Story dated 14th February, 2003.

Yet another well known name has been taken on by Stern Pinball Inc. and this time they've been given their marching orders straight away.

Steve Epstein has been given the task of promoting Sterns in-house tournament system ToPS and he is going on the road to visit distributors and operators to do it.

He will tell distributors all about the system (although you would hope they already knew) and let them know how best to sell it to operators. At the operators he will explain how tournaments can be run and how the system can be set up so it fits into their locations. In return, he will collect distributor and operator comments and pass those back to the development team so that ToPS can be improved further.

Steve is perhaps best known for running the Epstein family-owned Broadway Arcade in New York for many years until it closed in 1997 when the site was redeveloped. The Broadway Arcade was famous in the pinball world as both a superb place to play pristine games and as a test location for new games from all the manufacturers.

But he is also the cofounder of the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA) with Roger Sharpe, an organisation which held six international pinball tournaments at the Park Central Hotel in New York City. PAPA has not been an active organisation since 1998 but it is hoped to start it up again later this year.

Steve retired from pinball when the Broadway Arcade closed but now he's back and helping to keep interest in the game alive. He says "I'm very excited to be back in pinball and love to help Stern develop and promote the tournament package."