TEXAS PINBALL FESTIVAL 2019

The Texas Pinball Festival is back at the Embassy Suites in Frisco, and so are we.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon – a day before the show opens – so we can bring you all the details from the set-up through to the tear down, and we will be updating this report frequently so we can bring you all the events as they happen.

The TPF covers several rooms with the main hall being by far the largest.

On Thursday, set-up was progressing steadily on the show floor.

Machines are brought in through the rear loading doors, where a crew organises the unloading and directs owners to the appropriate staging point before games are taken to their spot in the hall.

The staging area is even more important at the close of the show when everyone wants to load-up and get away as quickly as possible.

Inside the main hall there is one stand-out stall, and that’s Marco Specialties’ Munster’s display.

To go with The Munsters pinball, there are two very special vehicles.

Elsewhere in the hall, Kingpin Amusements are featuring games from multiple manufacturers.

The multiple tournaments held at the Texas Pinball Festival usually occupy an area at the front of the hall. This year, however, they have moved into a dedicated tournament room opposite the main hall.

Friday is the first day of the show with the doors opening to the public at 5pm. Before that though, there was plenty of activity in the main hall and outside, as more games and stands were set up

Inside, Suncoast Pinball were showing two examples of their upcoming Cosmic Carnival game.

The game was flipable and played a music track, but there were no rules or display effects on the backbox LCD other than one static screen.

The game features artwork by Dirty Donny on the playfield, cabinet and backbox.

Further into the hall, Marco Specialties were making final preparations, as were other vendors.

Although the show didn’t open until 5pm on Friday, at 3pm there was a special VIP meet-and-greet session with two of the show’s special guests – Pat Priest and Butch Patrick from The Munsters, who were joined by members of the Stern Pinball design team from their The Munsters pinball.

The Stern team comprised John Borg, Dwight Sullivan, Jerry Thompson and Christopher Franchi.

There was a long line of VIP pass buyers waiting for their opportunity to meet the team and get their special commemorativeThe Munsters poster signed.

Over in the tournaments room, things were getting busy as qualifying for the tournaments was in full swing.

As the 5pm opening loomed, the lobby outside the main hall was packed with show guests anxious to get in.

There was also a long line of visitors waiting to buy or collect pre-purchased tickets.

While they were waiting, there were vendors of hot food, snacks and drinks in the lobby, as well as food trucks outside.

Once the doors opened, it was only a matter of a few minutes before most of the machines were being played, while queues soon built up on the most popular new titles.

The seminar schedule began at 6pm, with Martin Ayub of Pinball News and Jonathan Joosten of Pinball Magazine hosting their popular So You Think You Know Pinball? quiz in the hotel’s bar area.

The quiz asked a series of questions with two possible answers. Contestants were asked to move to one side of the floor if they thought the first answer was correct or the opposite side if they thought the second answer was the right one.

Those who chose wisely stayed in, while those who were wrong sat down and waited for the next round. As soon as there were only a few contestants remaining they all got to pick prize tickets at random, with the tickets relating to one of the prizes on the long table of goodies.

Martin and Jonathan presented numerous prizes kindly donated by American Pinball, Spooky Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Stern Pinball, Multimorphic, Christopher Franchi, Suncoast Pinball, Pinball News and Pinball Magazine.

Then at 7pm the seminars moved to their dedicated room at the back of the main hall as Jersey Jack Pinball took to the stage.

Jack Guarnieri was joined by John-Paul de Win, Butch Peel and Eric Meunier to talk about their latest games and answer questions from the audience.

After Jack introduced the team members, Eric spoke about his experiences designing his first game – Pirates of the Caribbean – for the company. 

Jack then turned to The Wizard of Oz and said it was still his favourite game because it held such a special place in his and the company’s history. He then unveiled the new Yellow Brick Road Limited Edition model.

The Yellow Brick Road Limited Edition of The Wizard of Oz is only available through distributors and is, Jack said, designed for those who haven’t bought a The Wizard of Oz yet.

The cost is $11,500 which includes art blades, yellow sparkle powder-coating on all armour, wireforms and on the apron and the playfield itself. 

Only 200 games are planned to be made this year, while the total could be up to 500.  Jack said he had renewed the The Wizard of Oz licence for another couple of years, and done the same with Pirates of the Caribbean too although there are no current plans to build more of that model.

