Well, a big thanks has to go out to Mark, Geoff, Greg, Tim, Andrew, and all others involved in putting this on. Honestly, it would have been a lot easier and cheaper for these guys just to have made a donation to the Red Cross and left it at that, but they went out of their way to allow the pinball community to join together to assist bushfire victims while having a whole heap of fun bashing away at pins and meeting other forum members. Congratulations for putting on a great event!! And well done to everyone who attended and contrubuted to the meet.
Some general comments:-
Having that many pins in the one place at the one time is just great. It was really fun to try out different machines, and the good thing for us was that there was always a couple spare even at the busiest times. I got there at 3pm and left at 11, with a bit of a dinner break in the middle, and I probably only played maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the machines. (By the way, I didn't even go near the video games - no time for that!) This was partly due to my mate Bruce coming along and us battling it out for supremacy across a number of titles. The kids tried out a lot of different machines, and also had a go at the vids. They seemed to have a good time (got the wife to pick them up at around 5:30 so I could kick on).
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed some of the later titles such as LOTR, POTC and even Family Guy. This was the first time I had played them. Even got grand champion on one of the POTC (it was pretty low) so it was definitely a machine I got into. My feeling was that LOTR and POTC will turn into classics, not so sure about FG. Can't see myself ever owning either LOTR or POTC as the price range puts them out of reach for now, but if anyone has one and wants me to come over for an hour or two, I will be happy to have another bash at them.
Enjoyed Medieval Madness, Indiana Jones, couldn't get into Cactus Canyon. Safe Cracker was an interesting one, definitely something different; if I had understood the rules better I might have played it longer. I didn't enjoy TOTAN that much, mainly because I coudn't keep the ball alive long enough to do anything useful. Bit of a learning curve there. Played some of the older pins as well: I could see the allure of something like Hot Hand, relatively simple but enough there to be fun.
It was also good to meet a few from this forum and put faces to the names, as well as shoot the breeze for a while.
Raffle winners:
Prize A: TimC (drawn by myself)
Prize B: MartyM
Prize C: Me (yay! I think that is the first time I've ever won a raffle prize - usually I think of raffles as a donation)
Monster Raffle: TimC (drawn by Matthew aka Felixthadog)
Overall, had a fantastic time, just being able to play pinball for that long is a winner in itself! The variety of machines there made it even better; and it was great to be able to catch up with some of the other forum guys.
Really well done, guys, and a big thank you from me.
