Players of all ages and skill levels are invited to play eight games of pinball for International Flipper Association points and other prizes at Pinball Pete’s Pinball Tournament, Sept. 10 & 24. | Photo: Emily Landau
Pinball Pete’s was doing a brisk bit of business on a warm, sunny Sunday evening, having seemingly made a full recovery from its pandemic closures. I had expected Pete’s to be significantly dingier than the hazy, neon-glowing recollections of my misspent youth; instead, the arcade shone brighter than I remembered it, with an impressive array of well-maintained contemporary and classic arcade games. The space was full of gamers young and old shooting zombies, playing air hockey, and collecting tickets to exchange for prizes.
Skee-Ball and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 would have to wait; I was here for the pinball tournament. Ryan Jurado, the genial organizer of the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) event and a highly ranked player himself, was happy to explain the rules. In each round, two to three competitors trade off turns on a given machine, with everyone’s per-round score tallied at the end into a ranking, managed by IFPA’s cell phone app. The competitor with the highest point total at the end of eight rounds wins. Also, don’t physically abuse the machines. Simple!
I had assumed that pinball as a concept was frozen in time, with the same Addams Family and the Simpsons machines I remember playing on as a nine-year-old. Turns out, the format never went anywhere. Pretty much any popular entertainment franchise you could imagine has been immortalized into sleek, flashy pinball form: Game of Thrones, the Walking Dead, the Mandalorian (especially popular).
Pete’s has about thirty-five machines on the floor, with twenty-one machines in play that night. The pinball scene in southeast Michigan is quite competitive, and a number of the players, particularly the women, were highly ranked in their divisions. Others were there mainly for the joy and camaraderie of the hobby, which made me feel much better on the multiple occasions when I somehow managed to have a ball go straight into the trough without even touching the flippers. While everyone I met was an adult, the tournament is family-friendly, and I was told that a recent tournament featured a state-ranked player who had just celebrated his twelfth birthday.
Despite my lack of ability, I was touched by how encouraging and open the other players were. When I managed to win a challenge on the Wizard of Oz machine (I saved Toto), I got spontaneous applause. “You’ve got a knack for this!” one man said after I defeated the Demogorgon in the gorgeous Stranger Things game. Emerging onto South University in the warm evening air, my head still vibrated with bright flashing colors, shining silver balls, spinning figurines, the clack of flippers, the bleeps and blorps of points being scored. I couldn’t wait to go back.
The Michigan Flippers pinball tournament at Pinball Pete’s is held every other Sunday at 5 p.m. This month, the tournament will be held on September 10 and 24.