referee himself. He'll be there with his trading cards. We have Tim Kittrow. You might know him really much as the voice behind NBA Jams and NFL Blitz. And, you know, he basically does the famous boom shakalaka. Boom shakalaka! You know, I mean, so Tim has done some great stuff over the years. And then we have Warren Davis and Jeff Lee. You know, here's two guys, and people are going to say, what did they do? Well, they were the designers of Qbert and Gottlieb back in the day. So they're going to be at the floor wandering around also, and I think we have them down for a seminar. So this is going to be kind of interesting. And you're going to have a bunch of standard artists and game designers and things like that. I don't know if they're going to be announced on your website or not. They will be, yeah. Being that you're in the capital of pinball in Chicago there, everybody who's anybody is going to be there. You have a big autograph session for them. But as far as the venue goes, you were talking about games. and let's talk about the raffle you have worked out for people who bring games in. Sure, not a problem. So every time you bring in a game that's 100% working or it's working and it's on the floor for enjoyment, you, of course, get to come to the show free. Okay, so you bring your game, you get to have to be in there, but you also get a raffle ticket. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be giving away a brand new game in box. Now, what is that going to be? You have to wait and see. The nice thing is if you bring two games, you get two raffle tickets. Bring three games, you get three raffle tickets. You could bring a couple games. You know, bring five games that you want to swap out for the show, sell off and so forth, because you're going to have an area where you have a lot of people wheeling and dealing. So this is going to be quite huge. So you bring five games, we'll give you five raffle tickets. You may be walking home with a brand new game. And I've heard through the grapevine that the giveaway game is the JCPenney's Fonzie Pinball. The Fonzie Pinball Machine. No. Very excited. No. No, it is not the Fonzie Pinball. And it's not a Stern pin either. This is actually a full pinball machine. Yes. One of the major manufacturers. There you go. Speaking of major manufacturers, let's talk about that for a second. Of course, we have Stern. Stern has this beautiful big presence. They have one of the biggest booths in the building. I think they're on count of 40-some-odd pins that they're bringing by themselves. We have Jersey Jack pinball. We have American pinball. We have Chicago Gaming. Also, the Pinball Brothers will be in attendance with their game, Aliens. Also, I believe, I believe, I heard through the grapevine that Pinball Brothers will be bringing the Queen Pinball Machine. So there you go, a new Queen Pinball Machine that will be on American soil for people to play. Also, returning from a long hiatus from Pinball Expo, a good friend of ours, Spooky. Bug and the crew are going to be bringing, I think, Halloween and probably Ultraman and who knows what other surprises they might be bringing. But I know that Spooky will be making a return to Pinball Expo and we're so happy to have them back. Well, it sounds like all the big boys are going to be there. What other vendors are you going to have at the show? Well, there's been some great vendors over the years that have always been coming to Expo. So we have Mayfair Amusements. They are coming back. Outside Edge is coming back to Expo. Pin Stadium is coming back. We also have Pin Sound. They're coming all the way from France to have a beautiful booth. We have a lot of the vendors that have been coming to Expo for many, many years. chance tests with pinball wizard boards uh wizard sales uh they he'll be there you know there are a lot of big name guys that have been around the industry and will still be coming to our show yeah and just confirmed yesterday our sponsors coin taker will be there so if you guys want well they sell a variety of things but they're known for their leds so if you guys need leds for anything come check them out and they usually coin taker melissa usually run some show specials Great bulbs, guys. They're really good for your games. Yeah, I can attest to that. Okay, well, let's talk about you've got two very special charity events going on as well. Let's go over those, starting with the Pinball Project, who's always on board and doing something great for pinball kids, kids with special needs. You know, Pinball Expo has always been giving back to charities, if it goes back to the Make-A-Wish days or even farther back. in fact in the 50s and 60s pinball manufacturers were a big contributor to the cancer research funds that were going on at the time and now we are here still supporting a lot of this and one of the big ones that we love is project pinball dan spoiler and team over there putting pinball machines into children's hospital you know we've we've been doing this for some great time dan is a very passionate to help children and those who are going through treatment and i'm telling you Every time you catch two minutes of the Project Pinball charity events or any of the stuff that they're showing, it brings tears to your eyes to see these kids having fun. And as always, Pinball Expo has graciously donated a game to support their fundraiser. So that is also very cool. And many of the other manufacturers have also supported nice gifts for this charity and raffle. So they're going to be doing a raffle, some silent