UK PINFEST

The major pinball show in the UK is back, as UK Pinfest returns to the Mercure Daventry Court Hotel for another weekend of games, tournaments, social events and talks.

UK Pinfest began in 2018 and all seven shows have been held at this same venue. The Mercure Daventry Court first became the home of the annual UK pinball show in 2010 when five UK Pinball Party events were held there, but after a two year hiatus without a national pinball show, Phillip Murphy stepped up to stage the first UK Pinfest.

The show has traditionally been held on the last weekend in August which includes a bank (public) holiday on the following Monday. This year, however, just for this 2024 show we are back in Daventry a week earlier. Future shows are expected to return to the bank holiday weekend dates.

We arrived at the venue on Friday morning. The show didn’t officially open until 7pm on Friday evening, but many of the machines were set up on Thursday. This 360 time-lapse video from Daniel Fligg shows the machines arriving and the transformation of the empty Danetree Suite into this year’s UK Pinfest.

The show has grown over the years to the point where it now takes over the whole hotel, occupying all the accommodation, the lobby, the show hall and all the conferencing rooms. That allows the lobby to be used for registration as well as some charity pay-to-play games and the pinballs for Saturday’s Ladies Competition.

A bank of desirable titles was on pay-to-play to raise funds for the Yorkshire Heart Centre at Leeds General Infirmary.

There are several tournaments taking place during the show as well as some talks and presentations. Details of these were found on posters all around the hotel.

The talks by David from American Pinball and Toby from VPin Workshop will be held in the Priestly Room on Saturday afternoon.

Al though the hotel has quite a large dining area, this is only used for the breakfast which is included in the special show hotel room rate. Meals are available later in the day, from a catering area set up in the lobby. Alternatively, food can be ordered for delivery to the hotel, while a pub and fish & chip shop are only a short walk away.

Drinks are available all day and into the early hours of the morning from the bar. During show hours, a second bar is open in the main hall.

Heading towards the corridor to the main show hall, on the left is a room where the Pinball Classics tournament is held.

Players could pre-register for £25 and order a pack which included entry tickets and a tournament T-shirt.

The Pinball Classic tournament used eight machines with the top two scorers on each going through to the play-offs, with third or lower placed players also progressing if anyone is the in the top two on more than one machine. Overall, sixteen players move on to Sunday morning’s play-offs, which reduce them to eight and then a final four.

Qualifying began at 10am on Friday and although was initially fairly quiet, it soon became very busy in the room once more show guests arrived.

The first of the free play machines could be found in the corridor leading up to the main hall’s entrance.

Peter Heath from The Pinball Parlour had some machines and game parts for sale in the corridor too.

As we entered the main show hall, machines and stands were still being set up, with most machines not yet powered.

At the back of the hall was the area reserved for the UK Pinfest Open tournament.

Qualification for the Open began at 10am on Friday. Entry consisted of a £10 registration fee which included one entry, or registration plus five entries could be bought for £20.

Each entry consisted of a single game on five different machines. The scores on all machines were ranked, with 200 points for the top score. The total of the points earned by each of the five games formed that entry’s score. Players could void an entry at any point before submission if they thought it might negatively impact on one of their earlier entries.

Qualifying continued through Friday and up until 6pm on Saturday. The top 24 players qualify for the play-offs, with the top 8 getting a bye through the first round.

If it all got a bit too much in the hall, there was a coll-down area outside on the patio.

In more of the side rooms there were additional pinball machines to play, either for just fun or competitively.

The Headless Pinballs room was so-called because the doorways into it are so narrow you either need to take the head off a machine in order to bring it through, or just have a narrow head on the machine in the first place.

Next door, the popular NBA Challenge head-to-head tournament was taking place. This Scottish Pinball Association event uses two linked NBA Fastbreak machines with players divided into groups of four so that they play one head-to-head game against the other three players in their group.

The show opened at 7pm on Friday night for VIP ticket holders and it was immediately very busy with most games in use. Predictably, the newest titles were especially popular, with this being the first opportunity for many visitors to see or play them.

