NEWS: ZapCon Was a Blast!

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ZapCon roared back to life this year, with its ninth incarnation transforming the Mesa Convention Center into the state’s largest arcade March 9-10.
Firebird Pinball was proud to once again sponsor ZapCon and provide master tech services. We also gave out Best of ZapCon awards to some really cool games.
If you didn’t make it down, check out some of our favorite pics!

Preparation for ZapCon begins early! The Firebird load-in crew did a great job of taking all our games down to Mesa.
After a fun contributors night on Friday, everyone headed down bright and early Saturday morning for the big day.
Check out the cool shirts they had this year!
Here’s the Firebird Pinball booth, set up and ready to go!
Wait, NOW we’re ready to go, both of us at the helm before the storm of repairs began!
There were a lot of awesome games at ZapCon 9, and one of the coolest was this one, the custom Arzach machine CW Goss made. (More on that one in the Best of ZapCon awards blog!)
There also was a Barry O’s Barbecue Challenge. Now we can say we’ve played it!
Dangerzone Arcade also brought down this game, which was really cool to see in person!
The brand-new Stern bank from Gameroom Goodies was a huge hit, from the opening moments through the closing hour.
Pinball enthusiasts were stoked to see this alternate translite. Look closely and see how many things you can see that DEFINITELY weren’t on the show!
The view from on high.
All the games at ZapCon were brought down by contributors, and they sure came through this year, with more than 200 arcade games and more than 125 pinball machines.
Here’s another cool overhead shot.
That’s a lot of games to bring down and arrange, and they filled up the whole convention floor once again.
Leslie snuck away for a few minutes and checked out the view!
So many cool games!
And so many cool people!
Sunday morning was way too bright after all the fun we had on Saturday in the dark, but we dragged ourselves back to Mesa again.
We had a few minutes to say hi on Sunday to some of our favorite people, and other friends.
Glad to see these ZapCon vets still having fun after all these years.
Chatting with more of our favorite folks!
Sunday morning soon grew busy, with hundreds of people arriving by the time the doors opened. Even pirates came down to ZapCon this year!
There wasn’t a ton of cosplay this year, but some people did get the memo.
Another fun part about Sunday: We get to spend the day checking out all the games and deciding which are deserving of these awesome awards!
We also checked out Danger Dann’s booth and all the cool keychains in his box.
We also made time to check out all the cool booths and vendors. There were some talented people there!
We tried to keep an eye on the tournaments too! There were lots of different competitions all weekend, but this one was the busiest.
After all the fun died down Sunday at 6, we had time to stand around and compare beards. Wolfman pronounced this one “a good start.”
Now that’s a beard! Seriously, we couldn’t have made it through the weekend without this guy. Thanks for everything, Grumpy!
These guys finally got a chance to breathe! Yay, it’s almost over!
Just a few games to get loaded out before we can all go home. Tell them how much room they have, Jan!
Push harder, Ned!
And then it was over. Time to pack this stuff back into the storage unit!
And then there were none. Thanks for doing such a great job this year, guys! ZapCon was a blast!