It’s been five years since we were last in Le Tréport on the northern French coast to visit Flip Expo, and there have been some changes in the interim.
The town is still the same picturesque fishing port, and it was looking especially attractive this weekend due to the 25C temperature, bright sunshine and blue skies.
The venue for Flip Expo is still the same – Salle Serge Reggiani, a large municipal hall on the eastern outskirts of the town – but the show has expanded into the adjacent sports hall – called Gymnase Leo Lagrange – too.
We arrived shortly before the doors opened at 10am on Saturday 21st April and there were queues of visitors outside both halls awaiting the official openings.
Both halls had separate registration desks, so some visitors took advantage of the shorter queue and entered the show through the second hall. The price was a mere €4 ($4.89/£3.50) per person per day, which is achievable thanks to the municipal council offering use of the halls for free in return for attracting a large number of visitors to the town.
The gymnasium was home to all the vendor stands, and there was an impressive selection of vendors selling many different gaming-related products, although the emphasis was definitely on pinball.
With the gymnasium being used for the vendors, the Salle Serge Reggiani was home of the free play games and the tournaments. However, several vendors were either distributors for one or more of the major pinball manufacturers, or they were selling their own machines. So, there were quite a few pinballs to play in the vendor hall too, including most of the more-recent titles.
The first one we encountered was a Stern’s Guardians of the Galaxy, but sadly it was on pay-to-play and hence remained virtually untouched all weekend. Thankfully, it was the exception and all the other games were set on free play.
Probably the most interesting new game there was the Olympic Goblin from Phenix Pinball. This has the feel of a home-brew game but also could be a commercial product if marketed and priced correctly.
The playfield is a simple affair, with four top rollover lanes, feeding three pop bumpers, below which are three banks of three drop targets. There are two flippers above which are two passive slingshots which don’t include any kickers. Scoring is on a seven-segment LED displays to give the game a retro early solid-state feel, which is Phenix Pinball’s intention.
The game runs on one of Pascal Janin’s CPU/driver boards with a PinSound audio board to make this a true French production. Gameplay is quite simple, with four stages to complete by shooting the lit drop targets, followed by a three-level wizard mode. The artwork is a little rudimentary and we have doubts Phenix Pinball will be able to put the game into production using the ‘Olympic’ moniker since that title is closely controlled by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but it could be a fun cheap game for home or family location.
The other new game here was Jersey Jack Pinball’s Pirates of the Caribbean which was the recent topic of discussion when JJP announced that they had been forced to remove a couple of prominent mechanisms from the game due to reliability issues and had replaced them with simpler alternatives. One was the three-ring spinning map and the other was the opening/closing chest which locked balls inside.
There were two Pirates of the Caribbean games at Flip Expo and both features these animated mechanisms.
Pinball News’ Martin Ayub teamed up with Jonathan Joosten from Pinball Magazine to interview JJP’s Jack Guarnieri about the changes. Jack was the special guest at Flip Expo this year and we cornered him for an interview, finding a nice quiet grassy spot behing the gymnasium for the interview.
You can hear our joint podcast here on Podcast Garden or with the player below.
Before that though, Jack was meeting and greeting in the vendor hall. At midday on Saturday there was a glass raised to toast the success of the show’s organisers in holding this twelth edition. The drink of choice as the local favourite, Ricard, but Martini and scotch were also available.
Let’s continue in the vendor hall and see what other games, parts and add-ons they had on display or for sale.
There was a good showing of titles from Spooky Pinball. Rob Zombie’s Spookshow International was joined by The Jetsons and Total Nuclear Annihilation. Alongside them was an Alien from Heighway Pinball and a The Big Lebowski from Dutch Pinball.
If you wanted to build your own custom game, Art Cab could fix you up.
These video pinballs weren’t the only video games in the vendor hall.
We return to pinball as we look at the parts available.
There was also a nice selection of new, refurbished or original playfields, with Mirco leading the way. As he could drive to this show, his range and number of playfields available certainly looked impressive.
There was also an impressive collection of Star Wars figures, although these weren’t for sale.
If you had any faulty PCBs you could probably get them fixed at the show while you waited.
Finally for the vendor hall there were the stands selling assorted memorabilia or curiosities, along with assorted games, parts or components.
This was a particularly hot weekend for April, so the temperature inside the hall soon made things uncomfortable. Side windows were opened later in the day to provide some much-needed ventiallation.
That’s just about everything from the vendor hall, so let’s head next door into the games hall. Our €4 entry included a hand-stamp which allowed us to move freely between the two rooms, but on the way we couldn’t help but notice a collection of classic retro cars parked outside and some suitably-dressed women accompanying them.
The event was to promote a retro event being held in a restaurant in the town of Le Tréport later on Saturday evening.
Also set up outside were a couple of food trucks, one serving different types of nuts, while the other sold bagels – either smoked salmon, bacon and egg, or vegetarian.
Later on, a third truck arrived to roast chickens and various meats for a banquet held on Saturday evening.
Heading into the games hall, things were a little cooler.
The majority of the games hall was occupied by the free play pinballs. These were mostly arranged in small ‘islands’ of around six machines.
One curiosity was this Hot Ball machine which was a steampunk-themed customisation of a Williams Big Deal.
Here’s the full list of the 54 free-play machines in the games hall.
| A.G. Football Arena Attack from Mars Attack from Mars Back to the Future Black Pyramid Bride of Pinbot, The Machine: Buck Rogers Cactus Jack Charlie’s Angels Close Encounters of the Third Kind (EM) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (EM) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (solid-state) Count-Down Cyclone Dracula, Bram Stoker’s Dragon Evel Knievel* Fast Draw Four Million B.C. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s Getaway, High Speed 2: The Harlem Globetrotters Hot Ball (custom) Indianapolis 500 James Bond* Jungle Queen* | Last Action Hero Matrix, The Monster Bash Monte Carlo Mousin’ Around Mystic Night Rider (solid-state) Pinball Pool Playboy (Bally) Scared Stiff Six Million Dollar Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, The* Space Jam Star Trek (Bally) Star Wars (Data East) Striker Xtreme Strikes and Spares Surf Champ Sweet Hearts Time Machine (Data East) Vulcan Whirlwind* Whitewater Whitewater World Cup Soccer World Cup Soccer World Cup Soccer |
* Indicates the machine was not working during our survey
In addition, there was a Dirty Harry set up in the lobby which was the tombola prize, three table football (foosball/baby foot) games were in the hall, as were a handful of video games including Atari’s Pinball.
The other part of the games hall was taken up by the tournaments run by Nico Flip. A fenced-off area contained either eleven (Saturday) or ten (Sunday) machines which were used by the main and side tournaments.
The tournament machines were:
| Avatar Blackout Doctor Who Getaway, High Speed 2: The Grand Prix Iron Man | Paragon Pinball Pool Striker Xtreme Tales from the Crypt Theatre of Magic |
Current scores and standings were shown on a projector screen behind the tournament machines.
We’ll have more on the games hall, the tournaments and we’ll wrap up the final day of Flip Expo shortly. Plus we’ll have our exclusive Twenty Minute Tour video walk around the whole show, so check back here a little later for all the news from Le Tréport.
