Hi, I'm TheKorn (OKOK, TheKorn2) and I'm the photographer (along with one of the founders of the Chicago Pinball Mafia).


For background, the Midwest Gaming Classic is really an 'all purpose' gaming show.  That means it covers (or at least attempts) all the bases from arcade gaming (pins & vids, what I mostly took pictures of), to old computer games (atari 400/800, C64), to table games (card and figuring based), to console games (NES, TG16, Jaguar).

A large part of the show is dedicated to the vendor area, which is what you're looking at when you look at this picture:  http://pinballmafia.net/pictures/_DSC4107.jpg  On that table you'll see a ton of Sega Genesis (MegaDrive) and NES (Famicom) cartridges, among other things.

That dude in the green check shirt seem to be IN CHARGE of something in Set 2  

A NICE sized crowd was in attendance  

That's Dan Loosen, one of the two founding organizers of the show making announcements and thank-yous at the start of the after party. 

What's going on is the show runs on Saturday from 10AM to 8PM.  (Also runs on Sunday.)  At 8PM, they boot everyone out.  Then at 8:20 or so they start letting machine owners (and show friends) back in to play until midnight or 1AM as a thank-you.  That's why there are tables, food, and drinks in the arcade hall.  (People had fairly well decimated things by the time I had moved to that side of the room, leaving just the tables.  )

The reason why most of the pictures are from the after-party is that the crowd is just far FAR too thick with people to even attempt camera-on-a-stick photography otherwise.  Imagine if you're at a very well attended house party where you have to plan your moves through the crowd several in advance, and you'll have a good idea of what the mid-day Saturday crowd is like at the MGC.  (Easily double the people of the after-party pictures.)

There is always ..... ALWAYS one idiot who has to shove his fingers up in the air to spoil a photo

Ha!  That's Jay, he's a good friend of mine, hence the double bird.  I took a second picture without him acting up, but that really is Jay so I figured it was appropriate.

They had a Pharoh - damn it - I love Pharaoh

Cool, I was responsible for bringing the row of pins that included Pharaoh.

Why we cant do this for pinball in Oz continues to elude and frustrate me the more I see events like this !

Each time I see events like this I remind myself that I really need to get my passport updated. It's the only way I'll ever see something like this. Maybe spend a year in the USA and travel around to all the shows.

Wotto - We had our chance in 2009. It was not done properly. But there needs to be another attempt sometime in the future 

Since I'm not Australian, mind if I ask what happened back in '09?  (If it's not too sore of a subject, of course!)

I have to admit I'm somewhat spoiled.  I hit three shows every year:  MGC, Pinball At the Zoo, and Pinball Expo in Chicago.  And they're all relatively close to each other!  http://tinyurl.com/7era3sh   I keep hearing how "big" pinball is down under, and realistically the countries are the same size (http://maps.howstuffworks.com/australia-us-comparison-map.htm).  So surely you have enough people and machines down there to warrant at least one pinball show, right?

Nevertheless, thanks for the kind words and glad you all enjoyed the pictures.  It's always interesting to see how far they fly.