JP spoke about the new artwork, how they were able to use more characters and add the interior art blades.  The Wizard of Oz: Yellow Brick Road Limited Edition is in production now and shipping next week.  Jack said from now on he doesn’t want to announce any games until they are available to buy.

Jean-Paul de Win then talked about how he came to work for Jack, and then played a showreel of his pinball work which is also viewable on his website.

He also showed the design progression of the graphical interface for
The Wizard of Oz, explaining how the scores, objectives and progress so far are conveyed to the player.

Questions were then taken from the audience about the differences between The Wizard of Oz: Yellow Brick Road Limited Edition and the Emerald City Limited Edition. The new model has Radcals for cabinet artwork instead of direct printing and has the new boardset and cabinet design as used on Dialed In! and Pirates of the Caribbean. 

The company redesigned a few of the playfield mechanisms to make them more reliable and easier to service but the new model doesn’t have winged monkey mech due to reliability issues.

The next seminar began at 8pm and featured Ryan Claytor and Nick Baldridge who were speaking about the creation of the new Coin-Op Carnival publication.

They were joined on the stage by pinball historian Gordon Hasse who spoke about the history of coin-operated machine publications, from the 1920 through to the present day.

Gordon spoke about – and showed examples of – coin-op publications through the decades, including titles such as Automatic Age which ran from 1925-1945, Automatic World which was published in the ’30s.  He also featured Billboard from the 1950s, Marketplace in the ’60s, continuing on to Playmeter, Replay and many more.

He then turned to more pinball-focused publications, including hobby and pinball association magazines of which there have been many, including numerous short-lived titles.

Ryan then introduced himself and the Coin-Op Carnival publication he has created with Nick Baldridge.  Ryan is a comic artist, university lecturer, pinball fan, and has worked on a number of pinball plastic reproductions.

Nick introduced himself.  Nick runs the For Amusement Only pinball podcast of which there are more than 400 episodes.  He also created the Multi-Bingo game which combines the gameplay of more than 100 different bingo games into one cabinet. The game is playable on the pair’s stand in the main hall.

Ryan explained how the two of them met and how Nick helped Ryan rebuild his Swinger EM pinball. They and their families became friends, taking vacations together which is where they came up with the idea of Coin-Op Carnival.

Nick talked about the common categories of content in each issue of the intended four-issue run, before Ryan showed pages from the publication and talked about the Papercraft models included in each issue, allowing buyers to build 7%-scale models of the games featured.

The duo then covered the production process, from the interview with the game designer – Wayne Neyens in the first issue – to the drawing and colouring of the cartoons which illustrate the interview.

They closed by discussing their two-yearly release schedule, saying they felt the two years between issues is a realistic timescale given their other lives, careers and other coin-op commitments.

Friday’s final seminar was at 9pm and was hosted by Stern Pinball duo Steve Ritchie and Mike Vinikour.

Steve welcomed everyone to the seminar before introducing Mike Vinikour who described his history in pinball and his current role at Stern Pinball.  Mike said he has known Steve for 25 years, first when they worked together at Williams, and now at Stern.

Steve denied rumours that he is retiring – he loves his job, he said, and loves working with his crew at Stern.  He said his team now is just as capable as they ever were at Williams.

Steve said he couldn’t talk about his next game, other than to say it will have six balls, will be made in three models, and will have two or more flippers.

Steve related how he got into the pinball business at Atari where he was working in the video game division.  He said it’s been a great business, and pinball is continuing to expand with more leagues, tournaments and shows. 

Mike related how he got into pinball as well, from spending all his time as a kid at an arcade where he always played pinball to some extent, even during the video game boom.

During the question-and-answer session, Steve spoke about how is it different designing games now compared to his time at Williams. He said it is more difficult in some ways, with more models of each title to make and more decisions now that there are so many options in different devices, RGB LEDs, etc.

Asked what his favourite feature or shot was on any of his game designs, Steve cited the innovation of Lane Change which first appeared on Firepower.

Steve also told the audience how he usually makes two whitewoods of each game.  Mike also advised that there is no timescale on when Stern games will have the online connectivity announced by George Gomez, although it is coming.

Asked what he did between leaving Williams after No Fear and his joining Stern Pinball, Steve said he saw the writing on the wall at Williams when they were concentrating on slots.  He joined Atari video games to work on racing games.  Steve called Gary and asked if they had a place for him at Stern and Gary said “Yes”.

Finally, Steve confirmed that both Star Trek and Game of Thrones were intended to have LCD screens when they were first designed, but the technology and skillsets were not there yet.

