The 2017 Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show takes place June 9th - 11th at the Tacoma Convention Center in Washington State! The show features around 400 pinball and arcade machines from the 1950s to today, tournaments, world record high score attempts, vendors, seminars, guest speakers, raffles and prizes. This convention draws thousands of collectors, players and fans of classic coin-op games.

-This is our 10th show! Find out why so many people consider this one of the best shows in the world. Over 100 volunteers help put on this yearly non-profit show and it runs quite smoothly. For our 10th show we promise to be bigger and better than ever before!

-Hundreds and hundres games on freeplay the entire weekend, all 31 hours the show is running. Last year we had around 420 games, dude! None will be pulled from the floor before the show is over and you won't see a bunch of games turned off. We have a crack team of repair techs on the floor the entire show, less than 5% of the games are ever down at once. This is a show for games and fun, we expect you to come ready to play!

-Top speakers from the industry and lots of tech seminars. And don't worry if you can't make it to every seminar or talk, they will all be filmed, we stream all our seminars live and put them on the web later for viewing. Speakers and special guests include:

Stevie Ritchie
John Trudeau
Mark Ritchie
Greg Freres
John Youssi
Jersey Jack Guarnieri
Butch Peel
David Thiel
Tim Kitzrow
Joe Balcer & Jolly (American Pinball)
Dwight Sullivan

-Vendors galore! We draw the top vendors from around the States and Canada. Seattle has a massive pinball and arcade collecting community and lots of money, if you aren't vending at our show, you are missing out on promoting and selling your products to a large audience, nearly 4,000 people attend our show over the course of the 3-day weekend.

-2 hotels within a block of the venue! The Courtyard Marriott is the main hotel across the street and the Hotel Murano is 2 blocks away. Dozens of restaurants, microbreweries and bars within a few blocks of the venue, there are 2 local barcades as well.

-Half a dozen pinball tournaments, including womens, classics, kids, rookies and the main tournament. Seattle is one of the biggest tournament towns and the Pacific Northwest region is home to many of the world's top players, including Raymond Davidson, Robert Gagno, Germain Mariolle, Zoe Vrabel, Kevin Birrell, Dave Stewart and Julie Gray. We offer all types of tournament play from kids and rookies to playing against some of the top players in the world of competitive pinball.

-Raffles! We raffle off a full-sized pinball or arcade game every day of the show in our $1 raffle, along with tons of other great prizes and game related merch. Our $20 raffle is for a brand new title, generally the latest release, in 2016 it was a Ghostbusters LE.

-Lots more goes on, including arcade tournaments, world record high score attempts, a large Kid's Zone with children's games and learning opportunities, home brew and one-of-a kind pins and vids, rare prototypes and whitewoods, debuts of the latest Stern and Dutch Pinball games, etc.

Much more info to come over the coming months, but get the dates on your calendar now, you don't want to miss the action!

Ticket and info coming soon at: http://nwpinballshow.com

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Heh, I just printed the first 2,000 flyers! Since it's the 10th show, it's gonna be bigger and have more promotion going on.

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Official Pinside event listing is up, mark that you are attending! Hotels are now booking! Guest speakers are signing on! Vendors are lining up! More info soon!

https://pinside.com/pinball/events/2017-northwest-pinball-amp-arcade-show-2017

Tickets are now for sale and hotels are booking!

http://nwpinballshow.com/tickets

Speaker Announcement: Steve Ritchie!

We are extremely happy to bring pinball legend Steve Ritchie back to our show to celebrate 10 years with us! He's been called The Master of Flow for the way shots on the games he designs feel and flow. Ritchie began his career in the 70s at Atari and became a superstar at Williams in the 80s and 90s with games like High Speed, F-14 Tomcat, Black Knight 2000, Terminator 2, The Getaway, Star Trek the Next Generation and No Fear. He was on the design team for the classic videogame Defender and did voice acting on a number of arcade games and pinball machines, including the Mortal Kombat series. Now a designer at Stern Pinball, Ritchie's resume includes some of the most popular newer pinball games like AC/DC, Star Trek, Spider-Man and Game of Thrones!

