Date: 3rd - 5th June, 2016
Location: Tacoma Convention Center, 1500 Broadway, Tacoma, WA 98402, USA.

The 9th annual Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show opened to the public on Friday 3rd June in the city of Tacoma, south of Seattle.

The city of Tacoma

The venue is the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center - a glassy construct built on a hill such that the side entrance is on the third floor while the main entrance is on the first.

The Greater Tacoma Conference and Trade Center

The show is held on the top (fifth) floor, and as soon as you arrive at the top of the escalator, you see the first change this year. The seminars have moved from a rather disconnected room on the third floor and been brought into the lobby area.

The seminars area on the top floor

Because of all the glass - and hence all the natural light - the organisers have eschewed the use of a projector for the seminar speakers' presentations, and have used three large-screen LCD monitors for the speakers and the audience instead.

The seminars area

As usual, all the seminars will be streamed live with the videos then posted on the show's YouTube page.

THURSDAY

When we arrived around 4pm on the Thursday, preparations were underway in all areas.

The registrations desk team preparing the badges, wristbands and welcome packs

Some of the machines for the kids zone

The winner of the Kids Tournament will win this rather splendid trophy

Inside the hall, the merchandise desk was also being populated

Elsewhere in the hall, many of the machines had arrived

The tournaments team preparing their machines

A good number of EM games were there...

...and here are some of them

From the older games to the very newest from Stern Pinball, Heighway Pinball,
and Dutch Pinball

Two The Hobbit games and a The Wizard of Oz from JJP

But there were still plenty of games to be set up

The transportation crew kept the games coming

It's certainly not all pinball though - there were tons of videos too

One row of classic arcade videos

More classic videos

Surrounding the merchandise desk were numerous vendor tables

These would be filled with gaming goodies come the opening on Friday

Private deals and messages would be posted on the show notice board

FRIDAY

With just a couple of hours to go until the official opening at midday, nearly all the machines were in place and vendors were setting up their stands.

The Kids Zone in the lobby was almost ready

Hopefully 'adult mode' is not enabled on this Flipper Football in the Kids Zone

This custom pinball allows kids to explore what's normally under the glass

Some 'big kids' check out the games

Inside the hall, things were shaping-up nicely.

Machines on the left side of the show floor

Making a few last minute adjustments

More machines on the left of the hall

More machines on the left of the hall

Pinballs on the right side of the hall

Some of the electromechanical games

There was enough space in the hall to access the back of these EMs

The show opened at midday, but before then plenty of visitors were buying tickets to be one of the first through the doors.

Queues at the admissions desk

As visitors entered the hall they came to the merchandise desk which is where they could buy their tickets for the prize draws which took place over the three day.

There was a $1-per-entry daily draw for one large and multiple smaller prizes, and a show-long draw for a brand new Ghostbusters Pro game.

The daily top prizes - an Xbox One for Friday, a Laser Wars for Saturday,
and an Astro Blaster for Sunday

Tickets for the Ghostbusters Pro cost $20 each with the draw taking place on Sunday

When the doors opened, visitors could sign up for the various pinball tournaments being held over the three days. The main match-play event was split into five qualifying rounds on Friday and Saturday. Players could only sign up for one round at a time, but if they didn't qualify they could then register for another round up to a maximum of three.

There was also a Classics PinGolf tournament played on a bank of classics machine to the left of the desk. This also ran through Friday and Saturday, with players booking their tee-off times at five minute intervals.

Entry for either tournament cost $20. There were also a women's tournament, two kids tournaments, a Rookie Tournament with a Galahad or the winner, and a Rising Star championship with a refurbished Harlem Globetrotters as the prize.

Players registering for the tournaments

Another player registers, while organiser Dave Stewart talks with Bob Matthews

Before the Match-Play and PinGolf tournaments began there was a free-practice session on both banks of machines from noon until 1pm on Friday

The Classics PinGolf tournament begins

The Galahad machine for the Rookie Tournament champion

The Harlem Globetrotters for the Rising Star champion

Dave Stewart explains how the match-play tournament works

The first round of qualifying in the match-play tournament

The hall soon got busier as more visitors arrived. However, the games were well-spaced so that it never became difficult to move around the room.

