Pinball Tournament

2018 Brisbane Pinball Masters

June 5, 2018 By ausretrogamer

Calling all pinballers! Get your flipping fingers ready, as the 4^th annual 4-day Brisbane Masters pinball extravaganza is almost upon us!

The 2018 Brisbane Masters will take place from July 19 till July 22 at Rydges Fortitude Valley. With 100 confirmed entrants, places are limited, so ensure you get in touch with the organisers, Jason Lambert and/or Jimmy Nails (via the Facebook event page) to secure your spot at this most prestigious pinball tournament.

Just in case you needed an incentive to compete, official Australian Stern Pinball distributor, Amusement Machine Distributors (AMD) is sponsoring the 2018 Brisbane Masters and have thrown $3,000 towards the event kitty!

For more information on the tournament, please check out the official Facebook Event page.

Photos from the 2017 Brisbane Masters (by Marco Rossignoli)

Rising From The Ashes: Argonauts Pinball Club Tournaments Are Back!

April 30, 2018 By ausretrogamer

Like the phoenix rising from ashes, the Argonauts Pinball Club is back with new pinball machines and new tournament format with the same awesome group of pinball fanatics!

Come along to the Golden Fleece Hotel this Thursday (May 3rd) for the Argonauts Monthly Pinball Quest – The Horrid Hydra tournament. Bring your friends, bring your family, play pinball and soak up the fantastic atmosphere as Melbourne’s pinball community gather to battle it out for great prizes and IFPA points. Oh yeah, everyone is welcome, so you have no excuse!

The tournament format has changed to an 8 game limited qualifier, meaning that there is more time to socialise and hang out!

Tournament Details:

Qualifying time: 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Finals (start time): 9:15pm to 11:00pm (the aim is to be finished by 11:00pm, but it could run later)
Cost: $15.00 (entry fee covers ALL games for the night!)

The competition consists of limited qualifying and head-to-head final rounds. During qualifying, each player will play ONE game only on each machine and a SECOND game on one machine of their choosing. A point system will be used to rank each player’s best score on each machine. Those who rank highest at the end of qualifying will participate in the head-to-head final rounds.

This tournament will be managed through the rules and regulations of the IFPA.

Current Pinball Machine Lineup:

Medieval Madness Remake
Dialed In!
Indianapolis 500
Jack*Bot
The Shadow
Bally Playboy
Star Trek – The Next Generation

For more information visit the Argonauts Pinball Club on PinballScore.

image source: Argonauts Pinball Score

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Pinball: 2016-17 IFPA Australian Championship Series Final Is Coming!

January 18, 2017 By ausretrogamer

The 2016/17 International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) Australian Championship Series (ACS) final will be held in Melbourne on February 11 and 12! Australasia’s top 32 ranked pinball wizards will face off for the ultimate crown!

With most of the Australian eastern states represented and a solitary New Zealander, the competition is guaranteed to be flipping hot! Number one contender is the young gun, Jordan Tredaway. Jordan has had another stellar year winning competitions or being in the top 4, which makes him the one to beat. Looking at the table of the top 32 players, any one of these wizards is capable of carrying away the crown. We will be covering the event, with live social media commentary and updates, so make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Bring on February 11 and 12!

TOP 32 Australian Ranked Pinball Players
Pos.	Name	State
1	Jordan Tredaway	VIC
2	Greg Gee	NSW
3	Luke Marburg	VIC
4	Martin Robbins	VIC
5	Paul Jones	NSW
6	Brett Goodwin	NSW
7	Jason Lambert	QLD
8	Gavin Drogemuller	QLD
9	Stuart Thornton	VIC
10	Johnny Crabtree	VIC
11	Pat Nichols	NSW
12	Paul Reid	NSW
13	Robert Macauley	SA
14	John Hutchinson	QLD
15	Greg Siegele	SA
16	Rob Singh	QLD
17	Matthew Venables	NSW
18	Brian Schleibs	VIC
19	Michi Henning	QLD
20	Stacey Borg	VIC
21	Jasen Mouritsen	QLD
22	Andrew Ferguson	NSW
23	Wal Dickie	VIC
24	Geoff Wills	VIC
25	Grant Quinn	QLD
26	Marcus Sezonov	VIC
27	Marc Bell	NSW
28	Nick Hamhougias	VIC
29	Chris Wade	QLD
30	Alex Nunn	VIC
31	John Ebejer	VIC
32	David Peck	NZ

Young gun, Jordan Tredaway will be the one to beat

The Pinball Wizard himself, Wal Dickie – we bet he’ll shake things up!

Johnny Crabtree will be tough wizard to beat

The dynamic pinball duo, Nick Hamhougias and Martin Robbins

Dr. C (Stacey Borg), will be flippin’ with precision!

