Date: 26th - 28th May 2007.
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Report by Mariolle Germain.

The Flip-Out Tournament is a triannual event held inside the Omoron arcade at 1-8-1 Nishi-Shinkoiwa, Katsushika-ku, in Tokyo.

The location has the biggest concentration of pinball in Tokyo, there are usually over 20 pinballs in that location and they select a different batch of machines for the tournament every time.

For the Spring Flip-Out it was Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Jack*Bot, Congo, Fish Tales and Solar Ride (an oldie from Gottlieb that proved difficult for a lot of players).

The rules of the tournament are like this; there are 6 pinballs that you need to score on. You can play from noon to 7pm and play the machines an unlimited number of times. You just have to queue on the pinball you want to play.

You can only play one game at a time, which could mean you only get to play once every 30 minutes if the pinball you want (or you need) to play on is very busy. So there is a little strategy to it, and getting there early is good too, of course.

Your ranking on each pinball gives you your points (first place = 1 point) and the player with the fewest points when the tournament ends is the winner.

There were around 35 people, but only 26 completed a score on each game. Some people were just playing for fun and didn't feel like playing on them all. There was no registration fee, you only have to pay for what you play, so everybody was welcome to join in.

The organiser, "Micky Albert" always makes these plexiglass sculptures as prizes for the Flip-Out Tournament winners.

There is usually small prize for the 10th and 5th place finishers, and then 3 bigger scultures for the top 3 places.

As for the tournament itself, the winner from the last event Toshiaki Koide had very good scores on most of the pinball games for the most part but unfortunately, he never succeed in getting a good score on Solar Ride which made him finish 4th, even though he had a first place on one machine and second place on two others.

There was a tight match between the first and second player until the last hour. Both of them achieved the best score on two machines and were tied for first place until 15 minutes before the end.

The tournament was decided when Mariolle Germain got a better score on Lord Of The Rings with his very last game, which earned him an extra 5 points and gave him the lead and eventual first place.

Second was Masaru Setsumaru and third was Shinjiro Fukuba who also received trophies.

The top 10 finishers were:

For more information about the Flip-Out Tokyo Tournament including full scores from each of the games and details of past events, visit the Pinball.co.jp website at: www.pinball.co.jp

Finally, you can take a look around the Flip-Out Tokyo event with our video tour.

Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.