Back in the day, part of mainstream movies' marketing budget included creating arcade video and pinball game spinoffs usually so movie theaters could stick them in the library to remind them of the movie's release or (in the cases of movies The Shadow and Johnny Mnemonic) give them something fun to make up for releasing such a sucky film. Stern has been great at keeping the traditional pinball spinoffs of pop culture properties alive, especially when they were the last pinball game company in town. This year's was even bigger because of the time we all lost to. Every year, Stern takes up a huge chunk of the floor space at the festival with several playable models of their newest titles. Stern is probably the oldest pinball maker still in continuous operation that managed to survive the start of the arcade drought of the late 1990s and early 2000s that put away pinball game studios such as Midway and Gottlieb. It would be impossible to review every single machine on the show floor - and I know because I tried to do that once - so we had to take a look at the newest flipping creations. The machines come from personal collections and from companies such as Stern, Jersey Jack and Multimorphic bringing back almost-lost arcade staples. This year, the annual gathering of pinball creators, contributors and collectors more than made up for time lost by lugging along their best working models from the last 90 years. oh for Christ's sake, do we have to say why? Of course, we haven't been to it in a couple of years thanks to. There was one moment around here that made March special, however: the annual Texas Pinball Festival in Frisco. In Texas, it's when the weather can't make up its mind on whether it wants to be cold, hot or throwing tornadoes at us, and it's when we lose an hour of sleep to the meaningless beast we call Daylight Saving Time (hopefully not for much longer). March isn't usually the most exciting time of the year.
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