For those of you that want to know more about the IFPA Australian Championship Series and it’s finals competition rules, here you go:

The IFPA Australian Championship Series (ACS) is an annual pinball competition where the qualification is done over an entire calendar year. Results of all IFPA-endorsed tournaments held in Australia count towards qualification. The top 32 players at the end of the calendar year are invited to compete in the IFPA Australian Championship Series Final, held the following February. The winner is crowned IFPA Australian Pinball Champion.

The IFPA ACS final consists of a group stage and a knockout stage. For the group stage, the field of 32 players is split into two pools of 16 players each. Qualifiers ranked 1,4,5,8,9,12,13,16,17,20,21,24,25,28,29,32 are placed in Pool A, and qualifiers ranked 2,3,6,7,10,11,14,15,18,19,22,23,26,27,30,31 in Pool B.

The group stage consists of 5 rounds of 4-player group match play. Each player is grouped with the other 15 players in their pool once each across the 5 rounds. Groups play 3 games in each round: one old, one mid, one new. 7-5-3-1 scoring. The top 7 players from each pool advance to the knockout stage. The winner of each pool receives a bye in the first round of the knockout stage. Players tied for 1st or 7th place in their pool will play a one-game tiebreak match on a randomly selected machine.

The knockout stage consists of head-to-head, single elimination best-of-3 matches until the final, which will be best-of-5. Players will be seeded according to group stage standings, then ACS qualifying rank. The higher seed in each match will have choice of machine or order for game 1 or 2 (at their discretion), as well as game 3. In the final, the higher seed will have choice or machine or order for any two of games 1 to 4 (at their discretion), as well as game 5. No machine may be played more than once in a match.

If you want to watch Australia’s top pinball players in action, then head to the Thornbury Bowls Club, 27 Ballantyne St, Thornbury on February 11 and 12 (from 10am). It’s a short walk to the High Street cafes, the St Georges Motor Inn, Route 11 and 86 trams, and Thornbury station on the South Morang train line. We can’t wait!

eSports Is Coming To The Pinball Arcade

January 3, 2017 By ausretrogamer

Get those flippin fingers ready, as eSports is coming to The Pinball Arcade!

FarSight Studios has partnered with Pinball Joe and Major League Pinball and starting this year, they plan to bring you sponsored tournaments where you can win cash and prizes. Players will be able to compete in time and objective based tournaments to establish themselves as the best in their geographical region. The first tournament is to be launched this month (January) with many more to come. This is going to be a huge year in video pinball!

For more information, check out Major League Pinball on Facebook, or sign up on their site.

Melbourne Silverball League: Get Flippin

March 31, 2016 By ausretrogamer

Attention all you pinball loving peeps, April 1 2016 will mark the commencement of the new Melbourne Silverball League monthly pinball tournament. This new tournament will be based on a selfie format, but more on that later! No, this is no April Fools’ Day joke, this is for real!

After his recent US trip to Arcade Expo 2.0 competing in the It Never Drains In Southern California pinball tournament, Martin Robbins was inspired to set up a similar qualifying and competition format here in Melbourne, hence the Melbourne Silverball League (MSL) was born. The first selfie competition in Melbourne will be at Bartronica in Flinders Lane. This is how the MSL pinball competition format will work:

Each month there will be particular pinball machines at Bartronica selected for qualifying – for the month of April the machines will be: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Party Zone, Addams Family, Goldeneye 007 and Pin*Bot. Play on each of these machines and take a photo of your score. You can either upload your picture via the tournament location at Matchplay.Events or post it to the Melbourne Silverball League (MSL) Facebook page. One of the MSL scorekeepers will review your photo and then submit your score. Your ranking on each machine will be worth more points the higher up you are to give you a combined overall ranking (based on the PAPA format i.e.: 100 points for the top score, then 90 for 2nd, 85 for 3rd and so on). The combined scores of the top 16 ranked players will qualify for the playoff (which is on the first Sunday of the following month).

To ensure your score submission goes smoothly, your selfie should have your face and the score to help the MSL scorekeepers validate your submission. Some patience might be needed where certain machines take a while to scroll through credits to get back to your score.

If we have lost you so far, here are the TL;DR (that’s Too Long;Didn’t Read) notes:

Register your participation at the MSL Facebook page;
play pinball at Bartronica;
upload pictures to MSL Facebook page of your awesome scores;
check the MSL Facebook page to see how you are ranking for that month;
get in to the top 16 players to qualify for the monthly head to head comp to determine the overall winner.

It is that easy! So what are you waiting for? Go and register now and then hit Bartronica during the month of April to rack up your high score!