In total there were 155 pinballs at the show this year. Here’s the full list courtesy of Paul Garner:

24	Looney Tunes
Addams Family, The	Lord of the Rings, The
Aerobatics	Magic Castle
Alien (Highway Pinball)	Mata Hari
Attack from Mars	Medusa
Austin Powers	Metallica
Avatar	Meteor
Barracora	Meteor
Barry O’s Barbecue Challenge	Monte Carlo
Baywatch	Mousin Around
Beatles, The (Diamond Edition)	Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man
Big House	Munsters, The
Black Knight	Nautilus
Black Knight 2000	NBA Fastbreak
Black Knight: Sword of Rage	NBA Fastbreak
Black Rose: Skull & Bones	No Fear
Blackwater 100	Orbitor 1
Bride of Pinbot	Paragon
Cactus Canyon	Pinball Champ
Capersville	Pulp Fiction
Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy	Radical!
Centaur	Ripleys Believe it or Not!
Central Park	Riverboat Gambler
Circus	Robocop
Creature from the Black Lagoon	Roller Games
Cyberpunk	Rolling Stones (Bally)
Demolition Man	Rush
Elton John	Scared Stiff
Farfalla	Seawitch
Fathom	Shadow, The
Firepower	Ski Jump
Fish Tales	Space Shuttle
Fish Tales	Space Shuttle
Flash	Space Station
Flash	Space Team
Flash Gordon	Spectrum
Flight 2000	Spider-Man
Foo Fighters	Spider-Man
Forbidden Planet	Spinal Tap, This is
Funhouse Remake	Star Trek (Stern)
Galactic Tank Force	Star Trek: The Next Generation
Game of Thrones	Star Wars (Data East)
Genesis	Star Wars (Data East)
Ghostbusters	Star Wars (Stern)
Gigi	Star Wars Trilogy
Godfather, The	Starship Troopers
Godzilla	Strikes and Spares
Goldeneye	Super Mario pinball
Gorgar	Super Orbit
Grand Prix (Stern)	Surf ‘n Safari
Guardians of the Galaxy	Taxi
Guardians of the Galaxy	Terminator 2
Harlem Globetrotters	Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
High Speed 2: The Getaway	Theatre of Magic
Hot Wheels	Torpedo Alley
Houdini	Total Nuclear Annihilation
Iron Maiden	Total Nuclear Annihilation
Iron Maiden	Tron
Iron Man	Tron
Jackbot	Turf Champ
Jackbot	Twilight Zone
James Bond 007	Twister
James Bond 007	TX Sector
James Bond 007	Venom
James Bond 007 60th Anniversary	Victory
Jaws	Viking
Jet Spin	VPin
Jokerz	Walking Dead, The
Jungle Lord	Walking Dead, The
Jungle Queen	Whitewater
Jurassic Park	Whoa Nellie, Big Juicy Melons
Jurassic Park	Wizard!
King of Diamonds	World Cup Soccer
KISS	World Cup Soccer
Labyrinth	World Cup Soccer
Lady Luck	WWF Royal Rumble
Legends of Valhalla	X-Men
Lethal Weapon 3

At 7:30pm there was a new Ladies Social event held in the Headless Pinball room exclusively for women at the show. It featured casual fun competitions, drinks, snacks and prizes, along with a lot of laughs.

At 9pm the popular StallBall competition began. Players lined up to compete in a queue snaking around the hall.

The concept is to play the chosen machine for the event and flip the ball into one of the locks or kickouts. Once you have done that you let the next player take over and go to join the back of the queue. If you let the ball drain, however, you are out of the competition.

The machine chosen this year was Twilight Zone.

Although the line was long, once the competition began it moved pretty quickly. Many players only needed one or two flips to lock a ball and let the next player take over.

It wasn’t too long before the competition reached the final stages with only Helena and Will remaining.

Will had an unlucky drain down the left outlane, leaving Helena Walter Higgins as the winner. She won a pinball-themed side table, presented by UK Pinfest organiser Philip Murphy.

The hall closed around 11pm with most guests heading to the bar in the hotel’s lobby for drinks and karaoke.

Saturday at UK Pinfest began at 10am. A good-size crowd had gathered by the entrance ahead of Philip opening the doors.

While in the hall, we ran into someone with a growing catalogue of pinball work to his name. Marc Silk is a renowned voice artist who has provided voices for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Stern Pinball, Funhouse: Rudy’s Nightmare and Whirlwind: Total Chaos for Pedretti Pinball, and, most recently, Labyrinth for Barrels of Fun.

The NBA Challenge first rounds took place on Saturday, with the play-offs on Sunday.

Across the corridor there were two talks taking place in the seminars room.

