Date: 15th-19th October 2024

Location: Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel, 1551 N. Thoreau Drive, Schaumburg, IL 60173, USA

Welcome to our continuing coverage of this 40th anniversary Pinball Expo being held at the Schaumburg Convention Center in the city of Schaumburg, about 25 miles north-west from the centre of Chicago.

Due to the size of our report and the huge number of videos and pictures we’ve included, we had to split our report into two parts.

The first part covered all the action, tours and seminars from Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If you missed it, you can catch it here.

In this second part we look at events on Friday and Saturday, plus the tournament finals on Sunday.

Friday

Friday morning began with the tour of the Stern Pinball factory in Elk Grove Village. The familiar yellow school buses were scheduled to depart at 9am, but before that a long line formed inside the Convention Center.

The front of the line
The front of the line
...back towards the corridor to main show hall...
…back towards the corridor to main show hall…
...round behind the staircase to the seminars rooms...
…round behind the staircase to the seminars rooms…
...back towards the main show hall...
…and back towards the main show hall…
The buses arrived and took the next group of factory tour guests
The buses arrived and took the next group of factory tour guests

We were working in the Seminars Room producing the videos below and in part one, but Pinball News’s M.G. Brown was able to take the tour and bring us these pictures.

Tour guests arrive at the Stern Pinball factory
Tour guests arrive at the Stern Pinball factory

No photography was permitted during the tour, but before the tour began Seth Davis and Gary Stern welcomed guests to their factory.

Seth and Gary welcome everyone to the Stern Pinball factory
Seth and Gary welcome everyone to the Stern Pinball factory
Stern Pinball CEO and President, Seth Davis, with Chairman, Gary Stern
Stern Pinball CEO and President, Seth Davis, with Chairman, Gary Stern

After taking the tour, guests could buy branded merchandise from the Stern Shop.

The Stern Pinball merchandise shop at the end of the tour
The Stern Pinball merchandise shop at the end of the tour

When Pinball Expo guests returned to the Convention Center, they found the show hall open and the programme of seminars ready for them.

Mischa de Muynck
Mischa de Muynck

Mischa explained the origins of the Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam, the current location and collection, alongside their aims of educating visitors about pinball’s history, science and art.

Larry Bieza & Phill Emmert
Larry Bieza & Phill Emmert

There are many more electromechanical games besides pinball. Larry and Phill show some examples through the decades of popular and landmark electromechanical arcade games you might enjoy.

Ted Finlay
Ted Finlay

Pricing a pinball to sell is always tricky, so Ted set up pinballprices.com to pull sales data from multiple sources and give average selling prices for hundreds of machines along with price trends over time.

Imoto Harney, Aaron Davis & Kyle Reed
Imoto Harney, Aaron Davis & Kyle Reed

Aaron is joined by Imoto Harney who coordinated this year’s huge homebrew section at Pinball Expo to talk to the many game creators about how they created their game designs and the challenges they faced.

The homebrew game creators
The homebrew game creators
Roger Sharpe, Tom Nieman & Jody Dankberg
Roger Sharpe, Tom Nieman & Jody Dankberg

Licensing has been a popular way for pinball makers to appeal to the wider public by tapping into popular culture. Roger, Tom and Jody talk about how licensing began and the pros and cons of branding your product with a licensed theme.

Barry Driessen, Melvin Williams & Rens Hooijmaijers
Barry Driessen, Melvin Williams & Rens Hooijmaijers

The focus of this seminar was the development and promotion of the new Dutch Pinball Exclusive game, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was designed by Melvin based on an original John Popadiuk design.

Pinball Expo Chairman, Rob Berk, hosted the ceremony to announce this year’s inductions into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame. Each inductee was introduced by a colleague or friend from the industry.

The presentation began with Dave Marston talking about long time Pinball Expo attendee and larger-than-life personality, Sam Harvey, who recently passed away.

The first inductee was John Buscaglia, the Chief Revenue Officer from Stern Pinball who was inducted by Gary Stern.

Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, John Buscaglia
Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, John Buscaglia

The second inductee was also from Stern Pinball. Sound designer and composer Jerry Thompson has worked on two dozen titles, stretching back to his first game, Whoa Nellie! back in 2015.

Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Jerry Thompson
Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Jerry Thompson

The third inductee, also from Stern Pinball, was their Senior Director of Licensing and New Business Development, Jody Dankberg.

Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Jody Dankberg
Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Jody Dankberg

The fourth inductee from Stern Pinball was voice artist Fred Young. Fred performed the callouts on many Data East, Sega and Stern titles, starting with 1990’s Back to the Future.

Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Fred Young
Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Fred Young

The fifth inductee for 2024 was the late Art Stenholm who created pinball art for more than eighty Gottlieb machines from the mid-’60s through to the start of the ’70s. His induction was announced by Dave Marston.

David Marson talks about Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Art Stenholm
David Marson talks about Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Art Stenholm

The sixth and final inductee for 2024 was Broadway Arcade owner and operator, the late Steve Epstein. His induction was introduced by his long time friend and PAPA co-founder, Roger Sharpe.

Roger Sharpe introduces Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Steve Epstein
Roger Sharpe introduces Pinball Expo Hall of Fame 2024 inductee, Steve Epstein

In the Service & Support category, the first induction was for the VP and Editorial Director of RePlay Magazine, Key Snodgrass.

Pinball Expo 2024 Hall of Fame, Service & Support inductee, Key Snodgrass
Pinball Expo 2024 Hall of Fame, Service & Support inductee, Key Snodgrass

The second Service & Support inductee was Imoto Harney of Imoto Arcade and Marco Specialties.

Pinball Expo 2024 Hall of Fame, Service & Support inductee, Imoto Harney
Pinball Expo 2024 Hall of Fame, Service & Support inductee, Imoto Harney

Here’s the ceremony in full:

The Hall of Fame induction ceremony was originally allocated 30 minutes in the seminars schedule, but actually ran for 90 minutes. As a result, the 40 Years Of Pinball Expo presentation with Rob Berk and Dave Marston was deferred until Saturday to allow the remainder of Friday’s talks to proceed as planned.

Pat Lawlor
Pat Lawlor
The 40 Years of Pinball Expo panel: Jack Guarnieri, Steve Ritchie, Roger Sharpe, Greg Freres, Larry DeMar, Chris Granner, Keith Johnson & Bill Grupp
The 40 Years of Pinball Expo panel: Jack Guarnieri, Steve Ritchie, Roger Sharpe, Greg Freres, Larry DeMar, Chris Granner, Keith Johnson & Bill Grupp

Pat Lawlor introduced the panel who have been instrumental in defining the shape of the pinball industry over the past forty years of Pinball Expo, from inventing pinball features we all take for granted to creating companies which opened the door to the mass of boutique manufacturers we see today.

This seminar was held in two parts with a short break between them for everyone to stretch their legs.

Jack Guarnieri
Jack Guarnieri

Jack Guarnieri introduced the panel who talked about the creation of Jersey Jack Pinball’s latest release, Avatar: The Battle for Pandora. The game’s designer, Mark Seiden, led the presentation.

Designer of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora, Mark Seiden
Designer of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora, Mark Seiden
The JJP team behind Avatar: The Battle for Pandora
The JJP team behind Avatar: The Battle for Pandora

Mark spoke about the evolution of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora, from the early whitewoods through to the complete product, bringing in those who worked on each aspect of the game.

Lloyd Olson
Lloyd Olson

No Pinball Expo would be complete without the late night LTG show, hosted by the owner and operator of SS Billiards in Hopkins, Minnesota, Lloyd Olson, who talks about how his business and the wider coin-op industry has evolved since he took control of SS Billiards in 1979.

Saturday

Saturday is the last official day of Pinball Expo. Although some of the tournaments do continue into Sunday, the main hall is closed to the public while the stands are being dismantled and the machines packed away.

So, Saturday is the last chance to play machines, buy parts and merchandise, and listen to the seminars.

For us, it was our first chance to get into the main hall to take pictures and shoot our video walkaround.

Here’s a gallery showing every stand in the main hall, with the exception of the History of Pinball and the homebrew section which we will be covering separately below.

One of the most popular features in the exhibit hall is the display of homebrew machines – games made by hobbyists, in various stages of development from concept through to fully finished. This year, Pinball Expo boasted its largest ever display of homebrew machines.

