2022 Houston Arcade Expo Walk-Thrus – Pre-show, show and the swap meet

I finally got a chance to get back to the Houston Arcade Expo, one of my favorite pinball events. I’ve got a bunch of videos I’ve shot of things and here’s the first few.

Pre-show walk-thru
Opening day walk-thru
Saturday morning swap meet in the parking lot

2018 Houston Arcade Expo (pre-show-opening) Walk-Through

This is a quick walk-thru of the 2018 Houston Arcade Expo (HAAG) before the show opens. To give you an idea of how much work is involved in getting everything set up. I apologize for the shaky camera. And it looks like YouTube has disabled their video stabilization ability (boo!) so I can’t stabilize it online. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this short video!

2017 Houston Arcade Expo Walk-Thru

Once again, our group descended upon Houston for one of our favorite events of the year, the 2017 Houston Arcade Expo. I apologize in advance for this really crappy video.. I should know better than to move the camera around too much, but I was excited and wanted to capture things as fast as I could so the video isn’t super long. I’ve used Google’s video stabilization which creates some artifacts.. if it’s too bad, let me know and I’ll try to fix it. Otherwise, enjoy a quick glimpse into a very cool festival featuring arcade and pinball both old and new!

2013 Houston Arcade Expo walk-thru

I just got back from the Houston Arcade Expo and have posted a video-walk-thru of the event. It’s always a fun time and this year was no exception. Although I actually did not pick up a game this year… I’m determined to finish my existing projects before adding any more. Any way, check it out:

A quick look at three 70s era classic EM pinball games

Here’s a look at playing the vintage 1976 Williams EM pinball game, “Space Odyssey”.  This is a classic Williams electro-mechanical game that featured a sweeping stationary target across the middle, and ball kickers on each side of the flipper.  It’s especially exciting when you can get the timing just right so the kicker fires the ball into the moving target.  This is the 2-player version of the same game, “Space Mission”.  There were 4,300 of these produced.

And as a bonus here’s a quick look at a vintage 1975 Gottlieb “Fast Draw”, the 2-player version of “Quick Draw” – another classic EM:

But Wait! There’s more… here’s a look at the 1977 Gottlieb classic “wedgehead” EM game, “Centigrade 37”:

HAAG Show Swap Meet report

On Saturday morning at the Houston Arcade Expo, there was a small swap meet in the parking lot. While it wasn’t big, there were certainly some good deals to be had and it was a lot of fun.  I picked up a neat old Stern “Memory Lane” that I’ll be showing more of on the web site in future PBH episodes.  At just over $100, it was another “no brainer” deal for me.

There was a nice T2 (Terminator 2) Williams DMD that went for less than $800.  There were two “Charlie’s Angels” machines, one of which went for about $100 (it had seen better days) and lots of miscellaneous parts.  I even found a coin mech for the 1940 Genco machine – what tremendous luck!

As you can see from the video, I picked up not one, but two pinball games, along with lots of other goodies.  I also found a set of sideart for the Earthshaker machine (prototype side art – woot).