Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show 2022 Re-cap
By Audrey Hacker
After a 2 year hiatus – the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show is back!
We arrived on June 2nd to set up our booth partnered with Stern Pinball and Next Level Pinball. We brought 20 of the latest and greatest Stern Pinball titles all hooked up to the Insider Connected™ platform!
Stern Pinball’s Insider Connected™ platform is a feature exclusive to Stern Pinball Machines, that keeps track of all of your high scores, enables you to interact with a Global network of players, track achievements on each game, and contains exclusive content.
The Insider Connected™ leaderboard challenge was a huge hit!! The Top 10 scores for every title on Sunday afternoon were awarded with awesome Stern Pinball Swag. Congratulations to all the winners!
Stern Pinball’s Associate Game Developer, Mike Vinikour, and Marketing Manager, Michael Grant challenged players to beat their high scores on the leaderboard. Mike did his famous “MXV Challenge” where attendees challenge him to a 1v1 on their ‘game of choice’ to try to win some big prizes!
We had a blast hosting these games with our local dealer partner, Next Level Pinball Shop & Museum out of Hillsboro, Oregon. Jordan Carlson and his team of pinball aficionados really helped make our booth special this year.
Have you visited Next Level Pinball Museum, yet?
They are one of the world’s largest arcades, with over 400+ pinball and arcade games on free play with a $20 All Day Pass! So if you are looking to visit a Pinball Shop & Museum to play pinball to your heart’s content, you should definitely check out Next Level Pinball Museum.
Other vendors such as Chicago Gaming Company, Another Castle, and more arrived. The wide empty show floor soon was filled wall-to-wall with over 450 pinball and arcade games on free play from collectors all over the Northwest. This show could not have been made possible without all the fantastic volunteers. The Northwest Pinball Community is full of extraordinary members who are helping keep the love of pinball and arcades alive. Huge shout-out and thank you to their team!
The first day of the show went off with a blast! Many visited our booth to receive exclusive Marco stickers, put in orders for parts, or even visit our own Pinball Gumball Machine.
The rest of the venue was decked out with classic arcade games, modern arcade games, classic EM Style Pinball, and Modern Pinball. There were also a lot of rare titles that are normally not seen out in the wild, and tons of EM games that were in pristine condition.
The homebrew section was also a hit with titles such as “Fight Club”, Harley Quinn, Mass Effect 2, and more! Fast Pinball hosted this section. They create and code pinball control systems that assist anyone looking to make their own pinball machine or upgrade their system. They also have premade conversion kits that will add a new set of rules for a game. One of these conversion kits is a mod of the original Funhouse machine called Rudy’s Nightmare.
We were excited to see the new Haggis Pinball Fathom remake all the way from Australia! This is a remake of the original Fathom game. A cool feature is the lighting underneath the game that projects blue/green moving lights onto the floor which makes it seem as if you too have been pulled underwater by the mermaids. The game has all the original sounds and callouts, with full RGB LEDs inserts and GI. A new special edition of the remake, The Mermaid Edition, includes a new ruleset where you can battle the Mermaid Queen. This remake is beautiful and keeps the spirit of the original game alive.
Days 2 & 3 were also very busy with the pinball tournaments & seminars kicking off. If you missed going to the show in person, GeekGamer.tv livestreamed the Pinball tournaments and Seminars on Youtube & Twitch!
The seminar line-up was great! “Collecting 101” showcased pinball & arcade collectors who gave tips and tricks on how to start collecting machines maintain them. Fast Pinball, sponsors of the Custom Pinball section, held a panel where they discussed how to design, make, and code pinball.
Butch Peel from Chicago Gaming zoomed in to talk about the Cactus Canyon Remake, which was on the floor to play during the show.
The last seminar was a fun one with Mike Vinikour & Dwight Sullivan of Stern Pinball doing Pinball Trivia! Stern Pinball handed out banners, translites, and more to the pinball trivia winners.
Northwest Pinball & Arcade show was a blast that could not have been done without the entire Pinball & Arcade community coming together to put on a remarkable show. Shout out again to all the volunteers who gave their time and energy to run this event! Thanks again to Stern Pinball and Next Level Pinball Shop & Museum for support and collaboration.
Check out our full photo album on our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/marcospec
Our next show will be at Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta, GA on July 15-17th. We look forward to seeing you there!