More guests arrive

Plenty of space between the machines

The same for the videos

A selection of cocktail vids

In total we counted 215 pinballs set up and playable, either on the show floor, in the tournaments area or at a vendor's booth.

Marco Specialties didn't have their usual stand architecture, but they did have a nice selection of new Stern games which were always popular

The Marco Specialties parts stand

On the opposite side of the hall we found this bunch taking a break from the show floor at the Fast Pinball stand

Fast Pinball had a number of work-in-progress custom projects on display, all using their pinball control boards. They were also previewing their replacement RGB LED display in a Tales of the Arabian Nights game.

The Fast Pinball stand

This project game was being built and coded during the show

So let's take a look at the other vendors at the show.

The Living Computer Museum had early Apple and Commodore computers on display featuring basic pinball games

The free Pinball Deluxe game was available to play

Moto Glass had an impressive selection of sand-blasted pint glass designs

Next door, Nathan had a display of classic movie posters

Rob Anthony at his Pinball Classics parts and repairs stand

Rich Bro's had a selection of assorted parts in the corner of the hall

The Seattle Pinball Museum brought three interesting games along for their stand
and also the Hercules pinball on the floor

Gambits Cards and Hobbies had plenty of 'gamerwear' on sale

Hills of Comics had lots of console games on their stand

Retro Game and Toy Exchange had (literally) stacks of toy characters available

Buzz Buzz Games also had lots of toy characters and accessories

Next to the entrance, Stern Amusements had lots of pinball parts available

Pinball Bulbs had a large stand featuring their replacement LEDs

They also had a great selection of games featuring their LEDs and other assorted mods such as mirror blades, powder coating or full game re-themes

Red Floor Arcade had a mix of home gameroom pieces and accessories

Nitro Amusements had The Big Lebowski, Full Throttle and Bride of Pinbot 2.0
on their stand

Out in the lobby, Comics4Kids were promoting comic books with free giveaways

The Pinball Outreach Project were showing their good work putting pinballs into children's hospitals and using pinball therapeutically

Artist Ron Randall showed some of his classic comic book drawings as well as his original comic series

The first seminars began on Friday afternoon, Friday is 'tech' day, with Dave Okert and David Shoemaker guiding the audience through the troubleshooting techniques to diagnose and repair faults on all kinds of arcade games and circuit boards.

Dave Okert and David Shoemaker in the seminars area

Dave Okert and David Shoemaker

The seminars team was headed-up by Mike Lorrain who had an impressive array of tech at his disposal

SATURDAY

The show resumed at 10am on Saturday, with a long 13.5-hour day ahead. It didn't take long before the aisles started to fill and free machines became just a little harder to find.

A good number of visitors early on Saturday morning

Still some free machines though

The next round of qualifying in the Match-Play Tournament started at 10:30am

Looks like it's going to be a busy day at Repair Central

Things were a little quieter in the vendor area,
although it picked up later in the day

It's certainly not quiet (in any sense) in the Kids Zone

Saturday also featured a new batch of seminars. These began at 12:30 with Seattle resident David Thiel.

12:30pm: David Thiel

David Thiel

David spoke about his history in game audio development, starting with early video games and continuing with pinball games for Data East. More recently he created the music and effects for games from Stern Pinball, and Jersey Jack Pinball.

David shows the code used to create early game music

He is currently completing The Hobbit's music and effects, and is in development on the next titles for Jersey Jack Pinball, Heighway Pinball as well as Multimorphic's first game.

2:00pm: Dwight Sullivan

Dwight Sullivan

Dwight's seminar took the audience through the creation of the rules for a Ghostbusters pinball's wizard mode. There are many considerations to be made when designing a mode and Dwight selected members of the audience to come up with ideas about the setting for the mode, what the player is supposed to achieve, how they progress through the mode and the scoring possibilities.