Before the seminars began on Saturday, there was the regular swap meet organised by the DFW Pinball and Arcade Club. As usual, this was held in the parking lot at the back of the Convention Center.

Anyone could turn up, unload their car or truck, and start selling.

Saturday’s seminars began at 1pm as Damian Hartin of Haggis Pinball talks about the company and the creation of their first two game, one of which – Celts – was showing in prototype form on their stand in the main hall.

Damian was interviewed by Martin Robbins from the Head2Head pinball podcast and started by asking why Damian and business partner, Blair Gowans, had decided to make pinball machines. The name ‘Haggis’ is a combination of his and Blair’s surnames.

He said he liked a challenge and got to that point in life and his level of interest in pinball where it seems like a good idea, although he thought it would be easier than it turned out to be. He has been documenting the progress on Facebook with videos on his YouTube channel which proved to be a motivator in making sure they hit certain milestones. Documenting everything has brought amazing support, feedback and encouragement from the pinball community, he said.

Haggis Pinball’s first game was called Wraith. It was originally called Ghost, and was going to be a single-level playfield which would take six months to complete, but soon developed into something more which would not be ready for this year’s show. They do plan to have Wraith at the 2020 Texas Pinball Festival though.

Celts is a new game which they built in eight weeks once they decided not to bring Wraith to the show. They were determined to bring a machine, having already made that commitment.

Damian said he thought the Celts title would immediately suggest a number of ideas and characters. He said he has cut almost 30 different whitewoods in developing the layout.

Having built the prototype in Australia, he disassembled it, put the parts in boxes, travelled from Australia to Dallas, got the use of an old Bally Star Trek cabinet, and rebuilt the game starting on Wednesday night.

He said the hardest part of the game design and build is the geometry – how to build ball guides so the ball smoothly goes where he wants it to go without any sharp angles or bumps.

When looking for an electronics system, he discovered P-ROC and has been using this along with the Mission Pinball framework which provides the basic functions to detect switches, fire solenoids and define rules and scoring.

Damian he would be happy to build production machines himself while the numbers are manageable, and would have a build-to-order system. He thought it would take approximately a week to build each machine.

The second seminar of Saturday was by Gerry Stellenberg from Multimorphic.

Gerry began by asking the audience how much innovation there has been in pinball over the past few decades.

After asking them to name any innovations he concluded nothing much has changed since the 1990s, saying this is due to prices going up and people still buying them in ever greater numbers, giving no incentive to change.

He said it has become a battle to get the most popular theme, and that games don’t need to be fun to play any more.

Multimorphic, he said, is innovating; firstly with their technologies of P-ROC/P3-ROC, software frameworks, online forums, and then with the P³ Pinball Platform.

Gerry explained the innovative features found in the P³ – dynamic & interactive playfield artwork, a rapid-fire multi-position ball trough, a multi-purpose set of walls & scoops, nudge detection which can be integrated into gameplay, modular swappable upper playfields, magnetic artwork, online player profiles, and a new optional backbox display.

Gerry then demonstrated the Hoopin’ It Up! free game which is automatically available to all existing P³ owners with the Lexy Lightspeed upper playfield.

Finally, Gerry talked about the status of the company – how they have fulfilled all pre-orders and are now building games to order. They moved to new production facility in Round Rock where they are ramping up their game assembly capabilities.

The next seminar brought onto the stage four members of the Stern Pinball team to talk about the making of their The Munsters game.

The team introduced themselves by showing a slideshow of pictures, starting with John’s desk with all the Munsters episodes on DVD so he could shotlist it and make notes of the timings of useful clips.

Chris showed a montage of images featuring his pinball artwork from various different games.

Jerry then did the same with a shot of his first new-in-box machine, The Simpsons Pinball Party, and pictures with Adam West, Steve Kordek, Norm Clarke, Ed Robertson and more.

Dwight also had a similar montage which was followed by another from Greg Freres.

The team revealed how Michael Airington is one of the voice actors in the game, while Gale Van Cott does the voice of Marilyn.

John then showed pictures of the Raven molding which will appear on the game’s topper. John got to voice the Raven.

A couple of montages then followed, showing John along with the whole team working on his first game, Star Wars in 1992, leading to later pictures with Dirty Donny and Dave Christensen, as well as pictures from the Stern Pinball factory and assorted pinball shows.

