‘It’s like zen’: Love of retro games takes over YEGPin Pinball & Arcade Expo

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The little silver ball pings wildly, taking unpredictable bounces and ruining a perfect game. But it’s the unpredictability of pinball, the fickle nature of physics and machines with quirks that keep Scott Stinchcombe and Derek Thomson coming back for more.

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The pair are organizers with YEGPin Pinball and Arcade Expo, the region’s biggest pinball convention and tournament, May 15 to 18 at Millennium Place in Sherwood Park.

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For the public it’s a chance to see a wide gamut of pinball machines and try their hand at an arcade classic. Stinchcombe, the president of the Die Hard Pinball League and the Event Director for YEGPin, says nostalgia plays a big part, the arcade generation looking to capture part of their past and relive memories of dropping quarters into machines. There’s also a younger audience who have never seen pinball wanting to try something different.

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For Stinchcombe pinball offers an ephemeral draw, a way of letting go of the outside world and focusing on the game in front of him.

“In pinball, you can play it all day for years and every time you will have a different game,” says Stinchcombe. “It’s like zen. It’s a way of letting your mind relax, focus on the ball.”

A pass to the show, starting at $30 for a one-day pass or $110 for the weekend, opens up the full play on any open machine for the entire day. No more loose change or disappointment when the quarters run out. Find a game you love? Spend the day learning the intricacies of the machine.

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Because of the physical nature of pinball, each machine plays differently, where the ball bounces differently, the paddles move slightly differently, even the launch into play a little faster or a little slower. The ghost in the machine makes each unique.

“Certain aspects just put me in a good mood. Whenever I’m having a bad day, a hard day at work, I can go down and play a good game of pinball and everything goes away,” says Thomson.

Getting those unique machines — nearly 300 in all — into Millennium Place is a major logistical challenge for Stinchcombe, Thomson and the YEGPin organizers. It requires equal measures of good planning and elbow grease, with each machine weighing anywhere from 200 to 500 pounds. Volunteers and technicians will test and repair any machines damaged during transport.

Thomson and Stinchcombe will provide almost half of the pinball machines for YEGPin, with more than 100 coming from Thomson and 50 from Stinchcombe. Another 30 collectors will bring the remainder in batches or just one or two machines.

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The full history of the hobby will be on display and available for play, from the hobby’s earliest days to modern technological marvels. The electromechanical machines from the 1960s and early 1970s are simplistic, with a single level playing field and switches that can only register points once every second or two. The golden age of pinball, the late ‘70s and early ’80s, called the solid-state era, started getting electronic scoring with a few machines capable of multi-ball play. The modern machines, heading into the LCD era that covers the newest machines, are more complex and often licensed from music groups, video games or movies.

Major pinball tournaments, such as YEGPin, feature a mix of the eras, forcing serious competitors to learn the quirks of each and become proficient in any situation.

While YEGPin is a much about drawing in new people interested in pinball, it’s also a major competition for international pinball. Somewhere between 300 and 350 people from across North America and as far away as the United Kingdom and Australia will come to town to try their hand at competition.

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Thomson, a long-time competitive pinball player who organized the first YEGPin, says strategy is important, knowing when to take safe shots and when to head for big risks that might lead to a bad bounce.

“The best analogy is poker. So you have all of the best poker players in the world. If you don’t get the cards, you don’t get the cards. It’s the same thing in competition pinball,” says Thomson. “Those are the things you learn over time, there are more skills you will learn: how to flip, how to take safe shots.”

YEGPin will run a few different tournaments. In match play, competitors will go head-to-head trying to outdo one another. They will have only 30 seconds to practice on the machine, getting a feel for the speed of the ball before they put up their best numbers. There’s also top score competitions, where competitors can buy multiple entries to really try to hone their skills on one machine and rack up high scores.

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Now in its eighth year, the competitive side has grown in importance in the pinball world. Last year’s tournament was the fourth-highest ranked competitive tournament in the world, a testament to the calibre of players making the trip and the size of the field. Tickets to the competitive side sold out in less than 24 hours.

YEGPin will also have classic arcade games on site, as well as old standbys like skee-ball and basketball machines. The focus for most people will be the pinball machines, whether it’s seasoned veterans coming to test their mettle or novices coming to learn about the hobby.

YEGPin Pinball & Arcade Expo

When: May 15 to 18

Where: Millennium Place, 2000 Premier Wway, Sherwood Park

Tickets: Starting at $30, $17.50 for youth, available at yegpin.com

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