The Plunge - 2022 My Year in Review

Well, I never did get around to writing any posts last year. Which means that this post is going to be jam packed full of discussion to catch up with my pinball adventures for 2022.

Personal News

Last year was definitely a struggle. I was trying to find my way without my best friend (see 2021 Year in Review) and it was difficult, especially because I was the administrator of his estate and there was a ton of work involved in that (and it's still ongoing). My day job eased up briefly, then the pedal went to the medal again. The microchip industry is booming, Congress passed the CHIPS Act, and my company's manufacturing has taken a big leap in terms of output. I couldn't keep up and my career and mental health suffered. The good news is I was offered a new position and jumped at the chance. I'm in a transition period but things are looking up. More travel may be involved which means more location pinball places to explore. And hopefully this will result in a return to normalcy and more time to devote to pinball.

Steampunk Virtual Pinball Machine

On hold, no progress. I did download some gorgeous games, the community is really producing amazing work. Hopefully I'll have more on this soon.

Location Pinball Near Me Is On The Rise

There are now 73 pinball machines in the greater Vancouver, Washington area. Some spillover from Portland was inevitable based on my past reporting: back in 2016, Portland had 711 machines, tops in the country. On Pinball Map, that number is now up to 967. That puts Portland third behind Wisconsin and Seattle but it doesn't trail Seattle by much (9 machines). When you look beyond Portland and view Oregon as a whole, the state passes Wisconsin into second place, behind only Washington. Going back to that 73 pinball machines in Vancouver: where there was once barren wasteland, pinball is popping up all over. I once had to drive an hour or more to play location pinball, but now I have 4 machines that are only 15 minutes from my house (currently The Beatles, Iron Man, Jurassic Park Pro, and Deadpool Pro). Downtown Vancouver is about 35-40 minutes from my house and features 2 pretty good locations: Mav's Taphouse and The Thirsty Sasquatch, a total of 17 machines that are a 3 minute drive from each other. From my workplace, there is a bar just a 5 minute drive away, and it has a Stern Indiana Jones and a Tron Legacy. So location pinball near me is finally a thing! Plus if I really want to stretch my legs, there's my old favorites: Next Level, Ground Kontrol, Wedgehead, and Quarterworld.

Pinball at the Thirsty Sasquatch

Podcast Appearance

Earlier this year I made an appearance on a podcast. As I have mentioned previously on this blog, I have been following the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast for over two and a half years. Within the past year, another podcast began to appear on the Poor Man's Pinball Network, called Tribe Multiball featuring Tim Lee and Rachel Ristow. I was interviewed on an episode of Tribe Multiball and I think it went pretty well. Tim and Rachel were great hosts, and we talked about what got me into pinball, dream themes, my Barncade (which Tim referred to as the "Haunted Barncade"), and other topics.

Current podcasts in my rotation on the drive to and from work are The Pinball Show (Zach is always entertaining!), Triple Drain, Silverball Chronicles, SlamTilt, and newcomer Pinball Party.

My First Competitive Pinball Tournament

Why haven't I played competitively? Well, there are a couple of reasons: 1) I struggle to remember rulesets, and 2) most tournaments are too far from my house. Sometimes I can blow up a machine, but without knowing rules, most of the time I'm a below average player. And as to the distance issue, I didn't want to drive an hour or more to get my butt whooped in pinball. But if I played in tournaments on weeknights, I could drive to them after work, which would be a lot closer for at least part of the trip.

Since I was interested in competitions that would contribute to IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association) rankings, I zeroed in on two competitions: monthly Stern Army competitions at Ground Kontrol, and bi-weekly Match Play tournaments at Next Level Pinball Museum. With a trip to the Northwest Pinball and Arcade show imminent, where I wanted to try tournament play at a national level, I chose to warm up at Ground Kontrol, participating in my first tournament ever. I did better than I thought I would. 40 people participated. I started out with a first place finish on Stern KISS - love that game! Then I came in last on Theater of Magic and third on Bram Stoker's Dracula. I needed a win to stay in the tournament, and managed to take first on Total Nuclear Annihilation. The next game was supposed to be Junk Yard, which I know well, but it crapped out and we got switched to Deadpool instead. Although I love the game, I don't know the rules and two of the guys in my group had one at home and knew exactly what to do. Another third place finish knocked me out of the tournament. Still, I felt pretty good in finishing 18th out 40 players for my first competitive pinball experience.

Tournament Play at Ground Kontrol

The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show

It had been several years since I last went to the show (2018 in fact), which I wrote about here. This year I decided to go big and attended all 3 days. I rented an Airbnb in Tacoma for 2 nights and drove up on a Friday, arriving in the afternoon. After getting situated at the Airbnb, I drove about 10 minutes to the show and went out on the floor. I got a few chuckles at my t-shirt featuring the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast with art by Christopher Franchi. There weren't a lot of people there yet so I got to play dozens of machines, including several that I scratched off of my bucket list. Rush was incredible, and I plan on getting it some day! Ultraman was great, I think it is a better theme than Halloween. Rick and Morty was fantastic too. But I kept going back to Rush. One of John Borg's best! I registered for the Classics tournament (Pingolf format) and didn't do great, finishing 120th out of 161 players. Slow, floaty EMs are such a different type of challenge than modern, fast pinball.

