Pinball Expo in Chicago is probably the most well-known Pinball show. It has been around for 28 years and usually has lots of pinball industry people walking around, doing seminars and stuff like that. I (Jonathan Joosten, editor of Pinball Magazine) have often thought about going, but this is actually my first time actually making it. The upcoming days I will report about my experiences. In case my writing isn’t that well: that’s probably due to a weekend without much sleep, being up for over 24 hours. To quote Faithless: “Oh, if I could only get some sleep…”
Anyway, today was the day of flying in to Chicago. I was travelling with Bertjan Postma (Ministry of Pinball) and Gerard van de Sanden (who is the man behind The Matrix pinball which premiered two weekends ago at the Dutch Pinball Open). Right before getting on board Andrew Heighway of Heighway Pinball turned out to be on the same flight as well. Very nice 🙂
Somewhere at 11,000 feet (or was it 11 kilometres) above the ocean Andrew showed me his latest developments regarding his Circe’s Animal House pinball game. I’ve played the whitewood of that game at the UK Pinball Party last August, which was the show where Pinball Magazine was launched. That whitewood played very fast and smooth. After getting feedback from people at the show, including pinball designer Mark Ritchie and yours truly, Andy and his team made some changes. I’ll leave it to him to reveal them at his seminar, which is tomorrow at 5:20 PM, but I recommend all who can be there to be there. I got very excited about the changes that have been made, of which I actually suggested some 🙂 Bertjan and Gerard joined Andrew and me in the centre of the plane and while it was not allowed to get together in such way, the crew was very patient with us 🙂