John then talked through a series of pictures showing how the The Munsters game changed from the initial playfield and mech design through to the production version, along with John’s initial ideas for features and artwork, and how they ended up.

Questions from the audience then followed, which included:

• Were there originally drop targets at the side rather than standups? – No, not really.
• What Easter eggs did Chris Franchi include in the artwork? – Several, mostly under the plastics but some more visible such as John and Dwight on the playfield just above the bottom apron.
• Any secret flipper codes? – CF5 (BLLLRLLLLLLRLLLLLRR, where B=both flipper buttons, L=left & R=right) brings up Christopher Franchi’s picture on the display.

The next seminar came from the Circus Maximus team of James Loflin, Paul Kiefert and Jimmy Lipham.

The three team members introduced themselves before Paul brought everyone up to date with progress on their Python’s Pinball Circus project.

He covered the background to the game’s creation, why it never entered production, and what the Circus Maximus team have been doing to make it a better-playing game.

James talked about why they decided to make the Kingpin remake before returning to finish Pinball Circus, while Paul detailed some of the challenges of working with both existing legacy and new engineering drawings which have to be made for every part in the game before it can be fabricated.

Jimmy explained how they are producing two sets of rules for the Kingpin game – one using the original emulated code, and the other being the team’s version with a much more extensive feature-set.

Jimmy described some of the problems implementing an old, poorly-documented system on modern hardware using LEDs instead of incandescent lamps and how pre-warming of lamps built-in to the software caused flashers to come on unexpectedly.

James said they are determined not to take pre-order money and to fund start-up manufacturing themselves. To help they have been selling a limited edition run of 250 Kingpin translites, signed by Mark Ritchie and Stan Fukuoka, with a guaranteed place in line to buy a Kingpin game.

The original Kingpin artwork is going to be changed by Stan to brighten it up and make it less gloomy, while the cabinet side grey colour might be changed too.

They are also selling limited edition artwork prints to help raise funds.
Finally, Jimmy announced that Pinball Inc. had acquired the Kingpin trademark from Planetary Pinball for use in pinball.

The final conventional seminar of the Texas Pinball Festival 2019 was hosted by the American Pinball team who were there to talk about their Oktoberfest game.

Before they began though, American Pinball served free food and drinks for all seminar attendees.

When most people had their food, the team of Joe Balcer, Josh Kugler, Jim Thornton and Dan Selakovich began their presentation.

The team started with their version of the game Jeopardy, where the answer to a question was shown on the screen and the audience had to guess the matching question.

The first related to Oktoberfest, as Joe talked about what had changed on the game between the reveal of the prototype at Pinball Expo until production, namely the scoop, the upper flipper, the opening shot and the right ramp.

Joe said he had been wanting to make an Oktoberfest-themed game since the mid-’90s as he thinks it is a timeless theme which isn’t all about excessive drinking but is a family event which, by the addition of the ‘Pinball on Tap’ to the name, would be a year-round title.

Josh said he thought Joe was mad originally but came around to the theme by stressing the carnival nature and the family elements. He agreed that it is a timeless theme, as people will still be celebrating Oktoberfest in 100 years’ time.

Talking about the new factory we previewed last October, Jim said the new 35,000 sq. ft. building will have room for three lines – one for the main game, one for smaller runs, and one for other products.

Josh said the company has replaced the power supply in all new games shipping from the factory and solutions are available for those using the old power supply.

Asked about what the third line might be, Josh said the company plans to build redemption games and also do contract manufacturing for anyone looking to build their game but without the means of building it.

In a straw poll of the four titles recently registered as trademarks by API, Sherlock Holmes was by far the most popular choice for a future game, with Robin Hood a long way behind, followed by Poker Run and Valkyries.

After American Pinball, Bowen Kerins took to the seminar room floor to demonstrate how to play pinball in a new version of the hugely popular challenge he set himself last year.

In 2018 the aim was to complete reactor 9 on Spooky Pinball’s Total Nuclear Annihilation. This year he was aiming to complete the Billion Dollar Babies wizard mode on the Spooky Pinball game Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle. Bowen works for Spooky Pinball on game and rule development, so has a special insight into how the features work.

In the event, although Bowen did indeed reach the wizard mode, he narrowly missed out on completing it to get the additional one billion points.

After playing for over an hour and completing all the game’s features except that one, his score was just over 500 million, so the one billion extra bonus would have been a huge boost.

