California Extreme 2012

[gs68]

http://caextreme.org

Yep, it's almost that time of year again. Pinball machines, classic arcade cabs, etc., and maybe a few shmups? Although the game list isn't looking very hopeful so far--at least we're getting Galaga '88, Gaplus, Xevious, and Forgotten "DUST DRAGON" Worlds.

So who will be in attendance, particularly those with hardware? Last year was great having the candycab lineup with Ketsui, DFK 1.5, Uo Poko 2--I mean Mushihime-tama, etc. but I wasn't able to go on Sunday.

I'm looking to be there both days this year, barring any obstructions or finding work.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yeah, count me in for both days at this upcoming California Extreme 2012 show/sale. There's always going to be some very last minute mystery arcade games and pinball machine brought in. It never fails.

Expect some more new mystery arcade shmup PCBs to be shown for the very first time at CAX '12. It's a given alrighty.

Sure would be nice if a larger arcade shmups presence were gathered for this year. If you can bring in a candy cab or two and some of your favorite shmup PCBs, it'd be all the more better (especially if grouped together).

Would be ace if the upcoming 100 Yen documentary could be shown in it's entirety at this year's CAX film event. A Q&A session certainly wouldn't hurt either.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Frenetic]

I'm busy with wedding planning stuff this year, but next year if anyone is down for renting a U-Haul or Penske truck (maybe if you have your own truck?) I'd be down for driving my candy cabs up with PCBs, etc.

--F

[Low.Blow]

Unfortunately I won't be able to attend this year. My wife is pregnant and due soon, so I can't be that far away . Next year I will definitely be bringing candies and shooters again.

[gibbous]

Should be at least a couple of candy cabs in the house. Hope to see some interesting and rare shmups, too.

This show is about coin-operated gaming. It's only proper that shmups are represented too.

[Dave_K.]

[edit]Actually not certain which day I'll be going.[/edit]

Glad to hear gibbous will be once again bringing the candy collection, and that PCEFX will be there with some boards no doubt.

Congrats Low.Blow!

[hollywdbri]

I plan on making it both days.

[gs68]

Unfortunately I won't be able to attend this year. My wife is pregnant and due soon, so I can't be that far away . Next year I will definitely be bringing candies and shooters again.

I'm busy with wedding planning stuff this year, but next year if anyone is down for renting a U-Haul or Penske truck (maybe if you have your own truck?) I'd be down for driving my candy cabs up with PCBs, etc.

--F

Aww Well, real life is more important than any shmup, so do what you gotta do. Perhaps I'll see you next year! (Although I might be going on vacation to the Philippines next year...)

[Fly]

I'll be there both days. Last year I took my Track & Field Cocktail cab. Wont be doing that this year though. But if I have anything that you all might be interested in board wise, I that would be easy to do. I have a decent collction of stuff. Nothing super expensive or rare, but it's decent. I would also need someone interested in swapping one of my boards into their cabs of course.

I'll post what I have if anyone is interested in using any there.

Hector

[KevinDDR]

I'll be here, but I doubt I'll have much time to do stuff thanks to the pinball tournament.

[NOAH]

I'll be there both days. If a qualified official will be there I'll be attempting the world record Easy Street Paperboy score. Looks like I'll be picking up my Space Harrier sit-down at the show also, it may only be there on Saturday though.

[alamone]

I sent off an e-mail to the show with a link to my PCB list.
If anyone's bringing candy cabs, I can definitely help provide PCBs.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It's shaping up to be a cool shmup PCB showdown for this upcoming 2012 CAX show. It'll certainly be here quite soon...only six more days until opening day.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Fly]

. If a qualified official will be there I'll be attempting the world record Easy Street Paperboy score.

Let us know what time you might play this, official record attempt or not, cuz I'd love to watch you play. I'll be at the Twin Galaxies table and will ask if any refs are available. Walter Day will be there but I dont think he's a ref any more but I could always ask him. I'll know by Friday evening since I'm having diner with him.

Hector

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For Fly,

I didn't know that Walter Day will be back at this year's CAX show. That is major news to me and perhaps I can try again with a slated Klax upright cab appearance this coming weekend. The last time he made an special appearance was at the 2003 & 2004 California Extreme shows. I personally asked him if he could watch me attempt a WR run on a Klax cabinet but no such game were to be found at either of those CAX shows. So it was a no-go for me.

Mr. Day told me that I could seek out a Klax rom file and he could validate such a WR run using Mame during the 2004 CAX show. I told him that I really wanted to attempt it on a real Klax upright cab though but it was "no cigar" that particular year.

For NOAH,

Please do let me know if and when you do attempt a WR run on Paperboy as well. I'd like to witness it first-hand if that is alright with you. It'll be a cool historical arcade game WR score in the making.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[NOAH]

. If a qualified official will be there I'll be attempting the world record Easy Street Paperboy score.

Let us know what time you might play this, official record attempt or not, cuz I'd love to watch you play. I'll be at the Twin Galaxies table and will ask if any refs are available. Walter Day will be there but I dont think he's a ref any more but I could always ask him. I'll know by Friday evening since I'm having diner with him.

