 And here's another event report! Will we get sick of constantly going to pinball events? Probably not! We've already been to three over the last two months, so what's one more? Besides, this is the one pinball event I look forward to the most every year - Pinfest! This year, we decided to be a little more organised than normal by finalising repairs to machines early and packing for the event a few days before. That didn't quite work out, as we were still hurriedly finishing repairs on the Friday morning, a few hours before we left. It always seems like there's an issue or two that pop up at the most inopportune time, but that's pinball! So what were were bringing this year? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Data East, 1991) had performed very well over the last few events, and I had just installed a new revision of the game code that I wanted to test in a real-world environment such as Pinfest. So TMNT was locked in. Earlier in the year, we had purchased our latest machine: Maverick (Data East, 1994). We had spent the last few months restoring it. I wanted to take this one to Pinfest as it had not been at the event since 2013, and I was keen to show off our most recent restoration work. (I haven't quite finished the restoration blog post for this one, so watch this space!) We also decided to help out a friend again by taking his Airborne (Capcom, 1996) to the show as he didn't have a means to transport it himself. The van was crammed full by the time everything was ready to go!  Part way through loading. Airborne in, TMNT in, Maverick almost ready! We got to the show on Friday afternoon and set up the games relatively quickly. We usually get to Pinfest quite late on Friday, so it was good to have some time to play some games and chat to old friends. We played a few games on TMNT and Maverick, and both seemed to be working well.  TMNT and Maverick ready to rock! After a few drinks to quench our thirst, we played a few of the more interesting games that people had brought to the show. Friday night is one of the few opportunities we have to play some of the games at the show, as the rest of the time we are generally chatting to others about pinball, or repairing the machines that break down during the show! I particularly enjoyed The Uncanny X-Men (Stern, 2024). It's an unusual playfield layout. I've gotten a little tired of the standard "Italian Bottom" flipper layout that almost all new games seem to have so this is a welcome change. You have to be prepared for the crazy ramp action and unusual bumpers on this game, too. Heaps of fun!  Having a flip on The Uncanny X-Men. Photo: Newcastle Pinball Association. One of the standout features of this year's show was the presence of not one, not two, but THREE head-to-head pinball games. I've never seen this many head-to-head games at a show before, and I'm not sure I will see this many again for some time! They were the Battle Pinny (custom design by Grant Levey), A.G. Soccer-Ball (Alvin G, 1991) and Challenger (Gottlieb, 1971). We had a blast playing all of them.  Having a head-to-head game on Challenger. Photo: Newcastle Pinball Association. By this point, we were pretty tired, so we headed in for the night. On Saturday morning, we checked that the games were still OK just before the public were let in the doors. Not much to report from Saturday morning. Another closed session was held on Saturday night, after the conclusion of the main public access sessions. We used this time to play some of the newer games. ABBA (Pinball Brothers, 2025) and Queen (Pinball Brothers, 2022) were interesting themes with catchy music. But, the gameplay didn't grab me on either of them. Dune (Barrels of Fun, 2025) was a very atmospheric game which has a great playfield design. Unfortunately the flippers were a little weak so it was harder to enjoy this one. I never ended up having time to try King Kong (Stern, 2025), which was disappointing! I'll make sure to have a go of it next year. And of course, we had a go at a lot of the classic 70s, 80s and 90s titles all around the show floor. Batman Forever (Sega, 1995) was probably the standout in this regard, as I've never seen one in the flesh. It's a little campy, like most Sega games, but it's unique for the large display and the widebody design. I had a good go of some older classics, too. Majorettes (Gottlieb, 1964) was a particularly fun one, and a great machine to test your nudging skills! And of course, we had a great time chatting with friends and making new ones!
By Saturday afternoon, we had to deal with some issues. Most of these were fairly minor and were fixed within a few minutes, but some required some more extensive repairs. These repairs included:
Granny and the Gators (Bally, 1984) was certainly the most fiddly repair we had to do. It initially would not boot up, and on the off chance it did, some of the coils would not work. The CPU had corrosion on it from battery leakage, and some of the connectors were very loose, as were the header pins. The whole board needed to be rebuilt. Luckily, the owner brought a brand new CPU board along, so we installed that and repinned all of the connectors on it, as well as a couple on the lamp/solenoid driver board. That fixed the issue, and the game operated as expected after that. It took us a while to do, and we only finished it at 11:55 pm on Saturday night! Just in time for the Sunday session the next day! While it was a lot of work it was worth it so the public would get to enjoy a rare and interesting game.
There was one other game that had issues on Saturday, too. This was our own game, Maverick! We discovered that balls were getting stuck at the paddle wheel entrance. This was because the paddle wheel was no longer spinning, so balls were not being sent back onto the playfield once they entered the Lauren Belle. We had suspected there may be issues with the paddle wheel gearbox because it was running very noisily with a lot of grinding sounds before we left.  Some troubleshooting on Maverick. Photo: Newcastle Pinball Association. We figured we may have to rebuild the gearbox on site, so we brought a drill along to drill out the gearbox casing, just in case. It's lucky we brought it, because that's exactly what we had to do! Drilling and hammering the rivets out of the gearbox was the hardest part of this repair as they were really tight. But once they were out, the gearbox was a fairly simple one to clean and grease. There are only four gears in it (five if you include the main rotor).  Paddle wheel motor gearbox during disassembly and before cleaning. We replaced the rivets with bolts and nuts, and applied some grease to all of the running gears. The gears were all in good condition otherwise, and nothing was missing. The issue must have been some grit or debris which was blocking the gears from moving, because once they were clean, greased, and put back together, the gearbox ran without issue for the remainder of Pinfest.
There was one minor casualty by the end of the Sunday afternoon. The ramp entrance on TMNT had cracked, with a piece of it falling off the ramp assembly. This ramp was already cracked in places so this was an inevitable thing to happen. The hole in the ramp doesn't actually interfere with anything, so I will start to save up for a new ramp assembly (RTBB) and grab one when I can afford it.  Broken piece from the ramp entrance. I also recorded some game audits on both TMNT and Maverick for the weekend. Overall, TMNT had 352 games played on it, while Maverick had 248. Maverick was down for a couple of hours on Saturday while we fixed the gearbox issue, so that is likely why the game count is much lower. But still, that's a typical amount of play for these games to get on a Pinfest weekend!
Sunday ran fairly smoothly with only a few minor repairs to do here and there. It was great to see people enjoying Maverick and Granny and the Gators, which we had spent a fair bit of time repairing the previous day. Maverick even got to feature on the livestream of the event for a short time. Fiona and I were absolutely exhausted after the end of the Sunday session as we had been on our feet for two whole days at that point, and we still had to pack everything up! We had a more chill night on Sunday where we played a little more pinball with the other guys who were staying the night at the hotel. The following morning we packed the machines into the van and made our way home. Another successful Pinfest complete!
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✍️ BlogHere you will find logs of our pinball and arcade machine restorations, repairs, discussion about general pinball and arcade topics, as well as recounts of our random pinball adventures. All entries on this blog are written by Alexander Visotin, unless otherwise indicated. Check back regularly for updates! Blog UpdatesArchives
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