After a long day watching, photographing and recording the seminars, we took the opportunity to join a large group of fellow pinheads who had left to go to a local BBQ restaurant, Hard Eight to get some dinner.

As we left, an autograph session was taking place in the hallway outside the seminar room featuring show guest from the pinball world. We also ran into Steve Ritchie, Mark Ritchie and Trudy Ritchie talking with special show guest John Rhys-Davies, the actor who, amongst his many movie roles played Gimli and voiced Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings, and played Sallah in the original Indiana Jones trilogy. He also did voice callout work for Williams for the Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure and Stern for The Lord of the Rings pinballs

While we were out eating, a new awards show took place in the seminar room.

The website This Week in Pinball had held a reader poll for the top games, people, companies or publications in a number of categories, and these awards were presented on Saturday evening.

You can watch the awards in this video of the live stream:

Now we’ll turn to the main hall and look at all the vendors, manufacturers and businesses represented, along with some interesting machine exhibits. Note: We’ll be updating this with many more pictures and details over the next day or so.

At the entrance are several banks of pinballs. On the left are some from the DFW Pinball & Arcade Club.

Directly in front of guests as the entered were two rows of beautiful machines starting with a stalwart of the TPF – Safecracker. This is filled with TPF-specific tokens for players to win, although this year’s tokens didn’t arrive in time for the show, so last year’s tokens were used instead. Regardless, playing the game and winning a TPF token is a rite-of-passage for all regular attendees.

Joining DFW Pinball & Arcade Club on the front wall were three vendors; George Sedlak Studios, Tornado Terry’s and PinSound.

In front of Tornado Terry’s was a block of vendor stands fronted by Suncoast Pinball.

John Rhys-Davies had a stand behind Suncoast Pinball but spent much of his time at a table in the corridor next to the main hall entrance.

The next vendor booth belonged to ColorDMD who were showing their 192×64 large displays for Sega pinballs Maverick, Baywatch, Batman Forever and Frankenstein alongside Jackbot and Game of Thrones regular-size displays. However, by the time we got there the larger model had been packed away.

Next door was a stand promoting Diamond Jim Taylor’s magic teachings, along with a suitable machine.

Running down the row of vendor booths in the next row, we start with Free Play Arcade who have locations in Arlington, Denton and Richardson.

At the end of this row was the traditional History of Pinball exhibit, featuring pre-war and early flipperless pinballs, many of which used impressive mechanisms to provide animated playfield features without the use of electricity.

A set of five Star Trek machines covered the Bally, Data East, Williams and Stern eras, as well as the custom Mirror Universe game.

The next block of vendors started with Lermods’ range of pinball add-ons.

Starting the long row of vendors along the right wall was Starship Fantasy with their large selection of pinball ramps, backglasses and playfields.

The full list of vendors and exhibitors at the Texas Pinball Festival 2019 is:

• 1984 Arcade
• American Pinball
• Arcade Factory
• Arcade Fixit
• Armadillo Aleworks
• ArkLaTex
• Artfroh
• Back Alley Creations
• Bob Herbison
• BOS Pinball
• Brad Albright
• Bubba Flint
• Butch Patrick
• Chicago Gaming
• Chris Cramer
• Chris Munro
• Circus Maximus
• Coin-Op Carnival
• CoinTaker
• ColorDMD
• Dallas Makers Space
• Delicious Doom (corridor)
• DFW Pinball & Arcade Club
• Diamond Jim Tyler
• Double Danger
• Eight Bit Dreams (corridor)
• Flip N Out Pinball
• Free Play Arcade
• Fun!
• Gameroom Mods
• George Sedlak Studios
• Haggis Pinball
• John Greatwich
• John Rhys-Davies
• Kimballs Pinballs
• Kingpin
• Laseriffic
• Lermods
• Lighted Pinball Mods
• LM Amusements (corridor)
• Marco Specialties
• Mezel Mods
• MI Pinball Refinery
• Mirco Playfields
• Multimorphic
• National Video Game Museum
• Ozarks Pinball Syndicate
• Pat Priest
• Pinball Art
• Pinball in the Basement
• Pinball Pimp
• Pinball Pro
• Pinball Wheezer
• PinGraffix
• Pinport
• PinSound
• Pin Stadium
• Queen City Pinball
• Regeration Arcade Bar
• Retrocade
• Rusty Key
• Scorbit
• Snag A Game
• Solid State Pinball
• Spooky Pinball
• Starship Fantasy
• Suncoast Pinball
• Super Skillshot
• Tilt Graphics
• Titan Pinball
• Tornado Terry’s
• Total Pinball Restoration
• Virtual Game World (corridor)
• VP Cabs
• Wizard Enterprises

There are no seminars on Sunday, so the Seminar Room was opened up and used to present the closing ceremony which began at 2:30pm.