Here’s our gallery of the homebrew machines set up while we were touring the hall.

Towards the back of the main hall was the Tap 91 Game Room, home of the History of Pinball exhibition.

Welcome to Tap 91 Game Room
Welcome to Tap 91 Game Room

Inside were numerous games from around 1930. Many of them are mechanical marvels, including features which would reappear in much later pinball designs.

Most of the games were fully playable, though they usually required a 5c coin in the slot in order to release the balls.

Guidance to visitors to Tap 91 Game Room
Guidance to visitors to Tap 91 Game Room

Here’s a look at many of the games available to play. There may have been others not included here, but these are the ones we saw when we visited.

There were also two non-playable machines to help show the game’s evolution.

Going further back, there was a billiards game which positively encouraged you to play it.

A fully-playable billiards table
A fully-playable billiards table
Play Me!
Play Me!

Also part of the decoration were an arrangement of pinball flyers and a banner with more information on the history of pinball and the games features at the show.

Sample flyers
Sample flyers
Contact details for History of Pinball
Contact details for History of Pinball

To wrap up all the pictures of the main hall above, here’s the Pinball News Forty-Seven Minute Tour video bringing you the machines, the manufacturers, the vendors, the homebrew games, the History of Pinball exhibit and the many extraordinary sights and sounds.

In the main seminars room, Saturday is Sternday. The afternoon and evening schedule consists entirely of Stern Pinball presentations. However, before that there were plenty of interesting talks about other aspects of pinball.

Mike Gullo
Mike Gullo

Although the title of Mike’s talk wasn’t what he had planned, his explanation of how to create test jigs to help you diagnose and repair electronic problems outside of the game certainly did encompass solid-state games as well as newer designs.

Ryan Claytor
Ryan Claytor

Ryan first came to the pinball scene’s attention with his artwork in the Coin-Op Carnival publication, but he was at Pinball Expo this year as part of a broader look at his comic book art through his new book, One Bite At A Time.

Ray Gay
Ray Gay

Ray is a regular speaker at Pinball Expo, regaling the audience with tales from his time at Seeburg, Bally, Williams and Midway where he designed circuits and was a technical illustrator from 1965 until he retired in 2002.

Don Marshall
Don Marshall

Don Marshall came from the advertising business as a photographer, but became an amusement machine operator where he saw how primitive the game cabinet and backbox artwork was. He joined forces with Premier Technologies to apply the digital printing techniques from advertising to make pinball art quicker, cheaper and photo-realistic.

Craig Bierman
Craig Bierman

Chrome plating gives a unique look, but as Craig explained, plating your pinball parts requires good money and plenty of patience. He described the different types of products which can be plated and the kind of finishes he can achieve.

Wally Gorczowisk
Wally Gorczowisk

Having recently refurbished a Funhouse, in 2010 Wally decided to build a Medieval Madness machine from scratch. Since then he’s built an Attack from Mars, a Cactus Canyon, a Monster Bash, a Scared Stiff, an Addams Family and an Indiana Jones. He told the audience how he made them.

Greg Yanish
Greg Yanish

Greg is a surgeon who decided to use his personal collection of games to open his own arcade. His Operation Pinball business has expanded to multiple locations and is now a distributor for nine different manufacturers. He described all the pitfalls and obstacles he encountered and how he overcame them.

Unfortunately, we cannot bring you a recording of this seminar at the request of the speaker.

Gary Stern
Gary Stern

Gary talks about his life in pinball, the ups and downs of the industry, the investors in Stern Pinball, and the importance of having outside skills brought in to boost the company, including the President and CEO, Seth Davis.

Seth Davis
Seth Davis

Seth was on stage with Gary and he spoke about his background and how he sees the company developing in the future.

The JAWS team
The JAWS team

Lead Game Designer, Keith Elwin, led this seminar about the Jaws pinball, looking at the evolution of the playfield design, the changes made along the way, the concept behind the ruleset and working with the video and audio assets from the movie.

The John Wick team
The John Wick team

The second ‘making of’ seminar of the evening looks at how the John Wick game was made, from the original concept, the layout of game features and inserts, the multiple art packages and how the music was composed to support and drive the gameplay.

