Vancouver FlipOut Pinball Expo draws bumper-to-bumper crowd
There are two rules on covering pinball tournaments as a reporter.
One: Never refer to the players as pinball wizards.
And two: Never talk to said wizards mid-game.
That was the word at the door of the Vancouver FlipOut Pinball Expo, where hundreds of proficient pinball practitioners racked up scores big and small last weekend on practice and tournament tables.
Among them was Esteban Astudillo, a competitor who said he made it to around No. 50 out of 200 entrants in the tournament.
On Sunday, Astudillo and his son Sebastian could be found playing a 1978 table called Joker Poker. Astudillo said he grew up playing classic pinball machines in Chile.
“There’s something special about classic games,” he said, explaining that newer games have great stories and are very complicated, while older ones are simpler and challenge your basic skills.
Expo attendees had all-you-canplay access to dozens of games from the oldest to the very newest. Among them were titles like Jack and Jill, a classic from 1948, and Old Chicago, a 1976 machine Brian Chelin and his son Jamie spent some playing Sunday.
“I like pinball, so I’m passing the passion on to my kids,” he explained.
Chelin said he started playing pinball when he was about five. He now owns a machine of his own manufactured in 1965 — the year he was born — that’s called Spin-A-Card.
“I like the kinetic kind of feel, action to it that you don’t get out of a video game,” he said of pinball.
But older pinball machines are not all fun and games as Warren McCulloch could tell you. He had the playfield flipped up on a Barracora machine from 1981 — which he referred to as “my baby” — and was inspecting the electrical undersides of a feature with help from a flashlight.
“This is my game and off course it’s just decided to die on me. This coil has just overheated,” he said, with exasperation in his voice.
It was a problem that could take a minute or a couple of hours to fix — with the right parts on hand, he said.
It’s also a problem that Michelle Reid and her son Lincoln may be able to avoid entirely. The pair were at the Expo to get inspiration for features on a table they’re planning to build — out of cardboard.
“This is his first time trying a real pinball game ever,” Reid said.