auctions, some specialty baskets. All these will be helping to raise money to bring pinball machines into children's hospitals across the United States. absolutely great project definitely i have the distinguished honor of uh two years ago being the the high dollar amount getter for a donation that i made of a big four foot by four foot 66 batman canvas that uh raked in i believe it was four grand if i remember correctly um yeah daniel was very excited he came running over he goes can i get my picture with you and it was all because of that so and i will be making a donation again this year gladly and then uh friends of ours podcast friends of ours loser kids pinball are doing a special charity stream i want to tell folks about what they're doing yeah loser kids and the pinball network are doing a 12-hour charity stream for autism uh this is an this is something dear to those loser kids uh guys they they've really been trying to fight this autism and you know they are going to be doing some options that benefit the learning solutions in utah so this is something near and dear to them i've been on the Loser Kids podcast before. They're a great set of guys. They've always been helping us out. And they just, this is something near and dear to their hearts. So they're going to be doing this 12-hour charity stream. And this is going to be awesome for these guys. So make sure you check them out. Well, one thing people always want to know is how many games are going to be available to play in the free play area? Well, you know, we continuously have a growing amount. So, unfortunately, every year it changes a little bit with people. You know who going to bring a game who not bringing a game It would be nice if we had this giant list We have it set up that the show can grow and be as many games as we want Right now I think we at like 200 to 300 confirmed And then we're going to grow this number even larger as people are bringing the games. But one of the problems that we've seen in the past has always been games might not last the whole show and they might break down. So we do have an on-site board and game repair guy. Ron Coon has set up a nice double booth in the back If something happens to your game or something else, he can run out, take a look at it, give you an idea of what's wrong with it, maybe give you a little quick repair, help you along the way. You know, maybe even if there's a board issue, maybe even give you quotes on what it would cost to repair a board. So, you know, Ron's going to be on site the whole time for the show. Ron has been an ace repair tech in the Toledo, Ohio area for many years, very knowledgeable in person. I've talked to Ron on many occasions, and we usually share stories. Now, Ron also is famous for the Coffee Chat, which is the coffee every Friday morning. It's a seminar where he goes through repairs and how to go through boards and different things that he's run across, you know, scary stories. And it's usually a great little time to sit down in the morning to talk about pinball and the horror stories that we've all seen. So Ron is taking a great expense and time and all that stuff to talk about, you know, people. You wouldn't believe what they did with rubber bands and chewing gum, you know, that kind of fun stuff. now one thing i appreciate about uh 300 plus games or so you guys are going to have at expo is that and this believe it or not cannot be said for all expos your games stay put until the expo is over and there's there's other pinball extras out there that when they someone sells a game they just wheel it out right in the middle of the show right but your games pretty much stay put for the entire show so you don't have these like you know as the show goes on you know there's all these big chunks of games just start missing uh they will all be there for the entire weekend and that's uh That's definitely a plus. And I will just say this publicly. We've had times where people have bought a game, and they want to take their game home and so forth. And due to the fire marshal and the rules of the room, we cannot be moving games around and opening the back doors and taking games out. But at the end of the night, we can usually make that happen for people, if it needs to be. But we usually ask people to keep their game there on the floor, enjoy it. They now get, you know, most of the time we tell them, listen, now you get to have the free admission for the next couple days. You get to come pick up your game. We'll make sure, you know, you get to meet a lot of people else in the industry, other people that are collecting, too. So it's kind of a cool little thing. Now, did you want to talk about seminars? Because you've got a lot of seminars planned for the, I don't want to say the weekend. It's almost a week-long event now. What's going on with the seminar room, which is, I believe, upstairs now? Correct. So we'll get into where the tournament's moving. but the tournament has been growing and growing. So we give them a little bit more area, but we're going to talk about that in a second. So we're taking the seminars. They're going up to the big seminar room upstairs. Now there's an elevator, there's stairs, there's all kinds of ways to get up there. It's not a problem. It's right there in the same section. It's not going to be tough for people to go to the seminars. The cool thing about this is that we have open to the public these seminars in which you can go through, get your badge, go up to the seminar rooms and you can hear highlights from people from around the world. You can