Date: February 25th & 26th, 2012
Location: Silla (a town located 8kms south of Valencia), Spain.

Report by Vicente Zaragozá and Carlos Kursh
Photos by Dasansa and Evaginal

It's 7pm on Friday 24th February, 2012 and we are at the headquarters of the Asociación de Coleccionistas de Pinballs y Máquinas Recreativas (Arcade Machines and Pinball Collectors' Association). With an area of approximately 300m², there are around 100 pinball machines and arcade video games of various ages and styles inside. For the second consecutive year this is the location where the WPPR-ranked 5th Torneo de Pinballs Ciudad de Silla is going to be held this weekend.

The first 2 players from Ibiza arrived at about 4pm. This year there were 58 competitors, coming from towns and cities across Spain, who arrived during the afternoon and the following morning - the first day of the tournament - with the greatest number coming from the Valencian suburbs. While Friday's early arrivals greeted and chatted with other competitors (most of them friends from previous tournaments), others enjoyed playing the arcade machines and pinballs in the free game zone, drank beer, or took hundreds of photos, while outside others set up a great barbecue. People were hungry; most of them after long journeys, but others after making all the preparations for the tournaments.

After dinner, there was plenty of time for people to play and listen to music. Eventually though, it was time to close the building until the start of the first tournament day.

At 9am on Saturday 25th February, we delivered the T-shirts, badges and score sheets to the venue, starting the main tournament one hour later.

Inside the tournament venue

More of the many pinballs

A dozen of the pinballs

Players practicing for the tournaments

Juegos Populares' Lortium in front with Williams' Diner behind

Another view of Lortium with Bally's Mousin' Around behind

Bright colours on the playfield of Juegos Populares' America 1492

Still time left for more practice ahead of the tournaments

America 1492 is a rare, but popular, machine

The practice period comes to an end

At 2pm we stopped to enjoy a meal of Paella, ham, cuttlefish, beer, coke, whiskey ice cream...etc.

It's lunchtime...

For the qualification round we played eight machines manufactured in or before the year 1990 (pre-1990), and eight made after 1990 (post-1990).

The 1990 or earlier machines were: Lortium, Faeton, Dragoon (single- player), Radical!, Evil Fight, America 1492, Petaco 2 and Cyclone.

The post-1990 machines were: The Party Zone, Frank Thomas' Big Hurt, Congo, World Cup Soccer, Jack•bot, No Good Gofers, Revenge from Mars and Gilligan's Island.

The notable scores during qualification were:

There was coverage in the local press and on TV with Canalnou (Channel 9) filming a report for the TV news.

Filming for a TV news report

Interviewing for the TV news report

About 10am on Sunday 27th we started the pre-1990 and post-1990 play-offs using the following machines:

Pre-1990: Diner, The Bally Game Show, Attack, 7-Up.

Post-1990: Monster Bash, The Simpsons Pinball Party, Scared Stiff, Tales of the Arabian Nights.

The best scores were:

The pre-1990 finalists were Euroflip, JDJulio, Rayo and Haz, while the post-1990 finalists were JDJulio, Handbilin, Euroflip and Handbilin Jr.

On Sunday morning, at the same time as the play-offs, we ran three mini-tournaments. The winners of these were:

Nbjose and Inderman - winners of the Pairs Tournament

Leberry - winner of the High Score Tournament

Orión - winner of the Cross Arms Tournament

At around 2:30pm the finals of the 5th Torneo de Pinballs Ciudad de Silla began.

Checking one of the finals machines is level

The pre-1990 final was played on Black Knight 2000.

Haz	Rayo
Euroflip	JDJulio

The post-1990 final was played on The Addams Family.

Euroflip	Handbilin
JDJulio	Handbilin Jr.

The winners of the two finals were:

Winner of the Pre-1990 Tournament, Euroflip

Winner of the Post-1990 Tournament, JDJulio

We look forward to welcoming you next year to the 6th Torneo de Pinballs Ciudad de Silla.

© Pinball News 2012