UKPINFEST 2019

August in the UK means it’s time for our national pinball show held in the familiar surroundings of the Mercure Daventry Court hotel, and Pinball News is here to report live on events across the three days.

‘Familiar’ because we’ve been here before, first in 2010 and 2011 (as the Barcelo Daventry), then again in 2012, 2013 and 2014 (Daventry Court Hotel), and more-recently last year (Mercure Daventry Court). The first five visits were for the UK Pinball Party, but last year a new event called UKPinfest took over the reins of the national UK pinball show.

UKPinfest is run by Philip Murphy who also runs a wider-scoped show in the north-east of England called the North East Retro Gaming show (or NERG for short).

Tickets for UKPinfest cost £20 ($24.50/€22.10) a day for Saturday and Sunday (plus booking fee) or £35 for both days. Kids tickets were £5 less per day. In addition, a VIP pass was available for £50 ($61.30/€55.30) covering both days as well as exclusive Friday and Saturday evening sessions. For everyone else the show closed at 6pm on Saturday and 4:30pm on Sunday.

UKPinfest is held at a hotel, so naturally accommodation was available. Rooms were priced at £60 (single) or £70 (double/twin) per night, including breakfast.

The Mercure Daventry Court is a mid-level 4-star hotel featuring a pool, jacuzzi, sauna and fitness equipment, as well as a bar and restaurant. It is in a somewhat remote location on the outskirts of Daventry, which meant a decent walk to get to alternative eateries but plenty of free on-site car/van parking.

With pinball folk having a reputation for being somewhat thirsty, the beer selection was an important part of the show mix, as is somewhere nice to enjoy it. Fortunately, there were some drinks specials for the show, with several beers and ciders being available for £3.50 per pint, which is not bad at all for a hotel bar. The weather also cooperated in making sure the outside seating area could be enjoyed.

The show is held in the Danetree Suite which is a large hall capable of being sub-divided into three smaller halls. There is a stage at the far end and a second larger bar along the side featuring the same selection of drinks as the bar in the reception area.

As you can see, the number of machines is somewhat reduced from the high points of the UK Pinball Party, but as more machines arrived later on Friday the room began to fill up.

In front of the stage are machines for the main tournament, qualifying for which is being run on Saturday and Sunday morning.

The tournament used the Drains Tournament Manager (DTM) software to track the scores and generate the standings.

There will be other tournaments held around the show hall at various times during both days.

The Northern Lights Pinball Addams Family Challenge shocker chair is here too, to offer an alternative way to play the classic game. You can read all about it in the Pinball News article here.

In addition to the tournaments, the finals of the UK Pinball League will also be held here at UKPinfest. The trophies for this and the other tournaments were set up on a table in the main tournament area.

There are a few side-rooms which are usually available for any show-related activities such as seminars or demonstrations. There were no seminars scheduled for this year, but you never know who might make an appearance.

On Friday afternoon, the last of the machines were being set up ahead of the opening for the VIP session that evening.

Power can often be an issue at pinball shows, but hopefully UKPinfest has this fully-covered.

The VIP session began at 7pm on Friday, giving those who purchased the special pass access to the machines before general opening on Saturday morning.

When the first day of the show drew to a close around 11pm everyone was ushered out, with many heading to the main bar only to find it had been closed. Apparently, the hotel manager thought there were not enough people using it, so they shut it down and locked it up, even though everyone was in the show hall using the bar there until 11pm. Not that that prevented several guests staying up into the small hours of Saturday morning.

For others though, after breakfast in the hotel’s dining area, the next event was the opening of the show to the general public at 10:30am on Saturday.

Within a matter of seconds, nearly all the machines in the hall were in use.

In front of the stage were ten machines used for the UK Pinfest Battle – the show’s main tournament. The machines were:

• F-14 Tomcat
• Iron Maiden
• High Speed 2: The Getaway
• Aerosmith
• World Poker Tour
• Roadshow
• Circus
• Total Nuclear Annihilation
• Creature from the Black Lagoon

There was a problem with the Drains Tournament Manager software which took a couple of hours to resolve, during which time scores were recorded on paper rather than directly into the system. The DTM system was back up later, meaning electronic score entry could begin and the backlog of scores entered by hand.

