PixlBit

North Texas may not be a Mecca for gamers, even if we do have a few developers around, but there is one thing that I think is worth a yearly pilgrimage:  The Texas Pinball Festival.  Every year in March, pinball (and arcade) fans come to North Texas to play a huge room full of all the games that used to crowd bowling alleys and bars.  From early, purely mechanical tables to the newest releases using super-bright LED displays and 3D video packed into a hotel ballroom and set on free play, it makes for an amazing day. 

This year’s event is taking place in a different venue, but it’s still close to my house.  Hopefully, there’s a bit more space for everything and everyone that crammed into last year’s hall.  Among all the machines you would expect were a few rarer gems that will hopefully return.

Probably the most well-known rarity was Hercules.  It’s a huge machine that uses a billiard ball instead of a pinball.  This makes for a very slow game of pinball and there isn’t a whole lot of the flashiness you see in other games from the same era.  It’s definitely worth playing if you ever get a chance, if only to see what the fuss is all about.  Whoever’s machine appeared at last year’s festival is in fantastic shape (it does appear to be restored) and it was very cool indeed.

I was stoked to see that they had a two-player head-to-head Joust table there as well.  Sadly, it was out of commission both days I went, so I didn’t get a chance to play.  I’m really hoping it makes a return this year and I can give it a try.  I’ve gotta beat my son at these sorts of things while I still can!

Then, there was the far-from-rare favorite of mine:  Taxi.  I don’t know if I had ever even played this actual table in any form until I played it in the Pinball Hall of Fame collection on the Xbox 360.  I probably did play it some as a kid, but I don’t remember much about it until the Xbox version.  That entire collection and this game in particular, was my steady companion during a months-long bout with insomnia.  Playing Taxi so much all night long actually makes me look back on that horrible time with a bit of fondness.  There have been years where Taxi wasn’t to be found on the festival floor, but it was there in force last year. 

In addition to the pinball tables, the fest also has quite a few arcade games set up too.  There are all the usual faves like Donkey Kong, Q*Bert, and Pac-Man.  I like to spend more time with the harder to find cabinets, though.  The main ones that stick out to me from last year are Quantum and I, Robot. 

Quantum is a pretty weird vector monitor game where you use a track ball to quickly draw circles around balls that appear on the screen.  It is very fast paced, and to be frank, not a lot of fun.  I can sort of see why this game wasn’t a big hit since there isn’t much character to it, but it was definitely interesting. 

I, Robot I had heard about for a long time but had never run into. (There were apparently less than 1,000 made.)  It’s the first polygonal arcade game, and it really feels like it’s the first.  It took me a long time to grasp what the heck was going on as you try to move forward into a three-dimensional space, avoiding lasers and jumping over gaps.  I could see this becoming engaging enough to try and get better at, but then I tried out the other option on the cabinet, which was a huge mistake.  Instead of playing the main game, you can play an art program that lets you plop down a limited set of pre-made polygons to make your own work of art.  It’s like an early graphics program that you can spend your money using and then watch as it disappears when your game is over.  This wouldn’t be too bad, except the cabinet was set up to have ten minutes or so allotted to this activity instead of the standard three.  So, once I started using the so-called “Doodle City” mode there was no turning back. 

I played plenty of other cool stuff I had never gotten to try before, and plenty that I had.  The whole shebang is really packed with stuff to do (as long as you like pinball and arcade games).  If you’re anywhere near North Texas and can get to the festival, you should make it a priority.  I’m hoping to bring my new camera I don’t know how to use and take some decent pictures this year, just in case you can’t make it.