Dwight shows some of the possible features in a wizard mode

Dwight said this was a condensed version of the process he and his team go through when designing a game's rules, and he rewarded the wizard mode designers in the audience with Stern Pinball T-shirts.

3:30pm: Nolan Bushnell

Nolan Bushnell

Nolan is a famed entrepreneur who is best known for being the pioneer of coin-op video games, as well as starting the company Atari and the restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese.

He began by talking about how he got into electronics and computing through ham radio and then at college where the earliest video games were played on mainframe computers. He continued by describing how the game Pong was created and how that title went on to be such a huge global success.

Nolan recounts how Pong was created

Nolan described how Pong's success shaped the video game boom in the years which followed, but also left him with a problem where we wanted to operate games as well as build them, but didn't want to directly compete with the operators who were buying his games. That led to the creation of the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant and arcade chain.

There wasn't even any standing room left at Nolan's seminar

After detailing his lifetime in game and business development, Nolan concluded by describing his vision for the future of the entertainment business and the companies who are currently working on creating it.

5:00pm: Jack Guarnieri, Butch Peel & David Thiel

Jack Guarnieri

Jack began and ended his seminar in which he updated the audience on the latest happenings at the Lakewood, NJ factory, the production of The Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit, and development on their upcoming third game designed by Pat Lawlor.

Jack was joined by Butch Peel and David Thiel who both talked about The Hobbit and the work they had done on the game.

Butch described the new player and operator features in the game and how it further develops the innovations introduced in The Wizard of Oz.

Butch Peel

David played several of the music tracks and effects from The Hobbit, and spoke about how he joined the project with certain musical assets already created, as well as the work still remaining to complete it.

David Thiel

Jim Schelberg from the Pingame Journal had put together a selection of pinball-related clips from the media, and at 8pm these were played on the large-screen monitors for guests to drop-in and watch.

The Classics PinGolf Tournament concluded on Saturday evening when the top eighteen qualifiers played head-to-head games on randomly-drawn machines in a three-strikes-and-you're-out format.

The final rounds of the Classics PinGolf Tournament

The winner was Julie Gray from Seattle who won $500 and a trophy.

Winner of the Classics PinGolf Tournament, Julie Gray

Here are the full results:

The show continued until 11pm at which point the machines were switched off and the hall emptied in preparation for the final, shorter day on Sunday.

SUNDAY

Doors opened at 9am on Sunday with the quarter-final rounds of the main Match-Play Tournament and the first games in the Rookie Knockout Tournament starting soon after.

The Match-Play Tournament continued on Sunday morning at 9am

The top seven players from each of the five qualifying rounds played on Friday and Saturday qualified for Sunday's rounds, with the winner of each qualifying round going straight into the semi-finals.

Match-Play quarter-finals

The remaining thirty players took part in the quarter-final which continued the match-play format with ten groups of three. Each group played a single three-player game with points awarded for finishing position. The groups were then shuffled and a second game played on different machines. This continued until four games had been played, when the sixteen players with the most points moved on to the semi-finals.

Meanwhile, the Rookie Tournament for players ranked below the top 1,700 began on the Classics machines before moving over to the same machines as the Match-Play Tournament once the initial rounds were over and the number of machines needed had been reduced.

After playing through the quarter- and semi-finals, the final three in the Match-Play Tournament A Division were Dave Stewart, Germain Mariolle and Bob Matthews. They played the final on Spider-Man, The Shadow and Twilight Zone.

The A Division final of the Match-Play Tournament

They played a three-game final in what was called multi-match-play, where all three start together on separate machines and swap to the next machine when it is their turn to play. Points were awarded for position in each game.

This resulted in a much quicker final than if each game had been played sequentially, but also lost some of the climactic feel of a final, since spectators had to keep track of all the points earned by each player.