Martin Robbins – the brains behind the Melbourne Silverball League

Shane Rubans getting some testing done at Bartronica
source: Melbourne Silverball League

Pinball Frenzy At PAXAus

October 22, 2015 By ausretrogamer

Who said that pinball was dead? Well, it may have taken a back seat a decade and a half ago, but boy, has pinball come back in a big way. There has been a resurgence of flipping the silver ball with companies like Stern Pinball making contemporary tables based on the hottest bands and pop culture franchises on the planet, from AC/DC, Metallica, KISS, to Iron Man, The Walking Dead, Star Trek and WWE Wrestlemania, there surely is no shortage of great pinball machines to tilt and bump on.

Since pinball has once again become cool (Ed: it never lost its cool!), it was a no brainer to start thinking about including pinball machines in the PAX Aus Classic Gaming area. After meeting Scott Kellett at Supanova earlier this year, we had a brief chat and that is when Scott mentioned how cool it would be to have pinball machines at PAXAus. A few discussions later, Scott’s idea was given the greenlight to pursue having pinball machines in the Classic Gaming area. Through sheer determination and dedication, Scott has round up the big names from the pinball community (Bayside Pinball Club, PinMem and AMD) to deliver us an array of amazing pinball tables (Ed: there will be 10 pinball tables!) for all of you to enjoy and compete on. In a major pinball coup, Scott has arranged to have the first Game of Thrones pinball table available for play in Australia at PAXAus 2015 – even more reason to see you all at PAXAus 2015!

For those with a competitive streak, the ‘PAXAus 2015 IFPA Pinball Tournament’ (proudly brought to you by AMD) will be on Saturday, October 31 – more details here. There will be great prizes on offer, including showbags full of Stern goodies and an awesome Game Of Thrones backboard translite! Get your flippin fingers ready for some pinball frenzy at PAXAus 2015.

Event: PAX Aus 2015
Date: Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2015
Where: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC)
Tournaments: PAXAus 2015 Classic Gaming Tournaments

image source: Amusement Machine Distributors (AMD)

Cramer’s Pinball Tournament: It’s Hotter Than July!

July 29, 2015 By ausretrogamer

Whoa! Time flies when you are having fun! It seems like yesterday that we attended the inaugural Cramer’s Pinball Tournament, but alas, that was over a month ago!

Well, the second Cramer’s Pinball Tournament rolled around this past Tuesday (July 28). Once again, tournament director Scott Kellett put on a wonderful competition at an equally awesome venue. Not only did we have the influence of pinball on the bar menu, Scott also worked tirelessly to upgrade the cameras near the competition area (thanks also to Dr. Curlytek) to ensure that all the flipping action was beamed to the big screen so that no one missed the wizards in action.

As per usual, the competition was fierce, but the social aspects of such pinball tournaments is always the winner on the night. In the end there were four left standing (from 27 participants): teenage pinball sensation, Jordan Tredaway, Wal Dickie, Daniel Luth and Mr. Pinball himself, Scott Kellett. There were a few nail biting moments on the scoreboard, but the eventual champion and last wizard standing was, (Ed: drum roll please!) Scott Kellett – well done on a fantastic win, Scott!

On a night like this, pinball is the winner, so congratulations to everyone that participated and to all the new players, we hope to see you at the next pinball tournament!

A big thanks to Scott Kellett, Luke Marburg, Wal Dickie, Stacey Borg, Cramer’s Hotel and Cashbox Amusement for another great tournament! Roll on next month!

The board says it all!

Scott makes final camera adjusments

A Pinball Wizard must eat before battle!

A new registrant is always welcome into the pinball family!

Light, Camera, Action!

Matt Cawley – Deep in concentration

ausretrogamer EIC, Alex Boz, with matching red sneakers tries his luck on AC/DC Luci!

The crowd builds! This is the best part of pinball’n

More devilish action!

Fierce competition!

With a massive score, Scott Kellett (SMK) is crowned the Grand Champion!

Till next time…….

Cramers Pinball Tournament

May 27, 2015 By ausretrogamer

Attention all pinball wizards and potential pinball wizards! If you want to participate in a local International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) sanctioned pinball tournament, then diarise June 11!

Scott ‘Skott’ Kellett (Tournament Director) will host the inaugural pinball tournament at the Cramers Hotel in Preston. Registration opens at 5:30pm with a $10 entry and all machines set to free play to hone in on your flipper skills. The official tournament commences at 7:00pm, with great prizes on offer, like tickets to PAX Aus 2015. Another bonus for participants is that they will receive IFPA points and gain a world ranking! With a great specials bar and menu on the night, it promises to be an all-round awesome evening.

Tournament: Cramers Pinball
Date: 11 June 2015
Where: Cramers Hotel – 1 Cramer Street, Preston VIC
Entry fee: $10
Registration time: 5:30pm
Tournament start time: 7:00pm
Tournament pinball machines: Metallica Premium and AC/DC Luci

For more details on the tournament and to register your attendance, go here. We hope to see you at Cramers!

Are you ready?