California Extreme Arcade Expo 2023

I promised I’d share some pictures from my visit in August this year to the California Extreme arcade expo, so, here we go!

Hosted at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Santa Clara, the event describes itself as the ultimate celebration of coin operated pinball machines and video games. What makes the event so special is its location – right in the heart of silicon valley, and therefore is well attended by local collectors – many of whom have or had close connections to the Atari factory. Of particular interest to collectors are the regular appearance of locally owned rare and prototype machines. As the organisers put it:

California Extreme was born with a desire to share fun coin op games that are in the hands of private collectors and to hopefully spread the word that pinball machines were once plentiful, and that videogames were not synonymous with “martial arts” and violence.

California Extreme mission statement

Having eyed the event from a distance for many years, I was finally able to get my diary aligned and managed to make the trip over the Atlantic with Retro Gamer magazine’s and Ted Dabney Experience co-host Paul Drury.

Our arrival was not without incident. We were due to fly in the night before from Las Vegas just as a huge storm was coming through the area. Our flight was cancelled twice and we ended up on a 1.00am flight to Oakland, coupled with an Uber down to Santa Clara. We arrived at the hotel at 4.00am just hours before the show opened. Without our luggage. So apart from spending the first day in the same clothes we wore the day before and feeling like zombies having had four hour’s sleep, the event turned out to be excellent!

What I will say up front is that California Extreme is by far the best event I’ve visited in terms of the things you are likely to see. Collectors from far and wide open their Pandoras Boxes and are happy to share their spoils. And boy was there some rare stuff. So below are some of the more interesting things you would have seen at the event.

With literally hundreds of cabinets on display, it was good to see some logic in terms of their placement on the floor:

Cocktail cabinets were popular back in the day; probably less so now as the footprint they require tends to be larger – so owning one of these cabinets does require a certain amount of space. Here’s some of the rarer pieces on display:

Talking of pinball, I won’t dwell on them too much, but suffice to say there were a lot and all playable!

If you know anything about my collection, you’ll know I love a cabaret. California did not disappoint on that front!

With so much on show, it was easy to get overwhelmed just looking at stuff and figuring out what to play. Here’s a few particular super-rare highlights that I thought were worth sharing:

As well as seeing and playing lots of awesome classic arcade cabinets, we also talked with many programmers, designers and engineers at the show. It was great to meet all of these people who we previously interviewed for the Ted Dabney Experience Podcast.

Paul and also I hosted a couple of panels with Warren Davis, Matt Householder, Al Alcorn and Roger Hector:

Phew – that’s a lot of photos. Anyway, here’s a walkthrough video of the event:

So there you have it. California Extreme 2023. Seriously, this is an excellent weekend event. If you have any interest in classic arcade games, pinball or otherwise, I highly recommend you check it out if you can. Hope to see you there next year!

Thanks for reading this week!

Tony