The B Division final took place alongside the A Division and was played in the same manner.

The A and B Division finals

In the A Division it was Germain who scored the most points in the final to take first place. Bob Matthews was second, with Dave Stewart third. In the B Division Dave Mercier triumphed, ahead of Jeff DeBock and Eric Morales.

Winner of the Match-Play A Division, Germain Mariolle

Second place, Bob Matthews

Third place, Dave Stewart

The top three in the A Division

Winner of the Match-Play B Division, Dave Mercier

Second place, Jeff DeBock

Third place, Eric Morales

Here are the full results of the Match-Play Tournament:

The Rookie Tournament was won by Emmalyn Smith who, apart from the $100 prize money, won a special pinball plaque trophy.

The Rookie Tournament final

Gordon Galbraith was second with James Frost-Winn in third.

Winner of the Rookie Tournament, Emmalyn Smith

Second place, Gordon Galbraith

Third place, James Frost-Winn

Emmalyn then joined the three top rookie qualifiers from the Match-Play Tournament in a shootout to win a Galahad pinball machine.

The players gather for the shootout to win the Galahad machine

The winner of the shootout and the machine was Nick Cline.

Nick Cline, the winner of the Rookie shootout

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the tournaments area, the Nitro Rising Star shootout was taking place with a beautiful Harlem Globetrotters fully restored and enhanced by Nitro Amusements as the top prize.

The prize for the winner of the Nitro Rising Star shootout

The shootout was between the winner of the Women's Pinball Championship, the winner of the Match-Play Tournament's B-Division, and the top two qualifiers for the Match-Play tournament's A Division who are not disqualified from playing in the B-Division.

Those four played a single game on the Harlem Globetrotters.

The Nitro Rising Star Championship shootout

The winner was Zoë Vrabel who took the game home with her.

Winner of the Nitro Rising Star Championship, Zoë Vrabel

The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show always has an awards ceremony on Sunday afternoon and this year was no exception.

Best-in-Show awards

Byron Raynes hosted the event, thanking the many people who work hard throughout the weekend, as well as the days before and after.

Some of the show organisers

He also thanked the sponsors and all those who brought machines, before announcing the Best-in-Show winners in a range of categories.

Nitro Amusements won three awards. Their The Big Lebowski took two of them for Best Pinball and overall Best-in-Show, while their Harlem Globetrotters - which was the prize in the Nitro Rising Star shootout - won the Best Restoration prize.

Nitro Amusements win three awards

Pinball Bulbs won the Best Custom prize for their Iron Maiden conversion of a Stern The Rolling Stones.

The People's Choice award was picked up by Marco Specialties for their Ghostbusters Pro game.

Part of the money raised by the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show is used to fund a scholarship for one student in a discipline related to the games and amusements industry.

This year the recipient was Yarhed Shella, a maths and mechanical engineering student at the University of Washington. Yarhed received a $5,000 scholarship to aid his studies.

Yarhed Shella collects the $5,000 scholarship

In addition, an award of $500 was given to the Pinball Outreach Project's Greg Dunlap and Nicole Anne Reik.

An award to Nicole and Greg of the Pinball Outreach Project

The top three in the Kids Tournament then received their prizes.

Top three in the Kids Tournament, JJ (3rd), Orien (2nd) and Tori (1st)

Finally, the draws for the two big raffle prizes were made. The winner of a restored Astro Blaster was drawn first.

The delighted winner of the Astro Blaster video game

Then the winner of the separate Ghostbusters Premium raffle was chosen.

The winner of the Ghostbusters Premium is picked

Unfortunately the winner wasn't present, and a call to their phone went to voice mail, but they were in for a pleasant surprise when they replayed the message.

And that brings us to the end of our coverage of the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show 2016. We hope you enjoyed our reporting, and we leave you with our exclusive Twenty-Two Minute Tour video, where you get to walk around the whole show without getting our sore feet.

© Pinball News 2016