hear stuff from some of the major manufacturers. I know American Pinball has, I think, Thursday night, Jersey Jack has Friday night, and Stern has Saturday. We have some very exciting stuff going to be happening at these seminars. And a lot of times these seminars is where people talk about new games, they talk about ideas, there's new people who have bought new products, a lot of new stuff, which is just, there's hours of countless things. So think about it, you have the seminars going on, usually at the same time now as the hall is open. So, you know, that's going to be proving a little tricky because, you know, you're going to go to the seminar to listen to that or you're going to go down and play pinball. You know, it's a little tough spot. The nice thing is a lot of these pinballs are going to be there all weekend long. The people are going to be there. So pick the seminar you want to go to. Set up your reminders in your phone. Go up there. Sit through the seminars. Enjoy them. And trust me, you're going to have a full time. This is, you know, there's so much going on at Expo that, you know, you just can't, like, not. Right? I mean, you've got seminars going on. You've got the game room open. and you've got everything else going on, people are just going to have a lot of fun. Now, one of the big things about the show is tours, right? So before we open the doors, before we do all this other stuff, and this is one of the staples of Pinball Expo, is on Thursday morning, the bosses will leave Pinball Expo to take people on a tour of Jersey Jack Pinball. This is a first for us because for many years it's been Stern. Stern is still going to do a video tour and show everybody and that's going to be a live tour of the facility later in the week but this is actually going to be an in-person tour of JJP. This is something that we haven't done yet. In years past Pinball Expo has had tours of Williams when they were open and Gottlieb and Elvin Gee and Valley and many other you know daily east back in the day. Well now this is putting a new one in the in the history books to now actually be able to walk through and see the factory here that is JJP and see all the wonderful games that JJP makes. So this is going to be awesome for people to come. Yeah, it's very fun too, because I have been there. So it's very interesting to see, and maybe you'll get a sneak peek at some new games coming out. Wink, wink, wink. But probably not. Well, you never know. Expo is one of those moments when, you know, history has always made it Expo. I always call it the largest soapbox in the world. the expo all the way back to virtual expo so think about this this was virtual expo uh three four years ago we had numbers from people around the world just tying in to get the expo experience on video from their homes during covid and to enjoy a show i mean it was i mean rob and i felt like we needed like two weeks off after this show because we were dead tired but i'm going to tell We have people from all around. Every year we have Pinball News who does feature articles about what's going on. Podcasters come in. They have private little microphones, little recorders. They're doing one-on-one interviews with people. A lot of history always happens at Pinball Expo. So people come there for some of the excitement. And trust me, it is very exciting. It's very completely rolling. It's just an amazing time. The Stern Tour, that's going to be held in a seminar room? Yes, that will be held in a seminar and it will be live. So there will be a live camera going through the Stern area. Unfortunately, I can't attend the seminar, but other people can. So, you know, most other manufacturers will not be allowed to attend the Stern seminar. And I won't be able to go to the JJP factory door either because that's just how that works. But the public you and the pinball fans can So make sure you go to the website and check it all out so it going to be absolutely fun and if you concerned about you know seminars taking up your pinball playing time remember the new hours they almost doubled you have plenty of pinball time so that you can make some seminars without worrying about missing out on any hot pinball action absolutely so let's talk about the tournaments what have you got going on with the tournaments because there's definitely more than one absolutely the tournaments have just been crazy. You know, last year, I think we had tournaments going on until three in the morning. Most mornings, there were tournaments just going on left and right. And we had them in the main hall. We had them in a nice little area. But it just was, you know, tournaments have been growing every year since Expo. So think about it. Way back when the Expo, many people remember them outside in the hallway. And there was these tournaments and there's all these games. And they just have now grown to a bigger, bigger and now even to their own hall. So where we had the seminars last which was a beautiful carpeted space. Now the flip out tournaments will be held there. They'll have their own room. They have their own everything. It's going to be a nice carpeted ballroom. The lights can be dimmed all the way down to what they want for the tournament. There is going to be so much going on. There will be a main, there'll be a classic, there's a women's tournament, and there's a youth tournament also. So make sure you check out the website for all the details on that. Also, there's a couple other tournaments that are going on. There's a World Cup tournament, which is crazy. This is something Rob