The team behind The Uncanny X-Men
The team behind The Uncanny X-Men

This third panel explored the making of The Uncanny X-Men, a game with many unusual design features. Lead Designer, Jack Danger, led the team as they each explained their role in the game, including the design of the Sentinel head mechanism and the artwork for the three versions.

Greg Freres
Greg Freres

Greg Freres recently retired as Art Director at Stern Pinball after a long and distinguished career creating pinball artwork for Bally, Williams and Stern. In this seminar he looked back on his canon of work, highlighting the most notable games and the many other designers with whom he worked.

Dwight Sullivan
Dwight Sullivan

The final seminar of Pinball Expo 2024 was the popular Let’s Make A Deal prize quiz hosted by Stern Pinball’s software and rules guru, Dwight Sullivan. Contestants drawn at random from the audience has the opportunity to win a Stern Pinball topper, big prize bundles, or nothing at all.

That concludes our coverage of this year’s seminars at Pinball Expo 2024. You can watch, share and comment on all 27 hours of them on our YouTube channel in the special Pinball Expo 2024 playlist.

At 1pm on Saturday, another regular Pinball Expo event took place in the Utopia A/B room, next door to the seminar rooms. That was the Autograph Session, where pinball industry people were available to sign pinball paraphernalia, including translites, playfields, posters, flyers and plastics. If guests didn’t have anything tangible to be signed, a signatures sheet was also available.

The Autograph Session
The Autograph Session

Last year the event took place in the Nirvana C room. However, that was being used for Saturday’s seminar, and it was also deemed too small for the Autograph Session, so the larger Utopia A/B room was employed instead.

Tanio Klyce on one of the Stern Pinball tables
Tanio Klyce on one of the Stern Pinball tables
Greg Freres heads up this table
Greg Freres heads up this table
John Buras and Fred Young on another table
John Buras and Fred Young on another table
Mark Seiden heads up the JJP line-up
Mark Seiden heads up the JJP line-up
Jack Danger signs a The Uncanny X-Men translite
Jack Danger signs a The Uncanny X-Men translite
Dwight Sullivan at the top of this Stern Pinball table
Dwight Sullivan at the top of this Stern Pinball table
There were lines for many of the most popular signatures
There were lines for many of the most popular signatures

The final aspect of our Pinball Expo coverage is the tournaments.

There were multiple competitive events taking place throughout Pinball Expo, both in the main hall and in the tournaments room.

As we have shown you, the main tournaments had a new home this year in a section of the Schaumburg Ballroom. The timings were also adjusted so that the Women’s Tournament and Main Tournament would finish on Saturday, with just the Classic Tournament’s finals taking place on Sunday. At least, that was the plan.

As it transpired, the Women’s Tournament ran late into the night and a a winner wasn’t crowned until around 6am. Needless to say, we weren’t there to witness the final, but will bring you the results as soon as they have been submitted.

The main Flip Out tournament also didn’t finish on Saturday but ran on until Sunday afternoon.

The format involves an initial seeding round run on Wednesday and Thursday which most players can choose to play in or not. Those who do take part play a number 24 games on as many machines as possible to get their best score. Their overall ranking position determines their seeding in the main qualifying rounds.

The top 50% of players from the seeding round make up the A Division and the rest the B Division. If a player doesn’t join the seeding round, they are automatically ranked at the bottom of B Division for the qualifying. Anyone in the top 250 of IFPA rankings has to play in the seeding round and must finish in the top half to qualify for the A division, as they cannot play in the B Division.

That left Friday and Saturday to play the final rounds which began at 10am each day. Initially (phase 1) games were best-of-three head-to-head until there were just 24 players left, when Phase 2 began. Now it was double-elimination with best-of-five head-to-head in the winner bracket and best-of-three in the loser bracket.

It took until 4:20pm on Sunday for the final two to face each other in the grand final. They were Jack Slovacek and Zach McCarthy. Zach got into the final as winner of the Winner Bracket having not lost a match. Jack lost his first match in Phase 2 but won every match since, to win the loser bracket.

In typical double elimination style, Jack had to beat Zach twice in order win overall – one best-of five and one best-of-three – whereas Zach only had to win the one best-of-five match to triumph.As it transpire, Jack best Zach once to make them level, leaving a best-of-three to decide the winner.