Hector

Yeah, I'm not sure which day or time I'll try assuming that there is a qualified official there. I was aware of Walter Day's appearance at the show, but I was asked not to spill the beans by the show's organizer due to a small possibilty of him not making it. I also found out recently that he retired from refereeing, I wasn't even aware of that before a couple weeks ago. Hopefully someone's there. PM me your cell and I can text you or call you when I'm at the machine. Pressure's definitely higher than before, the acceleration pot on my steering assembly starting acting up a couple weeks ago. There are spots when it's pretty much unplayable so I haven't been able to keep my game up. I was really confident a couple weeks ago, now there's a little bit of uncertainty.

[NOAH]

For NOAH,

Please do let me know if and when you do attempt a WR run on Paperboy as well. I'd like to witness it first-hand if that is alright with you. It'll be a cool historical arcade game WR score in the making.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Will do.

[ookitarepanda]

I feel really bad that my family trip to LA/Anaheim begins on Monday 7/30 and I completely miss CAX.

Anyway, I'll be in town until Saturday 8/4. Gonna be hitting up Round 1 Arcade on that Monday night if anyone wants to join.

[blackoak]

I think I'll be there on Sunday, for most of the day. I'll keep an eye out for familiar faces.

[majors]

Well, missed this thread til now, at the airport. I know I'll be hovering around the candy on Saturday.

[majors]

Mad +1's for Money Idol Exchanger!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

This year's CAX event was quite stellar. The first day had shmupper gibbous' two candy cabs of a Sega Astro City stocked with shmupper alamone's Dodonpachi-SDOJ board for the better part of the day (and into the night) and a Sega Swing cab with my rare MVS cart of Fast Striker version 1.5. After swapping boards and alamone going home, I put in the ol' DDP-DOJ PCB that has a BL conversion eprom that was setup until Sunday morning at 2am closing time/shutdown. On Sunday at 10:30am, put in Dodonpachi-Dai-Fukkatsu version 1.5 for the entire day until Gibbous had to go home early.

A big thanks to both shmuppers gibbous and alamone for their generous time to donate the candy cabs and SDOJ board. It was great to try out SDOJ at CAX.

Saw a Taito Egret 29 candy cab with the ol' Cave shmup favorite of ESP.Ra.De up and running. It was for sale also and was sold by the end of Saturday evening and removed from the convention gameroom floor late Saturday night.

Saw some shmuppers like NOAH, gs68, Dave K., Skyline, Kenchan, and a few others as well.

It was great to give gibbous' Capcom CPS1 arcade cab of "Forgotten Worlds" a complete play-though from start to end. The heavy-duty spinners were in great shape for their age and worked like a charm. The CPS1 based graphics still look awesome after all those years since it's June 1988 debut in the USA. Now I can see why it commands so much $$$ in the three figure range for a 100% working Forgotten Worlds control panel setup along with the obligatory CPS1 board.

So for the first time, not one, not two but three different Dodonpachi arcade PCBs were brought in for this year's CAX event. Saw plently of CAX attendees play both SDOJ, DOJ BL and DFK 1.5 for both days.

The grand prize raffle winner was a guy whom was standing to my left side behind me when the winning raffle ticket number was announced. He chose a brand new Stern AC/DC pinball machine. Lucky SOB indeed. ^_~

See you all at next year's 2013 California Extreme show.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[NOAH]

Cool show, needed for shmup cabs to satisfy the modern-era shmupper (plenty of non-jamma US classics available). It was great seeing PCEFX, Dave K., Kaph33n, 300wins, BIGTIME, gs68, and gibbous (who was hard to flag down due to business, he brings a sh*tload of games to the show afterall). I know I'm forgetting some others on here, like Fly the renowned arcade competitor. I just wish the Paperboy at the show had better steering on it, it deviated right and forced me off the curb and altered my paper throws regularly. My best score on that machine (the only one I actually decided to finish) was still 10,000 less than my average.

Thanks to all who contributed to the show. I contributed for the first time and it was nice to see my machine being enjoyed by so many, Space Harrier was occupied constantly (with credit feeders). It was all good until some stupid kid put his foot on the coin door while playing (I sent that kid away real quick). It also pissed me off when the show organizers opened a door in the wall behind my game so that people could scrape by the left side of my Space Harrier. I saw numerous people leaning on it and brushing by it while passing by and women's purses scraping the sideart. I couldn't believe they did that shit, there were other doorways into that room. Why open a door in between two games that are less than 2 feet apart? I ended up moving the Virtua Fighter cab on the left over about a foot and moving my Space Harrier to the right about a foot to create a reasonable space for people to walk by into the doorway. Problem is that gibbous's Spy Hunter was now difficult to climb into due to nearly zero space between Space Harrier and Spy Hunter.

Sorry for rambling, it just pissed me off that of over 400 games at the show that mine was the only one subject to people scraping up against it, and I had just bought it that same morning. Enthusiastic patrons begged me to bring it back next year, if they don't put it in a shitty location where people rub all over it and they keep stupid-ass kids with no regard for the property of others out of the show then I'd definitely be interested in bringing it back. It'd be great next to Dave K's Planet Harriers, and he's not far from the show so there's no excuse for him not to bring it .