On my second day I registered for the main tournament, but the line was so long long that I ended up getting a Sunday spot. It was pretty intimidating looking up at the banner of past winners and seeing Keith Elwin and Raymond Davidson listed multiple times. That's the caliber of player in this tournament. I then roamed the floor, playing a few more games on my bucket list such as Time Warp, Jurassic Park Home Edition, and Cactus Canyon Remake (CCR). I also played some cool homebrew games such as Fight Club and Mass Effect. To top off the day I got invited to Nitro Pinball's VIP party at the Marriott next door to the convention center, on the 34th floor (the top floor). The view was incredible and I got to see the entire city laid out below me. I got to play a lot more Rush (love that LE backglass!), CCR, Halloween, and Fathom Revisited (the first in North America) which was a real beauty. But most importantly, I got to play Pinball Brothers Alien! What an awesome game! The best part is when the alien mouth opens and the tongue comes out to grab the ball. I really wanted one but the maintenance issues I've read about ultimately scared me off. It's not that I can't repair machines, it's that I have plenty of other projects and I don't need a $9000+ game to be a project. It's also not clear how long parts will be available for this machine, a real concern considering there's no telling how long parts in the game will last as Pinball Brothers are still pretty unproven, although their customer service sounds great.

Rush LE at the Nitro Pinball VIP Party

Sunday morning I met my Dad for coffee (he came down from Seattle to meet me) and then I had about 15 minutes before my match was supposed to start, so I decided to warm up with a game of Deadpool on the main floor. I had such a great game I was almost late to the tournament, getting high score #4. I did not fare so well in the tournament, however, placing 54th out of 60 players (Match Play format). I struggled with no ball saves, no kickbacks, and wide outlanes. I definitely need to set my games up harder at home if I want to compete at that level. After the tournament, it was time to head home, but I had a really fun time. The biggest disappointment was no presence from Jersey Jack, American Pinball (wanted to play Hot Wheels), or Multimorphic (really wanted to play Weird Al or Heist) and fewer vendors. It seemed "smaller" than the show in 2018 in that sense. More photos of the show can be found at the end of this post.

Games on the floor at the 2022 NW Pinball & Arcade Show

Home Lineup and Barncade Layout Transformation

I mentioned in last year's review that I had put in an order for The Mandalorian and Alien, but ended up cancelling both. I also mentioned that I badly wanted a Godzilla Premium but that seemed like a pipe dream. In October my pipe dream came true when I scored a Godzilla Premium! I drove out to Next Level Pinball to pick it up, got it home, set it up, and was instantly entranced. It's easy to see why this game is #1 on Pinside and the greatest game of all time. It simply blows everything else away. As a Godzilla fan, it's everything I hoped it would be. I bought several mods which I will be installing soon and will talk about in a future post. It does have a VUK malfunction that I need to fix but otherwise the game is flawless.

Owning Godzilla puts me at 14 machines. I'd like to downsize the collection a bit, so I'll be selling off Popeye, Ripley's, Fish Tales, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. I've even contemplated selling The Munsters LE and Scared Stiff but haven't made up my mind. I'm definitely keeping White Water, Creature, The Hobbit, Alice Cooper, Stern Pirates, Godzilla, and my virtual machine (which I don't count as a machine in the collection). It won't happen right away but my goal is to add a Deadpool, Rush, and The Mandalorian (I still want one). If I did end up selling Munsters and keeping Scared Stiff, plus adding the 3 I just mentioned, that would put me at 10 games, which feels like a pretty good number. If I sell Scared Stiff, I've thought about picking up a Stern Jurassic Park or a Ghostbusters, but I'd probably just leave a spot open for a dream theme such as Harry Potter or Fast & Furious.

One last thing... all the pinball machines (except Godzilla) were on the second floor of the Barncade. I had wanted them on the first floor but Kelly had objected, saying they were "too noisy" for the bar. Well, now the decision is mine so I'm moving the machines back downstairs. To accommodate this, I moved the pool table to the center of the room. The new layout is slowly taking shape...it's a lot of work to move things around by myself. The pool table alone is 1200 pounds, and I have to be very careful moving machines down the stairs...moving them up took 3 people, but now it's just me. As I write this, I have 6 now on the bottom floor and 8 left to move, so I'm almost halfway there.

That's pretty much it for my year in review. Maybe I'll get out a few more posts this year! Enjoy more photos of the 2022 NW Pinball and Arcade Show...