Qualifying ran through Saturday, with an additional two hours on Sunday morning from 10am to midday.

The qualifying format consisted of a self-selected three-game entry which cost £5. Unlimited entries could be purchased at £5 each. Scores on all machines were ranked and a player’s highest-scoring entry gave them their qualifying position. The top 24 players would qualify for Sunday afternoon’s head-to-head best-of-three single-elimination play-offs.

Just outside the tournament area was a bank of six machines. These games were used for the finals of the UK Pinball League. The machines were:

• Batman (Stern)
• Indianapolis 500
• Indiana Jones (Williams)
• Batman 66
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Dialed In!

The B-Division finals began soon after the doors opened at 10:30, while the A-Division started at 1:30pm. The A-Division finals continued beyond the closure of the show but the eventual winner was Matthew Vince.

Nick Marshall was second and Chris Poyntz was third.

There were several interesting project machines at the show, some of which we saw earlier during the set-up. Pinball Amigos had their The Crazy Mansion and Despicable Me games. Both titles feature some innovative concepts and mechanisms. The Despicable Me game, for example, has a side-mounted Fart Blaster toy which is used to shoot at a character when they are revealed in the backbox.

Next to the Pinball Amigos was Phil Dixon’s Forbidden Planet project which was originally designed by John Trudeau but has had a number of modifications and additions since then. It features an acrylic playfield topper which is rounded at the front to incorporate the lock bar hand rest area.

In total there were 81 machines set up in the free play area, of which two were not working at the time of our survey. The full list is:

AC/DC	Lucky Seven*
Addams Family, The	Matrix, The
Addams Family, The	Metallica
Aerobatics	Monster Bash
Airborne	Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man
Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle	Nautilus
Alien	NBA Fastbreak
Austin Powers	NBA Fastbreak
Batman (Data East)	NBA Fastbreak
Batman 66	No Good Gofers
Batman: The Dark Knight (Stern)	Orbitor 1
Batman: The Dark Knight (Stern)	Queen’s Castle
Baywatch	Revenge from Mars
Big Buck Hunter Pro	Revenge from Mars
Black Jack	Riverboat Gambler
Black Knight	RoboCop
Black Knight 2000	Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends
Black Knight: Sword of Rage	Safecracker
Bride of Pinbot, The Machine	Shadow, The
Creature from the Black Lagoon	Ski Jump
Creature from the Black Lagoon	Sopranos, The
Demolition Man	Space Invaders*
Dialed In!	Space Jam
Domino	Space Shuttle (Zaccaria)
Dracula, Bram Stoker’s	Spider-Man
Family Guy	Spider-Man
Flash	Star Trek: The Next Generation
Flintstones, The	Star Wars (Data East)
Flipper Football	Star Wars (Data East)
Forbidden Planet	Star Wars (Sonic)
Getaway, High Speed 2: The	Stargate
Guardians of the Galaxy	Strikes and Spares (Bally)
High Speed	Tag Team Pinball
Indiana Jones (Stern)	Tales from the Crypt
Indiana Jones (Williams)	Tales of the Arabian Nights
Indianapolis 500	Terminator 2
Jokerz!	Total Nuclear Annihilation
Junkyard	Walking Dead, The
Jurassic Park (Data East)	Whitewater
Last Action Hero	Wizard!
Lord of the Rings, The

From all the machines at the show, one was picked as the Best-In-Show. This year that accolade went to Stan Simpson for his Safecracker.

While several of the machines in the hall were for sale, there were also four vendors selling pinball parts or machines.

Jon Melleny of 1 Stop Pinball had a table inside the hall where he had pinball staples such as rubbers, lamps and cleaners as well as mods such as shaker motors, cabinet protectors and game add-on toys.

On Saturday, Chris Brimacombe had several tables set up outside the hall where he had a wide range of reclaimed pinball parts of all kinds taken from projects and restorations.

