While we are still early in the planning stages, mark your calendars today, the 2015 NW Pinball & Arcade Show is June 5th-7th, 2015. This is one of the premiere shows in the world and many industry insiders consider the most well-run and fun. If you haven't been before, maybe it's time you booked a flight to Seattle and come and check it out!

In its 8th year, the show will draw 3,000 pinball and arcade fans to Washington State. Highlights of the show include:

-Over 400 pinball and arcade games on freeplay, including one of a kind and rarely seen in public games.

-Top guests and speakers from the pinball and arcade industry are always one of the highlights of the show.

-Multiple pinball and arcade tournaments throughout the weekend for kids, amateurs, avid tournament players and top rated IFPA pros.

-Drawings for a pinball or arcade game every day of the show (usually one brand new pin, one restored 90s pin, and two restored 80s arcade games)

-Tons of sponsors and vendors, from the biggest in the industry to local arcades, artists and parts vendors.

-World record high score attempts.

-Fairly new facility with food, beer and wine onsite. Free WiFi. Great air conditioning. Multiple bathrooms. Great lighting. Really nice convention center.

-Two nearby hotels, lots of nearby restaurants and bars, also very close to a number of great museums and other extracurricular activities.

The hotels are already booking, tickets will be for sale soon, more information will be coming in the next few weeks at: nwpinballshow.com

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Weird on the parking situation comments, I found free parking on the street two blocks up from the Tacoma Convention Center every day of the show. There are multiple large pay parking lots on two sides of the venue. Parking and driving around trying to find it was much worse at the Seattle Center, there was no free street parking and the lots were mostly full and very expensive ($25-$30 a day).

We've found the loading/unloading situation mostly great, 5 bays for big trucks and a ramp smaller trucks and trucks with trailers can drive right up. If there's things we can do to help with loading/unloading, let us know a few weeks ahead of time, we usually have a big crew of volunteers ready to help. I know the venue has stipulations about load in times, but we can work with you if you are bringing a truckload of games.

The beer and food stuff we can't change, both venues we've done the show at and every other one we looked at force you to use their vendors and don't let you bring in outside vendors. I think that's the nature of the business from their standpoint. We could try working with the hotel for food carts in their parking lot, if someone wants to volunteer to spearhead exploring this idea, I'm all for it!

Honestly, we'd love to move it back to Seattle, I've been an advocate for that all along. But we outgrew the Seattle Center space and a street change chopped the loading area so big trucks can't get in. We looked about about 15 other spaces, the only possible doable one was the Seattle Convention Center--the main drawbacks were loading/unloading (2 games at a time in elevators works for our arcade at PAX and Comicon, but not with 425 games), the ticket price would have to jump 50% to afford the venue, and parking would be far worse of a situation. Does it help knowing we've done a ton of venue research, looked at a lot of spaces, and really could not find a better option? And the option we chose is new and modern and a really nice space?

I think we found the best venue in the region for our type of show, it's a great space, but yeah, it's a 35 minute drive from Seattle. If you have suggestions of another space that's big enough, has nearby hotels, ample parking and a good loading dock for a reasonable price, we are all ears!

That's actually a possibility, we will look into travel and hotel situations there. Everyone from Seattle would complain about the drive even more though

We are gonna talk at our planning meetings about both the swap meet idea and figuring out better parking

I think actually there is great parking and multiple options for trailers, it's just that we didn't communicate it well. I'll put together a guide to the various nearby lots for both day parking and for people with trailers and have it on the website and printed out to give out on the loading dock to people self-transporting games. This part is easily solvable, there's way more parking around this venue than there was at the Seattle Center, so thanks everyone for the feedback and bringing it up!

The swap meet idea comes up every year. I think the main reasons it hasn't happened is:
-There are one or two other regular swap meet parking lot sales organized by other people, it takes the pressure off of show organizers for this event, which is already a ton of work.
-Most of the people that would participate are the same local collectors working the show. We have 100+ volunteers, pretty much every medium to big pinball and arcade collector in the area is bringing games and working the show, so we don't really have time to sit at tables selling games and parts. I wish we could do all the things!
-Northwest collectors are insane hoarders. Pinball is super popular here right now and has been for years. Games are snapped up immediately when they go up for sale. Local collectors are paying big bucks to ship games in because the local demand far outweighs the inventory.

But that said, we are definitely trying to grow the show with more vendors and more stuff to do when you're there, I definitely think we could swing it if we get the right person to organize it and can get a few people committed to bring a bunch of stuff to sell.

For the guy that found downtown Tacoma scary, man, you should have seen it 20 years ago! I think it's more empty than scary. They've built a lot of nice museums, office space, hotels, the convention center, the UW campus, etc. all there and it's full during the day, but not much happening at night. There definitely is a dead space at night between the hotels and Dorky's. Protip for late night food and beer drinkers, if you walk the opposite direction within 3 blocks is:
The Harmon Brewpub - Their own line of microbrews and great pub food. Big space and hopping all day and night.
The Swiss - Old Tacoma bar, huge space, with strong drinks, a ton of taps, good food, and live music at night in the second room.
The Rock Wood Fired Kitchen - Rock'n'roll themed pizza, burger and microbrewery place. Pinheads tookover the bar area almost the entire show. They have a bunch of crazy drinks in buckets. Now Todd MacCulloch is a big man, but he was goofy drunk after two of them.

I know, right? I just stayed at the Murano for another convention a few weeks ago and now am not sure which is better, the Harmon's gigantic mountain themed nacho platter or The Swiss' tachos, which were nachos served on tater tots instead of chips. Both went really well with a nice porter