About this event
California Extreme is the “Classic Arcade Games Show”. It’s an annual celebration of coin operated pinball machines, video games and other novelties you once found in game arcades. All games on display are set for free play, so leave your quarters in the ash tray in your car. You won’t need ’em!
Why A Game Show?
Arcades were once a fixture on the American urban landscape, and games were plentiful in rural cities too. The closest heir of today is the so-called “Family Entertainment Center”, which is populated with myriad devices designed only to take your coins quickly and leave you with a pile of tickets, which you exchange for cheap, trashy toys. This is entertainment?
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.
Buy/sell/trade! The show is a great place to bring games you want to sell, and also a good place to add to your collection, or even start it! Not all games will be for sale; many collectors bring games to show (or show off!) that they would never sell.
So .. Can I play the stuff? Yes! Everything is on free play. You can play from the moment you arrive until we shut off the power at closing — Play as many games as you want, in whatever order you want to. There are *HUNDREDS* of games, all set to play for free. This is your chance to try those older games, or the newer games that you’d never put money into in an arcade. There are also many games that never got produced, and are very hard to find.