After thanking all the machine donors, vendors and visitors, show co-organiser, Ed Vanderveen, drew several names out of a box to award cash prizes as a thank you for bringing machines to play.

Then tournaments organiser, Colin McAlpine, presented trophies to the top players in the Wizards Tournament main and classics divisions.

The winner of the main division was Raymond Davidson.

The winner of the classics division was Bob Matthews.

First, the Best-in-Show awards were presented to the winners in fourteen different categories. One or two runners-up were announced, followed by the winner who also received a cash prize along with their plaque and rosette.

The winners were:

Best Classic Arcade Video Game Winner: Kevin Moore for Computer Space Runners-Up: Jeremy/April Pruitt, Joe “Hollywood” Reyna

Best Custom Arcade Video Game Winner: Rodney Black for Morpheus Runner-Up: Tornado Terry’s

Best Pre-1960 Game Winner: Jeff Frick for Army vs. Navy Runners-Up: Bill Wightman, Barry Posterick

Best 1960s Game Winner: Chris Schnick for Cross Town Runners-Up: Ken Head, Bob Herbison

Best 1970s Electromechanical Winner: Sam Thompson for Twin Win Runners-Up: Ken Head/Kevin Moore, Bill Wightman

Best 1970s Solid-State Winner: Jeff Bulger for Tri Zone Runners-Up: Ron Pennington/Chad Lower

Best 1980s Winner: Ron Pennington for Galaxy Runners-Up: Bobby Niefer, Bill Stahly

Best 1990s Winner: Lonny Payne for Harley Davidson Runners-Up: James Alexander, Adam Streeter

Best ’00s Winner: Garrett Hlavinka for The Lord of the Rings Runner-Up: Kim Keist

Best Modern Winner: Kim Keist for Iron Maiden Runner-Up: Jean Caps

Best Original Winner: Howard Isaacson for Paradise Runners-Up: Randolf Kubler, Pat Danis

Best Restoration Winner: Aaron Beasecker/Bill Wightman for Bonanza Runners-Up: Bobby Niefer, Ken Kemp/Marcus Trevino

Best Custom Pinball Winner: Nick Baldridge for Multi-Bingo Runners-Up: Colin Dowling, Zitt Zitterkof

Grand Champion Winner: Kevin Moore for Tales of the Arabian Nights

To close events at the Texas Pinball Festival, the draw was made for the grand prize. Entries were put into a wire drum, given several spins, and one winning ticket was pulled out at random.

There’s no doubt that this was the biggest and most successful Texas Pinball Festival to date. The move of the tournaments into their own room released additional space in the main hall for more machines and vendors.

This extra space was needed due to the two The Munsters cars and the autograph desks which clearly themed the show around the show and Stern Pinball’s latest release.

The move of the tournaments did give them their own (somewhat limited) space in which they could keep their own hours, but the side-effect of that was to remove the competitive events from the eyes of the general public, making tournament play less inclusive than before.

The seminars schedule featured all the major players from the big manufacturers as well as a few more esoteric talks. The number of seminars felt about right – covering the latest news without being too exhausting.

With the lead time to secure special guests this was always going to be a The Munsters-themed show, and it did an exceptional job at that. But there was one elephant in the room which simultaneously felt inevitable and yet remained a little odd.

That was Stern Pinball’s announcement of their next title just hours after the Texas Pinball Festival closed on Sunday. The designer and other members of the design team were at the show, but couldn’t talk about the game everyone knew they had been working on. That said, the fact that all the The Munsters machines at the show were pre-sold and the length of the lines which formed at the VIP meet-and-greet showed there was still huge enthusiasm for the residents of 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The Texas Pinball Festival returns to the Embassy Suites in Frisco on 27th-29th March, 2020. Hotel rooms at the Embassy Suites sell out very quickly, so if you are planning to attend you should book yours as soon as they become available on the show website. If you do miss out, not all is lost as there are several alternative hotels available within walking distance.

We will be back next year, but in the meantime here’s our extensive, in-depth look around the 2019 show in our exclusive Forty-Five Minute Tour.