Next to Chris were six electromechanical games in various states from Joe Fletcher. All were definitely project games, with prices around the £350 mark.

Finally, on Sunday Dave Wilcox of Pinball Daze set up a few tables outside the hall with more new and reclaimed pinball parts.

Back inside the hall there were multiple tournaments run over the three days. On Friday and Saturday nights, during the VIP sessions, Neil McRae ran a Stall Ball tournament on a The Shadow machine.

The tournament format puts all players in a line, with the first one stepping up to the machine. They play the game, with the intention of parking the ball in a saucer or a ball lock. If they do that without draining then they hand over to the next player in line and join the back of the queue. If they drain then they are eliminated from the tournament. This continues until just one player is left.

Stall Ball was free to enter with some great prizes. The recordings from Stall Ball will doubtless be on Neil’s Twitch channel.

Meanwhile, Neil also ran Flight Club where players self-submitted scores on ten out of fifteen machines in the hall.

The NBA Challenge returned this year, but it was run by the Scottish Pinball Association with assistance from the Northern Lights Pinball team. Registration cost £5 per person and all thirty-two places sold out on Saturday afternoon, with the tournament running on Sunday.

The players were divided into eight groups of four, with everyone playing a single head-to-head game against the other three players in their group. The top two progressed to the next round, with single head-to-head games used to decide the overall winner.

That winner was Andy Foster.

Qualifying in the UKPinfest Battle continued for two hours on Sunday morning from 10am. After that concluded, the top twenty-four players continued to the play-offs, with the top eight getting a bye through the first round.

The qualifying results can be seen here, while the top twenty-four are shown below.

1	Rich Mallet	283	#1 on CIRC, #2 on HS2, #5 on IMDN
2	David Mainwaring	268	#1 on HS2, #7 on RS, #11 on ASMTH
3	Wayne Johns	266	#3 on WPT, #4 on IMDN, #6 on F14
4	Andy Foster	262	#3 on CFTBL, #3 on HS2, #11 on RS
5	Craig Pullen	261	#4 on F14, #6 on HS2, #8 on IMDN
6	Nick Marshall	259	#3 on F14, #7 on HS2, #10 on IMDN
7	Peter Blakemore	255	#7 on ASMTH, #8 on CIRC, #9 on HS2
8	Ian Walmsley	253	#2 on CIRC, #11 on CFTBL, #17 on WPT
8	James Adams	253	#6 on CIRC, #6 on TNA, #14 on WPT
10	Vin Jauhal	245	#1 on F14, #16 on ASMTH, #25 on TNA
11	Tim Thornton	244	#1 on RCOP, #5 on F14, #37 on ASMTH
12	Thomas Evrenos	243	#11 on TNA, #12 on F14, #13 on WPT
13	Ian Wallace	239	#3 on CIRC, #18 on ASMTH, #19 on RCOP
13	Matt Vince	239	#2 on CFTBL, #2 on TNA, #44 on HS2
15	Greg Mott	235	#4 on CIRC, #13 on RCOP, #27 on IMDN
16	Garry Speight	231	#8 on RS, #10 on CFTBL, #30 on ASMTH
17	Shaun Harvey	227	#7 on TNA, #21 on CIRC, #24 on IMDN
18	Sam McCourt	226	#5 on RCOP, #8 on TNA, #40 on IMDN
18	Nathan Garwood	226	#1 on WPT, #25 on RS, #35 on ASMTH
20	Paul Owen	223	#1 on RS, #29 on IMDN, #34 on WPT
20	Steven Smith	223	#5 on RS, #19 on HS2, #32 on IMDN
22	Luke Grayson	221	#9 on TNA, #15 on RCOP, #34 on CFTBL
23	John Parkins	218	#6 on RCOP, #16 on RS, #39 on WPT
23	Dave Blake	218	#4 on ASMTH, #18 on HS2, #39 on RS

After the initial sixteen were whittled down to eight and then joined by the top eight qualifiers for the second round, the last eight remaining were the same as the top eight qualifiers.

