Pinball Paradise for the next 50 hours – part 2

In our first post today, I told you about some never-seen-before pinball action on offer tonight in Newcastle. And now it gets even bigger.

THIS WEEKEND, Pinfest returns to The Caves Beach Hotel, and I genuinely believe it’s Australia’s best pinball event.

I spoke to Robert Denton from Newcastle Pinball Association who seemed blown away by the success of last year’s inaugural event. “We hoped to raise 3 or $4,000 for Hunter SIDS & Kids. But last year exceeded all expectations.. with 7 or 8,000 people across the weekend, and around $7,000 raised for the charity.”

Pinfest 2012 – Sunday crowd (pic by Greg aka ‘ExtraBall’)

This year, there’ll be over 50 pinballs lined up – mostly in collectors “kept lovingly at home” condition. And they’ll all be on ‘freeplay’. Plus for the first time (thanks to sponsor Highway Entertainment) there’ll be arcade machines onsite including classic cocktail (table) games and driving titles.

One of the organisers, Edy ‘Dedrok’ Stephens (whom we profiled last year) has been kind enough to share a likely list of the machines on offer…

Electromechanical machines

• Carnival Queen (Bingo)
• Bank a Ball (Gottlieb)
• Royal Guard (Gottlieb)
• All Star Baseball
• King Tut (Bally) ???
• 2001 (Gottlieb)
• Dealers Choice (Williams)
• Space Race (Recel)
• Jacks Open (Gottlieb)
• Colour Demon
• Tumbleweed

Solid State machines

• Black Jack (Bally)
• Meteor (Stern)
• Supersonic (Bally)
• Paragon (Bally)
• Countdown (Gottlieb)
• Seawitch (Stern)
• Fathom (Bally)
• Spy Hunter (Bally)
• Jungle Lord (Williams)
• Pinball Champ (Zaccaria)
• Time Machine (Zaccaria)
• Black Pyramid (Bally)
• Comet (Williams)
• World Defender (Bell Games)
• Grand Lizard (Williams)
• Police Force (Williams)
• Diner (Williams)
• BOP (Williams)

Digital Dot Matrix machines

• Bugs Bunny (Bally)
• Theatre (Bally)
• Judge Dredd (Bally)
• Last Action Hero (Data East)
• Addams Family (Bally)
• Fish Tales (Williams)
• Maverick (Data East / SEGA)
• Tommy (Data East)
• Terminator 3 (Stern)
• Sopranos (Stern)
• Sharkey’s Shootout (Stern)
• Ripleys (Stern)
• Jurassic Park (Data East)
• Medieval Madness (Williams)
• Cirqus Voltaire (Bally)
• Viper Night Drivin (Sega)
• Getaway (Williams)
• + 5 recent Stern machines from distributor AMD.

Pinfest 2012 – machines by night (pic by Chris Slevin)

Entry is a miniscule $10 per session (adults) or $20 per session for a family.

Session times:

• Saturday 9.30am to 1 pm
• Saturday 2pm to 5.30pm
• Sunday 10am to 3pm

Some of the other features of the event include sales of pinball and arcade machines, a raffle (win a Maverick pinball machine!), parts for sale, merchandise stands, and a Saturday night competition. The latter is likely to attract some really talented players.

I’ll be there Sunday – hope to see you there.

If you weren’t around for last year’s Pinfest, you’ll enjoy our lengthy exclusive feature ‘Pinfest 2012: How one mad idea came to fruition‘.