At 2pm David Fix, Executive Vice-President of American Pinball was interviewed by Martin Ayub, Editor of Pinball News, about David’s career in coin-op and the changes which have taken place at American Pinball since he joined in December 2020.

You can watch David’s talk on this YouTube video from Daniel Fligg.

At 4pm, Toby (a.k.a. SixToe) from VPin Workshop held a talk about the origins and development of virtual pinball, including the different platforms and their relative capabilities.

Back in the main hall, it wasn’t as crowded as had been feared. In fact, we decided to record our exclusive Twelve Minute Tour of the whole show which is currently uploading to YouTube using the hotels incredibly slow Wi-Fi. As soon as it has uploaded and been processed, we’ll add it to this article.

In the evening, the Ladies Competition was held in a dedicated tournaments area in the hotel’s lobby. The machines had been used earlier in the day for the finals of the UK Pinball League but now hosted the Ladies Competition which had a grand prize of £1,000 ($1,294/€1,173) for the winner.

The final four players were Claire Lickman, Alice McKenna, Helena Walter Higgins and Emily Stokes. They played on Cactus Canyon, Gigi and KISS using a 4-2-1-0 scoring format.

It was a close run final, but Claire triumphed with 7 points. Emily was 1 point behind in second, with Helena a further point back in third and Alice fourth on 3 points. Trophies were presented by show organiser Philip Murphy and competition organiser, Ailsa Clunie.

Also taking place on Saturday evening was another round of the StallBall competition held, as on Friday night, at 9pm on the Twilight Zone game in the main hall.

The winner for this second StallBall was Graeme Davison who collected a The Big Lebowski translite for his trouble.

Sunday at UK Pinfest began at 10am with the opening of the main hall and the resumption of competitive action.

In the Pinball Classics tournament, the top sixteen qualifiers from Saturday were split into four groups of four, playing three games across different machines using the 4-2-1-0 scoring format for first to fourth places in each game.

The top two from both groups went on to play in the four player final. Those four were: Andreas Bernard, Owen Lloyd, Craig Pullen and Albert Medaillon. The three games they would play were Flight 2000, Meteor and Super Orbit.

The first game was won by Owen who earned 4 points, ahead of Andreas who got 2 points for second. Albert was third for 1 point, while Craig was fourth.

The second game was Meteor and this time Andreas improved from his second place finish on Flight 2000 to win on Meteor. Craig got his first points on the board with his second place. Owen ended in third place with Albert fourth.

Going into the last game of the final, Andreas lead with 6 points, Owen was close behind on 5 points, with Craig on 2 points and Albert on 1 point. If Andreas could finish on Super Orbit ahead of Owen he would win overall. Albert couldn’t win but if he got first place on Super Orbit he could take second as could Craig, although Craig could also get a tie for first if he won, Andreas was last and Owen third.

After two poor first balls Craig seemed out of the running, but a large double-bonus on ball three shot him into the lead.

Andreas tried to catch Craig’s 411,590 but ended just below 400,000, giving Craig the win, but more importantly, Owen came fourth. That meant Andreas had won on 8 points while Craig had leapfrogged into second place on 6 points, ahead of Owen on 5 points with Albert on 2 points.

Awards of engraved hip flask sets in gold, silver, bronze and black, tournament posters, Stern Pinball-themed anti-fatigue mats and cash prizes were presented by Tournament Director, Shaun Harvey.

The cash prizes were significant, with the winner receiving £2,000 ($2,588/€2,346) in cash. Second place received £400, third place £300, and fourth place £200.

Also starting at 10am was the NBA Challenge for players aged under 14 years. This was split into two divisions – under 11, and 11 or older.

The parallel running of the Pinball Classics meant we couldn’t attend the final of the under-11’s division, but the winner was Daniel Vince.

In the 11 or older division, it was a clean sweep for George with three wins out of three for a maximum of 9 points and first place. Ethan was in second place with two wins, while Katie was third and Lucy fourth.

After the Pinball Classics and under-14’s NBA Challenge, at 1pm the pinballs in the main hall were switch off for a couple of presentations.

First, Pinball News Editor, Martin Ayub, hosted this year’s UK Pinball Group Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

The UK Pinball Group Hall of Fame has been running since 2008 with the intention of honouring those who have made outstanding contributions to the promotion and development of pinball in the UK. Nominations can be submitted by anyone, either through the website or in person to one of the members of the Nominations and Inductions Committee.