They were: Andy Foster, Craig Pullen, David Mainwaring, Ian Walmsley, Nick Marshall, Peter Blakemore, Rich Mallet & Wayne Johns

The semi-finals saw wins for Craig, Ian, Nick and Peter, so these four played in the final. Andy, David, Rich and Wayne were all joint sixth.

The final was played on three machines – RoboCop, Roadshow and World Poker Tour – with 4-2-1-0 scoring for each game.

It was streamed live on the Pinball Live Twitch channel, and you can watch a replay of events there.

Ian began on RoboCop, followed by Peter and Nick, but it was Craig who took charge, scoring nearly a million on his first ball and bumping that up to over three million on his second.

As player four he didn’t need to play his third ball to take the win. Peter was second on just over a million, while Nick was third and Ian fourth.

Game two on Roadshow had a somewhat different outcome, for most players at least.

Nick took the lead after the first ball with 81M, while Peter was second on 61M, Ian third on 22M and Craig fourth on 18M.

It was all still to play for going into ball two, but all four players more-or-less doubled their ball one scores. So Nick still lead over Peter by 212M to 146M.

On ball three Peter came close to catching Nick but couldn’t quite reach his 261M total, ending on 253M. Ian had 93M and while Craig tried to beat Nick’s score and effectively win the final there, he ended his game in third place on 155M.

So, going into the third and final game, Craig and Nick had 5 points each, Peter had 4 points, while Ian had yet to score and couldn’t win the final, but he could create a tie between any of the others if he won on World Poker Tour.

Ian began again, scoring 3.6M on his first ball. Craig played second getting just 1.5M. Peter did best with 4.4M while Nick scored 2.8M making it all very tight going into ball two.

Craig pulled it back to take a slender lead into the third ball. His 15.1M was followed by Ian on 14.1M, Peter on 10.6M and Nick on 5.9M. Not huge scores by any means, and still wide open.

Ian’s last ball gave him the lead, albeit a slight one with a game end score of 17.745M. Craig immediately overtook him with his ball three total of 25.482M. Peter’s third ball didn’t give him any help, ending his final on 11.761M. While Nick had his best ball of the final, it still wasn’t enough to overtake Craig, finishing with 17.808M for second place overall.

So, Craig won, Nick was second, Peter third and Ian fourth. Trophies were presented by Tournament Director Wayne Johns and show organiser Philip Murphy.

Along with the trophies, each of the top eight players also received cash awards from the tournament entry fees. The split was 35%, 20%, 15% and 10% for the top four, with the four joint-sixth players all receiving 5%. That meant Craig received more than £500 for his win.

The trophy presentation took place after the show had closed at 4:30pm on Sunday, bringing the three days of events to a conclusion.

Everyone who went to this year’s UKPinfest seemed to enjoy themselves. The high temperature outside left the air conditioning in the hall struggling to cope with the combination of 91 pinballs and even more eager players.

With twenty fewer machines at the show this year and a dedicated tournament area, there was more room to move about so conditions never got too bad, and a trip to the reception or bar areas also helped guests cool down.

Despite the slightly smaller number of free play machines, you wouldn’t have had to wait long to get on a machine of your choice. Outside the very busiest periods there was usually a free machine available if you didn’t mind which one you played. The number of inoperable machines was admirably few – just two when we did our survey, which is unusually low – thanks to the team of machine repairers who quickly fixed most issues.

There were no talks, seminars, discussions, displays or demonstrations this year – the first year this element has been missing from the national UK show and something we look forward to returning in future years.

As usual, all the machines at the show were brought by collectors, so a huge thanks to them for donating and transporting their valuable toys for everyone to enjoy. There were some nice unusual titles there, including many single-player Zaccaria electromechanicals which are surprisingly fun to play, especially if you like a valuable spinner shot.

A final thanks to Philip and his team for keeping the show running smoothly, staffing the reception desk and answering questions from guests. There always seemed to be plenty of people around in ‘staff’ shirts milling around and outside the hall in case anyone had a query.

Finally, to wrap up our coverage of the show, here’s the exclusive Pinball News Eight Minute Tour of UKPinfest 2019.