TACOMA, Wash. — Every year, during the first weekend in June, The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show turns the Greater Tacoma Convention Center into the largest arcade in the Northwest.
Fans call themselves "pinheads" and thousands pay up to $150 each to get inside the convention center where all games are set to free play.
"Every year there are new pinball machines," show president Mike Lorrain said. "There are a number of companies that are still making games today. Some people are surprised at that. And so this year the big game is Pulp Fiction.
"And everybody wants to get a shot at it, but there's only five games that they've made so far. They call them the prototypes and so right now people come and they play it. And if they like it they can order it."
The huge room roars with the buzz of machines. Outside, the man who invented Q*Bert stands on stage, discussing how his iconic 80's game came to be.
"It sort of slowly filtered through the country in 1983 and was almost like an instant hit," Warren Davis said. "It was just astonishing because I was still anonymous, which was fine by me, but this thing that I created was known and loved by so many. And it was a strange, strange feeling."
Everything old is new again. The number of pinball competitions, like the one here, has increased five-fold in the past decade. Carnation's Max Stewart is competing against some top talent for serious cash.
"Ashley Weaver went to the world championships recently," she said. "We've got Hannah Hatch over there, who used to be Washington's top player and is gunning for that position again."
Stewart said even when she's competing, she's playing for fun.
"You're never going to play the same game twice," she said. "There's always going to be some physics working against you, a different machine, different rules. So it's a lot of variety."
Both kinetic. And chaotic. There's no quenching this passion for pinball.
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