wants to do. So there's two teams from every country. So, you know, if you haven't already looked it, check it out. There may be some countries that have not. Basically the best of the best from their country going into this World Cup tournament and see who's going to go home with the World Cup of pinball. So it's a two-person team from different countries. I think we have U.S., Germany. I think there's one already from Canada. Hey, hey, hey, guys. It's Jeff Hewles. I think there's one coming in from the UK. So this is going to be absolutely great to represent your country, kind of like almost like the Olympics. And then, of course, we cannot forget the Battle of the Bells tournament. The Battle of the Bells, they've been doing such great things over the years, and they're going to have their own booth, like a nice quiet area. But, of course, the Battle of the Bells will be having their classic tournament at Expo. And then there's the Atari 50 tournament. I mean, again, just more tournaments, more tournaments. It's just going to be crazy how much we're going to have with tournaments, but this is all the old Atari games. So this will be absolutely cool, too. So let's segue into that for a second. The Atari tournament is like, well, David, that's video games. Well, there's classic video game segment. There's a nice big giant area. It's been growing every year at Expo. We have a nice huge area this year. It's actually where the tournament was last year. So they're going to have tons of tables down there. It's just going to be awesome for them to have these tournaments and continue to grow. so that's absolutely great most definitely a tournament for everyone all ages in fact chris you could go for the youth tournament you might win because i'm so lovely and youthful looking yes yes yes yes speaking of lovely and youthful looking you're gonna have a special guest coming from overseas and you may not recognize his face but you might recognize his voice who am i talking about i would think that you're talking about the announcer to the super awesome pinball show mr Marc Silk. He will be making an appearance there. He's been the voice of the Star Wars pinball, the Scooby-Doo, Ninja Turtles, and many more. He will be there for sure. And yes, he was your opening announcer for the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Am I correct? He is, not was. He does our new intro. Yeah, that's we've only had for the past three or four shows. But yeah, so we call him Mark Smooth as Marc Silk. There you go. Yeah, super, super, super nice guy. He's very tall. He's got very light blonde hair, and if you see him and you recognize him, definitely pull up for a chat because he's a super nice guy. I love him to pieces. I'm looking forward to seeing him again, so I'm glad he's going to be there. Yeah, and definitely more guests to be announced. They will be listed on the website, correct? And can you tell the folks what the website is? Well, it's very easy. It's www.pinballexpo.com. There's also one other thing we forgot to talk about, and I'm going to talk about it for about the next three seconds. And that is, of course, this year, like no other, we are blowing out the homebrew section. The homebrew area of Pinball Expo is this gigantic area that has got people bringing games from all over the world to enter the, of course, the American Dream Challenge, which if you go to the Pinball Expo's webpage, you can read more about that. You can read more about how to get into the American Dream Challenge. We're probably going to do it again next year. Such a great little thing for people. But we are looking for the next new up-and-coming game designers. And these homebrew guys have put a lot of love and passion to build up. In fact, the winner of last year's homebrew was Sonic Pinball. So that was with Mr. Ryan McVeigh, who now has graciously started a new job at American Pinball. So that was pretty cool for Ryan. And that's how you also found out about the Legends of Valhalla. Yes, it is. Strong ties. Yes, a very short amount of time. Very cool. So bring out your homebrews, and hey, you never know. You might be the next Legends of Valhalla. Professionally produced pinball game, and that means you're going to make some cash. We'll give you a few quarters. How's that? Yeah. Well, this sounds fantastic. That about covers everything. Just a recap. The show starts Wednesday, October 19th with the Bumper Blast at Interium, and then the show runs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. New expanded hours, plenty of guests, brand new location if you didn't go last year. everybody under one roof vendors and games over 300 games to play lots of fun it's one of those shows where people will ask you if you went and if you don't you look like a loser so make sure you make the trek out to pinball expo 2022 david fix thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you out there in another month that was great chris can't wait to see you guys see everybody there all the friends all the pinball guys from all over the world descending on chicago like they always do. And like you said, it's going to be the most exciting times and Rob and I would always say, get ready. That's right. Anybody who's anybody will be at this show as far as pinball goes. So if you're a pinball fan, it's the place to be. Absolutely. Alright, we'll see you next time. Bye guys. for awesome merch, you can do so by visiting our non-profit store at silverballswag.com. Just look for our logo on the homepage. See you next time, everybody. Okay, that's a wrap.