After winning one game each, the decider was held on Stranger Things. Whoever won this game would be the Pinball Expo Main Tournament winner for 2024.

Jack Slovacek starts the last game of the final
Jack Slovacek starts the last game of the final

Jack began, and by the end of his third ball had a decent score of 178M.

Zach McCarthy plays second
Zach McCarthy plays second

Zach didn’t have much luck on his first two balls, meaning he went into the last ball of the final on just 17M with a target of 178M.

He did improve, but couldn’t catch Jack, finishing on 85M and making Jack the winner.

Zach congratulates Jack on his win
Zach congratulates Jack on his win

Then it was time for the trophy presentations to the top four, all made by Tournament Director, Deborah Tahlman.

Fourth place, Preston Currie
Fourth place, Preston Currie
Third place, Escher Lefkoff
Third place, Escher Lefkoff
Runner-up, Zach McCarthy
Runner-up, Zach McCarthy
Winner, Jack Slovacek
Winner, Jack Slovacek

Jack won a brand new Stern Pinball machine for his prize.

The top four in the Main Tournament
The top four in the Main Tournament

You can watch the final rounds for yourself on the Fox Cities Pinball channel on Twitch.

Here are the finishing positions for the top 32 players.

1stJack Slovacek
2ndZach McCarthy
3rdEscher Lefkoff
4thPreston Currie
5thDalton Ely
Jared August
7thEric Stone
Andy Bagwell
9thNick Weyna
Steve Bowden
Jason Zahler
Andrew Foard
13thJohn Ingman
Carlos Delaserda
Arvid Flygare
Josh Sharpe
17thSterling Mitoska
Derek Price
Raymond Davidson
Zach Sharpe
Kaylee Campbell
Andrew Rosa II
Zach Parks
Tyrus Eagle
25thNate Grant
Bill Mason
Adam Lefkoff
Logan Henderson
29thCarleton Plourde
Roy Wils
John Miller
David Riel

That only left the Classics Tournament to conclude. The last few rounds of this were running alongside the Main Tournament’s final.

The Classics Tournament continued into Sunday afternoon
The Classics Tournament continued into Sunday afternoon

Like the Main Tournament, the Classics went down to the wire, with the two finalists – Josh Sharpe (winner of the loser bracket) and Zach Parks (winner of the winner bracket) facing each other once in a best-of-five, which Josh won, and again in a best of three to decide the overall winner.

We waited as long as we could to catch the final, but eventually had to leave for a dinner engagement before Zach finally defeated Josh to take the win. So, thanks to Jim Schelberg for sticking it out and taking pictures of the top two.

Fourth place, Bob Matthews
Fourth place, Bob Matthews
Third place, Nick Campbell
Third place, Nick Campbell
Runner-up, Josh Sharpe
Runner-up, Josh Sharpe
Winner of the Classics Tournament, Zachary Parks
Winner of the Classics Tournament, Zachary Parks
The top two in the Classics Tournament
The top two in the Classics Tournament

If we get any more tournament information we’ll bring it to you right here, but while the tournaments were concluding, the last of the stands in the main hall were being dismantled and paced away.

The show's over, folks...
The show’s over, folks…
The final few games get shipped out
The final few games get shipped out

But, that concludes our Pinball Expo coverage for this year.

Without doubt, this was the biggest and best Pinball Expo ever, with more show space, more vendor stands, more seminars, more factory tours, more days, more… well, you get the idea. It was certainly wholly fitting for this special fortieth anniversary of the world’s biggest pinball show.

It was evident to everyone just how much planning and organisation had gone into this year’s Pinball Expo, and it certainly all paid off, with masses of plaudits and almost no complaints,

We hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage too. With so much taking place it’s impossible to cover everything, but we hope with our reporting including more than 470 pictures, 43 videos and 19 audio recordings you got a great feel for just how huge Pinball Expo was this year.

We’ll be back next year, when Pinball Expo returns to its regular four day format, starting with the Bumper Blast on Wednesday 15th October and concluding on the Saturday night.

Put it in your diary for 2025
Put it in your diary for 2025

We hope you can make it too.

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