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Indeed a bummer, the Denver show is also the same weekend. I don't know who picked their date first, ours has been planned for that weekend since Summer. We are a much bigger show and it's our 10 year, sadly that may hurt the other shows in regard to vendors and speakers, but in reality it hurts all of our shows. Hopefully in 2018 we can all talk and plan better!

Speaker Announcement: John Youssi!

John Youssi is not only one of the greatest pinball illustrators of all time, but he's also designing this year's Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show poster! Youssi began is pinball career with the backglass artwork for Williams' Jokerz! in 1988 and his resume of arcade and pinball illustrations include Whirlwind, Fun House, The Addams Family, Cruisin' USA sit down drivers, White Water, Johnny Mnemonic, No Good Gofers, Revenge from Mars, Sharkey's Shootout, Monopoly, the Big Buck Hunter series and Tron. He's also done product and magazine illustration and children's books, as well as IGT slot machines. Youssi's artwork has been iconic and rich with colors and content, we are excited to see what he does for this year's show poster.

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Speaker Announcement: Mark Ritchie!

The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show is happy to welcome Mark Ritchie to our 10th show! Mark began his pinball and game design career at Atari, working on games like Hercules and Superman, then really hit his stride at Williams designing games like Taxi, Diner, Sorcerer, Road Kings, Big Guns, Fish Tales and Indiana Jones. He then put in time at Capcom (King Pin, Pinball Magic, Big Bang Bar), Incredible Technologies (working on touchscreen games and helping produce Big Buck Hunter), and has been working at Raw Thrills with Eugene Jarvis for the past decade developing video games!

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The first big planning meeting for the show is this Saturday, if any locals are interested in attending, PM me for details. It will be in Snohomish.

Bummer, this is going to be the year to go since it's our 10th year. We have more speaker announcements coming soon and some very cool game debuts and other stuff planned.

Check out this year's poster, designed by John Youssi!

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Just got the artwork. We will have 11x17 and large format posters at the show and will probably have them available online after. As well as tshirts and other merch. This is the year we need to get our online store going, we have a bunch of the older posters available and a lot of people have been asking about them.

I just moved and all my games are still broken down and wrapped up in my new garage. A friend was joking that they are all ready for the show early. I definitely plan on sending a bunch of games this year, I have 4 months to get them all dialed in great. We will be starting to host repair parties around Puget Sound next month too.

Speaker Announcement: John Trudeau!

The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show is happy to welcome pinball game designer John Trudeau to our 10th show! You've seen John's work design work on Sterns newest games like Ghostbusters, WWE Wrestlemania and Mustang, as well as on tons of older great games including The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot, Flinstones, Black Rose, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Judge Dredd, Genesis and Congo. He also did some of those funky 80s games like Hollywood Heat, TX-Sector, Night Moves, Robo War and Excalibur. Trudeau has been around for a long time designing games and his latest Ghostbusters has been a huge success.

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Speaker Announcement: Dennis Nordman!
Dennis Nordman has been at a number of Northwest Pinball and Arcade Shows over the years and in fact came up with the plan for Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons with Greg Freres at one of our past shows and debuted the game a few years ago here. Other games Dennis has designed include Pirates of the Caribbean, White Water, the Elvira pinball machines Elvira and the Party Monsters and Stared Stiff, Wheel of Fortune, Demolition Man, Indianapolis 500, Dr. Dude, Party Zone and Blackwater 100. Dennis partnered with Greg Freres in 2009 to form Whizbang Pinball where they designed the Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons, later released by Stern and released as Can Crusher with different artwork. He contributed to the Wizard of Oz pinball machine that Jersey Jack put out and has also been designed Lexy Lightspeed for Multimorphic.
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Added over 7 years ago: Update: Dennis Nordman will be unable to speak at this year's show

Added over 7 years ago: Dennis Nordman will no longer be able to speak at this year's show. Sorry!

Speaker Announcement: Greg Freres!