Prior to today’s ceremony there were twenty-nine inductees, but today another two were added.

The first was Peter Blakemore.

Peter is a long-standing member of the UK’s pinball community and a regular high-flyer on the tournament circuit, both in the UK and across Europe. He founded the UK’s first pinball club, Special When Lit, in Salisbury which continues to open every Friday and for special events through the year.

The second inductee was UK Pinfest organiser, Philip Murphy.

In addition to organising seven UK Pinfest shows in Daventry, Philip has also run ten annual North-East Retro Gaming (NERG) shows in Gateshead. Through these show he has helped built a community of supporters and volunteers, raising large sums for several charities. He has also helped others promote pinball at other gaming shows by supplying and transporting machines to help them raise pinball’s profile.

Following the Hall of Fame inductions, Ailsa continued with the presentation of this year’s Best-in-Show awards.

There were two categories – Best Overall machine and Best Refurbished machine. Show attendees could vote for their favourites in both categories using a form found in a special show booklet available from the front desk. Cut-off for voting was when the show closed on Saturday night.

When all the votes had been counted, the winner of the Best-in-Show award was Stan Simpson for his Harlem Globetrotters.

The Best Refurb award went to Alan and Alfie Adair for their Whitewater.

The final official set of presentations were to the top players in the UK Pinball League. This spans the UK with eight regions each holding six meetings during the League year. The top two from each region qualify for the national final which was held on the machines in the hotel’s lobby on Saturday afternoon.

Trophies were presented to the top three players in each region, as well as the top three in the national final.

Before the machines were switched back on for the remainder of the show, there was a surprise presentation to Ailsa Clunie, who was celebrating her birthday at the show, in the form of a celebratory cake.

At 1:30pm the play-offs for the last eight in the open division of the NBA Challenge began. Qualifying had taken place on Saturday while the play-offs were only single head-to-head games, so proceedings moved along pretty quickly.

The final four were Adam, Roy Smith, Ethan Campbell and Naomi Porter. Roy and Naomi made it through to the final, leaving Adam and Ethan to play for third place.

It was a close-run final, but Roy triumphed by 42 points to 39. Naomi was second, while Ethan won the play-off to take third place. Trophies and cash prizes were presented by Scottish Pinball Association’s Ailsa Clunie.

The UK Pinfest Open tournament was held on a bank of 14 machines from electromechanicals to the newest models. They were:

Black Knight: Sword of Rage	Meteor
007 James Bond: 60th Anniversary	Paragon
Creature from the Black Lagoon	Rush
Flash Gordon	Taxi
Iron Maiden	The Walking Dead
Jackbot	Tron: Legacy
Jet Spin	World Cup Soccer

In previous years, the final of the tournament had run long past the show close at 4:30pm on Sunday. To address that, qualifying for the UK Pinfest Open this year had began at 10am on Friday, a full nine hours before the show opened to the public. In addition, the usual Saturday evening qualifying period changed to become the first two rounds of play-offs.

The UK Pinfest Open uses a card system for qualifying entries. Each card consists of a single game on five different machines. The scores on each game are ranked with 200 points for the top score. A card’s score is the total points from each of the five games.

Streaming and commentary of the qualifiers, the play-offs and the final was provided by Pinball.Live on their Twitch channel. Playfield video from select machines was shown on monitors in the tournament area to allow the audience to see the action.

When qualifying closed at 6pm on Saturday, the 24 players who had made it through to the play-offs were:

Player	Points
Craig Pullen	900
Wayne Johns	872
Josh Iles	852
Luke Grayson	842
Andy Foster	837
Mike Christiansen	831
Rich Mallett	825
Yuen Aw	824
Nathan Garwood	822
Will Jarvis	807
Greg Mott	806
Jeremy Dorling	801
Neil McRae	799
Owen Lloyd	795
Isaac Granby	793
Kate Rothwell-Jackson	783
Jon Carolan	779
Peter Blakemore	763
Matt Vince	762
Andreas Bernard	762
Andy Brock	757
Helena Walter Higgins	754
Stewart Judson	741
Ryan Pullen	733

The qualifying details along with all the play-off results are available on the Drains Tournament Manager website.

The top eight qualifiers earned a bye through the first round of play-offs, leaving the remaining sixteen to play in four groups of four. Each group played three machines with the highest-ranked qualifier in each group having choice of machine or position. Points were awarded for finishing position in each game using the 4-2-1-0 scoring system.

