By Todd Russell
For the third consecutive year, we’re attending the Northwest Pinball & Arcade show (https://www.nwpinballshow.com/) in Tacoma, WA. See last year’s coverage: Humpday Wednesday #47 + Jaws (Stern 2024) Liveplay + FX Tournaments + NW Pinball Show 3-day Recap Review
This show is in our home area, so it only makes sense we’ll be there checking it out. This year, again, we’re attending all three days. You need to buy your 3-day passes before May 1, 2025 or the prices go up, so consider this a friendly warning to save some $$ if you’re planning on attending.
This will be our second show attended in 2025, as we went in March to the Texas Pinball Festival (Unpacking random thoughts after attending first Texas Pinball Festival 2025 with pics + Humpday Wednesday 3/26). We only did one day of that one, Saturday.
We’re also planning to attend the Portland Retrogaming Expo in October 2025. In 2024 we were able to see and play Stern’s newest game at the time: The Uncanny X-Men. I also met the designer, Jack Danger at the show and we appeared in some of the background audience footage on Stern’s teaser for the game.
There’s one panel I’m looking very forward to attending and that will be the one with Keith Elwin, Rick Naegel and Jerry Thompson.
As noted on their speaker page, they will be discussing a game they worked on “which isn’t yet announced, but will be at the show!” We now know this game is King Kong: Myth of Terror Island. Reportedly, there will be 20 of these games there so definitely going to be getting in some Kong pinball action.
The panel takes place from 3:30-4:30pm on Saturday on the GeekGamer.TV live stage that, in years past, was located just up the escalators before entering the show floor.
Tournaments? Yes, you can pay to enter online — limited entries available
If you want to play in one of the pinball tournaments during the show, the place to buy an entry for the tourney is here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/seattlepinballservices/1580343/
The ability to buy tournament entries ends when the tourneys are full or June 2, 2025, whichever comes first.