Greg Freres is an artist and graphic designer with over 35 years experience in the pinball industry. Freres did the artwork or was on the design team for some great 80s games like Fathom, Frontier, Escape from the Lost World, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Strange Science, Speakeasy and Vector. In the 90s he worked on Dr. Dude, Medieval Madness, Scared Stiff, Party Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation. And most recently he co-created Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons, worked on Wizard of Oz, and has been working at Stern on games like Star Trek, Mustang and Game of Thrones.

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I live in Seattle and would love for it to be in the city proper, but there are no spaces we can do there now! The old space was too small and was rebuilt to be the new KEXP studios and live space, plus the hotels and parking in that area now cost a lot more than in Tacoma. People forget how much Seattle has grown, changed and become way more expensive and less car friendly since the old days of the Seattle Center show.

The Tacoma Convention Center is a killer space with good climate and lighting control, it's new and way bigger and nicer. And there is lots of free and cheap parking, multiple hotels, some great bars and breweries within walking distance, a 5 slot loading dock for our trucks with an additional ramp for self-delivery, etc. If you fly in, you can get there and checked into a hotel faster than you could at the old spot. The show will never be back in Seattle, there are no places that could host it now, if it moves again, it would likely end up at a place like the Everett Event Center and the commute from the airport would be twice as long. I get it, I live in Seattle and loved it there, but the city just doesn't have a location we could do it at.

FYI, from my home in Maple Leaf, it would take 40 minutes to drive and find $20 parking 8 blocks from the Seattle Center. It takes 45 to Tacoma and find free street parking 2 blocks from the venue. Just don't leave between 3-6pm on Thursday or Friday when traffic is bad, come down between 9am-3pm or after 6pm, then the drive ain't bad at all.

Here's a great Google map we put together of restaurants and bars around the Tacoma Convention Center:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1OrjJwS2B2nib_C3kKD6wMewvm0o&ll=47.24403348428594%2C-122.44671926329687&z=13

I usually hit both some time during the weekend, the Harmon Brewery as well. I've had good service at the Swiss when there isn't live music going on, Friday and Saturday nights not so much, but for lunch or dinner, good bar type food and strong drinks.

My current favorite Tacoma places are about a 5-10 minute drive from the venue, The Valley and the Eleven Eleven. Both have great sandwiches, lots of beer on tap, and a good vibe. For beer lovers, the Red Hot on 6th has a massive line up and does a bunch of great hot dogs. Within walking distance across the freeway bridge down by the glass museum is a place on the water called Social that is a bit fancier, but has a great happy hour, we sit outside there in the sun by the water and boats and eat happy food and pitchers of Sangria.

It's typically a great show to sell a machine at, but I personally think there are a lot more buyers than sellers. Seattle is a pretty wealthy town, there are tons of collectors here, so the vendors do extremely well at this show selling parts, and the 30-40 games that are for sale on the floor and on the Buy/Sell Bulletin Board in the lobby generally all sell. Lots of first time buyers come to this show. If you are looking to buy at the show, I'd follow the "Pacific Northwest Buyers/Sellers Thread" in the two months before the show, because a lot of deals are lined up by folks ahead of time so they know what games and parts to bring with them to the show.

This is the place I think more people should check out during the show, especially if the weather is nice again, because you can eat outside here: http://www.thesocialbarandgrill.com/

Their happy hour is 4-5pm and 10pm-close and features $10 pitchers of sangria as well as:
Seaweed Salad | $6
Fried Garlic Rice Balls | $5
Sautéed Mushrooms | $5
Chicken Donburi Bowl | $6
Ahi Wontons | $5
Fried Calamari | $5
Hood Canal Oysters
Smoked | $6 Fried | $6
Ahi Tuna Poke* Served Raw | $7
Tacos | $6
Roasted Chicken, Pork Belly or Brisket
Blackened Rockfish Tacos | $7

The NW Pinball & Arcade Show is a proud sponsor of the IFPA WA State Pinball Championships at the 8 Bit in Renton today! Come watch the action as our state's top players compete or compete yourself in a lower stakes Match Play pinball tournament open to anyone! The Match Play tournament is at 2:15pm and is one of the region's largest match play tournaments. $10 Entry, $150 guaranteed first prize.

More details: https://www.facebook.com/events/273938659673488/