When all three games had been played, the top two points scorers progressed to the quarter-finals where they were joined by the eight top qualifiers to play another round of sixteen using the same format.

These quarter-final matches saw some big names unexpectedly dropping out as the eight remaining players for Sunday afternoon’s semi-final matches were decided. They were: Josh Iles, Rich Mallett, Nathan Garwood, Helena Walter Higgins, Luke Grayson, Mike Christiansen, Peter Blakemore and Matt Vince.

After three semi-final games for both groups of four, the four finalists were decided. They were: Josh Iles, Nathan Garwood, Mike Christiansen and Matt Vince. Games selected were James Bond 007: 60th Anniversary, Taxi and Black Knight: Sword of Rage. Josh was player 1 in each game, followed by Matt Vince, Nathan Garwood and Mike Christiansen.

Matt in the player 2 spot put up a decent target of 18,227. Nathan got close but ended on 17,712 while Mike wasn’t far behind on 16,994. Josh never really got going and ended on 1,082.

It was the same play order on the second game, Taxi, and also the same outcome.

Matt got another 4 points with his 1.2M score, Nathan another 2 points with his 776K, Mike a close third on 739K for 1 point, and Josh on 627K.

Going into the last game of the final, Matt had 8 points, Nathan 4, Mike 2 and Josh 0. The only way Matt could not win would be if he came last on the third game and Nathan won. The game was Black Knight: Sword of Rage.

As fate would have it, that’s exactly what happened. Nathan had a decent game and won with 193M. Josh scored his first points, coming second with 80M. Mike collected a full set of third places and another 1 point with his 54M, while Matt had a bad game with little opportunity to flip the ball, ending on just 4M.

So we had a tie for first place, with Matt and Nathan both on 8 points. Mike’s three 1 point scores earned him third, while Josh’s 2 points weren’t enough to lift him out of fourth.

The tie-breaker machine was chosen by Nathan as the higher qualifier. He selected The Walking Dead and played as player 1.

It was a close-run affair throughout but Nathan, despite scoring 30M on ball 1, ended his third ball on 37M. Matt needed a decent third ball and, fortunately for him, got one. A Well Walker multiball and a mode running saw him pass Nathan, stopping play on 40M when it was clear he had won.

Presentations to the top four were made by tournament co-organisers, Claire Lickman and David Bowery.

As with the Pinball Classics, there were substantial cash prizes for the top players. Matt took home £2,000 ($2,588/€2,346) for his win, Nathan received £1040, Mike £780 and Josh £520. Losing semi-finalists Peter, Rich, Helena and Luke all received £260 in prize money.

Just before the final took place, the clock rolled round to 4:30pm and UK Pinfest 2024 was officially over.

As the battle was under way for the top spot, free-play machines in the main part of the hall, in the corridor outside, and in the side rooms were all being dismantled, strapped, packed and loaded in preparation for their journey home.

With that we bring this year’s UK Pinfest coverage to a close. We may add any additional pictures and information we receive to this report over the next few days, but for now we can look back on another hugely successful show and send congratulations to all involved in running it.

The number and quality of machines and side events seems to increase year-on-year, as does the professionalism and knowledge of every aspect, from the tournaments to the seminars, presentations and even the hotel team at the Mercure. The support from the UK pinball community for the show also grows each year, with new ideas and offers of help in all areas.

The show also helped raise a total of £1,216.50 ($1,605/€1,443) for the Take Heart charity which supports heart medicine at St. James Hospital in Leeds. The majority came from the pay-to-play machines set up in the hotel’s lobby, but Open Tournament winner Matt donated £100 from his winnings and Chris Brimacombe donated the £35 in cash he had supplied to provide players with change for the lobby machines. The money was presented to Take Heart by David Dutton.

Next year UK Pinfest returns to the August Bank Holiday weekend (29th-31st August, 2025). Investigations have started about the possibility of expanding the show to also occupy the hotel’s lower level. That space was used by previous shows for a Saturday night banquet and presentation ceremony, but the hall was subsequently converted to office space. Rumours suggest it may become available for the show to use again, possibly for the tournaments.

Keep an eye on the UK Pinfest website and Facebook page for more details as soon as they are announced.

In the meantime, we close this report with our exclusive Twelve Minute Tour video of this year’s UK Pinfest in 4K UHD.