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Another cool highlight of the 2012 CAX show was the guest appearance of Stern founder, Gary Stern, and his personal talk about the current state of the pinball industry. I did see him out and about in the lobby portion of the Santa Clara convention hall area. Sadly, I missed it but it was for only an hour tops.

The 3-screen super-wide panoramic Sega's Ferrari 355 deluxe cab was setup for the second year despite it not making a return appearance in 2011. This very same Ferrari 355 cab first made it's debut at the 2010 CAX show. The force-feedback was quite impressive and responsive indeed. With a dedicated three pedal setup for that accurate gas pedal, brake pedal and clutch pedal, Sega went all out with this ultimate Ferrari sim. Not to mention that it has a dedicated 6-position stick shifter (including reverse) for the ultimate in realism.

Sega Ferrari 355 Factoid: The actual deluxe sit-down cab uses four seperate Naomi mobos to run the entire game itself: one for each of the beautiful high-res RGB screens and one for the actual game engine itself. If you press on the brake pedal, the exterior brake lights on the deluxe cab "light" up. How cool is that? With it's robust force-feedback mechanism, it's quite accurate in terms of actual responsiveness and feedback handling depending on the track conditions, etc. So it's quite easy to "spin out" if played in sim mode with manual transmission setting. Sega truly did their homework in conjunction with Ferrari's expertise and help in developing this fine driving simulator.

I had the pleasure of trying it out at a Japanese game center back in early 2000 with two linked-up deluxe Ferraro 355 cabs with a cousin. It was a mere 200 yen per credit and well worth it just for the price of admission/playing.

The DC port of Ferrari 355 Challenge is only a one-screen affair but still retains the cool linked-up head-to-head feature of it's arcade counterpart via a DC link-up cable setup. Plus, 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio support via S-Video input on an old-school CRT setup is a another option to take advantage of.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Just got an e-mail today from the CAX staff saying that they already have the new dates for the upcoming 2013 California Extreme show:

--------------------

2013 Show Dates

We have our dates for next year – July 13-14, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA.

--------------------

Will surely be looking forward to attending this upcoming 2013 CAX show. It's a given alrighty.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[gs68]

A bit late, but I thought I'd say this anyway.

CAX just keeps getting better every year for me. Every year manages to introduce something that captures my interest--the multiplayer Rush 2049 and The Grid setups when I first attended in 2008, new and more commute-friendly location in 2009, DOJ in 2010 (with bonus Mark Alpiger lol), and CAVE lineup and Bemani last year.

I'm definitely glad I was able to go both days this year. Getting to play SaiDOJ again was pretty ace (and props for disabling continues so everyone can have a chance), as was playing DOJBL.

I was a little saddened that Rush 2049 was only 3 players this year (with at least 1 machine malfunctioning at all times), but I had good runs on that nonetheless, and I pretty much murdered a boatload of other players on The Grid. Playing Hard Drivin' Airborne was pretty neat, even if I don't like the Hard Drivin' series in general.

Billy Bowl was great to play as usual. I had the fortune of first playing it at TimeZone arcade at Greenbelt in Makati City, Philippines; sadly the last time I went (2009) that machine was no more. Once a year of BB is pretty sufficient for me, I guess.

I was surprised to a. see IIDX Lincle and b. connected to Programmed World (unofficial version of Konami e-Amuse for Western arcades). Timing was a bit wonky at first, but I got used to it over time. Got to see the ever-so-rare Crackin' DJ machine--seems fun, but I couldn't clear a beginner-level song =/

Some of the attendees pulled off some pretty vicious performances--I observed one player clearing out all of 720 Degrees, and of course there's always SLOW_DOWN dominating R2049.

The Irritating Maze was nice to see, but honestly it could do without the jump scares.

I thought about playing the Super Mario Bros. pinball machines, but I'm suck-tier at pinball so I skipped out D: Maybe next time.

Also didn't get to play Panic Park. Laziness, the tournament (which I should've signed up for), and lack of interest in nagging someone to play with me contributed to me not playing.

I wanna give my shoutouts to NOAH, alamone, PCEFX, gibbous, and everyone else who contributed hardware and cabinets to the show. Additional shoutouts to Skyline, Kenchan, KevinDDR, Kitaru, and everyone else I saw.

I don't know if I'll be at CAX next year; it depends on when I go to the Philippines with my family. Failing that, there's always CAX '14! See you whenever!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

That Gottlieb produced Super Mario World pinball machine was fun. I used to play it at the Modesto, CA based Regency Game Palace back in 1993-1994. It had that simplistic playfield and the ball, still, managed to "go down the drain" most of the time whenever I'd try to play a serious session.

Sadly no Williams 1989 Police Force pinball machine to play at this year's CAX show. Perhaps, next year?

Giving the new Stern X-Men and AC/DC pins a spin was cool. I noticed that one of the X-Men pins had a massive speaker hooked up to it for better audio fidelity. It was cranked up for maximum punch and it delivered in spades. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~