A shallow dive into the deeply competitive world of pinball in Aotearoa.

This is not a story of overnight success. It is the result of months of dedication and honing my craft, which led me to the lofty heights of becoming the 193rd best pinballer in New Zealand and, in turn, the 17,292nd best in the world. 

Stepping into the world of pinball, it’s bright lights, music, and points by the millions. Pinheads line the various pinball machines with their hands on the side buttons with a Ford-like focus. There’s a machine named Medieval Madness with a moving Fisher Price-esque castle, exploding towers, and a lowering drawbridge. Others are themed for rock bands, TV shows, or simple retro classics. Whatever your niche interest, there’s probably a corresponding pinball machine. I pray for the day the Wahs release one. 

For the uninitiated, pinball works like this: in each game, you have three chances to post the best cumulative score. You use the plunger (the pulley thing) or sometimes just a button to whiz your ball into the playfield. Your goal is to make sure that damn ball doesn’t fall out of the playfield through the middle of your flippers. To do that, you press buttons to flip the flippers a bunch to keep the ball from going dead. Sounds pretty straightforward.

While it may look like dumb luck, pinball is an intricate art. There’s ball control, game modes, jackpots, combos, nudging and smacking flippers, sometimes to the dulcet tones of AC/DC. It’s pretty bloody complex, but the best players make it look like a smooth ballet. 

Nudging was the most confusing part for me as a beginner. You’ll see players constantly whacking the side of their machines. It’s a tactic to help stop the ball from going dead, among other things, but it is regulated by a strike system to make sure you’re not thumping the machine too much. The strike system works via a tilt-bob mechanism. It’s a pendulum hanging freely under the machine, surrounded by a ring. Each jolt will make it swing. Every time you hit the ring, you get a danger warning. Once you get three dangers, the game will end. It’s way harder than it looks. The great players do this with perfect precision. I have not learned how to do it yet.

Pinball is a sport that comes into our lives by various routes. For some, it’s via our parents’ computer playing 3D Pinball Space Cadet. Others are tempted into the world from a trip to the local pub as a child. Or, in my case, being roped in by a flatmate earlier this year at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe on Wellington’s Bond Street, where I was thrown in the deep end of a Thursday night tournament.

My goal for my first tournament was not to come dead last. I failed, and I also failed at my second, third, and fourth tournaments. My typical tournament goes something like this: first match, trash; second, trash; third, a bit better than trash but never much better. However, the exception to this was in my fifth tournament, where I shocked myself and did well enough to win one game. I was so proud that I darted around the shop, telling anyone who would listen. To celebrate the start of my impending rise, I bought a celebratory Steiny, which the shop sells for exactly such moments.

After six tournaments, I’ve only won one game. But via the magic of the scoring system, out of five million New Zealanders, I’m officially in the top 200 best pinballers. Being a globally ranked sportsperson is a great addition to my two truths and a lie repertoire. 

So, what’s the secret to cracking the lofty heights of the national and international rankings? The format of the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) rankings means that simply entering a tournament earns you points – though obviously, a better result will earn you more. 

You could go up against absolutely anyone in a tournament. In one game, I was very briefly leading against the third-ranked player in the country, Ashley Burke. Sadly, my mental fortitude couldn’t hold up, and I ended up losing by literally hundreds of millions of points.

In one tournament, I went up against the current New Zealand champion, Mitchell Stewart. If you have an image of the best pinballer in New Zealand, you may assume somebody who is only comfortable standing in front of a pinball machine, with exceptional finger strength from decades of dedication. Stewart doesn’t look quite like that—he’s a six-foot 20-something with a clean moustache and a strong mullet. A bit closer to a young Billy Ray Cyrus than a late-in-life Sheldon Cooper. 

The stereotypical pinballer is a middle-aged male, but it is really something that can appeal to any age bracket, gender, and body type. Stewart is emblematic of the pinball culture in New Zealand, which he describes as a “chilled out, welcoming, kind, generous” bunch of people who are passionate about keeping a once-declining game alive. People from all walks of life in Wellington come along to play: security guards, lawyers, students, policy folk, and landscapers. 

Despite everyone being chilled out, playing a tournament game is not. Stewart says that when in an intense game, “your heart starts going, your hand starts shaking, it impacts how you play.” He believes that “it’s within you, but it’s a measure of doing it on the spot.”

Stewart, who plays competitively at least fortnightly, says the first-of-the-month Thursday night tournaments are best for beginners, even if you are going up against some of Aotearoa’s finest. In fact, these people are also among the world’s finest. Aucklander Danielle Peck is the IFPA Women’s World Champion. Her father, David Peck, is also a top-ranked player. Wellingtonian Ashley Burke recently went to the world championships, where he was mere places from making the finals. Stewart himself is ranked in the top 200 in the world. This is all fairly serious stuff. 

In a week of Tuesday night pub quizzes and Friday after-work drinks, the majority of the pinball tournaments slot in an ample amount of socialising on a Thursday night. Hamish Guthrey, who owns Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe and gave himself the title of chief pinball enthusiast, says tournaments are formatted to play a ball at a time, so between your turn, you can socialise with your competitors or pick their brains comparing strategy and skills.

I arrived at my first tournament with Kelly, 5’4” of pinball fury, circular framed glasses and an undercut sharper than the blades on the Brooklyn wind turbine. She was the first person to really explain how best to play machines to maximise certain point-scoring modes, multi balls and other boosters.

The skill levels vary, but when it’s you and the machine, the possibilities are endless. Cooler heads tend to prevail – I blame this for my poor results. “The points are very much designed to encourage you to be proud of yourself; that is why you’re getting points for essentially losing.” I personally wouldn’t call it losing, I  prefer to look at it as winning 34th place. He reckons it encourages people to think, “Hey, I didn’t actually do very well, but I’m ranked thousands of places ahead of all these others who did even worse than me elsewhere in the world”. That’s my type of outlook on life.

When talking about the upper end of New Zealand pinball talent, Guthrey describes it as “quite a serious undertaking because it’s not just a skills-based game, it’s also about your depth of knowledge about each game, the strategies, ball sets and how to approach it in a tournament environment, which is different to the approach if you were just playing for fun. Once you get into it at that level, it really is a strategy and skills-based sport.”

The reason I keep coming back is because it’s bloody fun and pretty addictive. I like competing and getting a little better every time. It’s also an even playing field; people don’t have better equipment; they just have more skill and talent. Folk are welcoming and are genuinely stoked to see you having fun, improving, and perhaps one day doing well. Whether you’re in Crocs, Docs, or Birkenstocks, come as you are.

New Zealand is a rarity by global standards in that tournaments are not generally played for prize money. The scene looks to be a bunch of people who are just genuinely into pinball. People have seen pinball die before, and those involved are very keen to see that not happen again. It was only in 2018 when Guthery opened Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe, that Wellington saw the return of consistent competitive pinball. 

Guthrey sees Wellington pinball as trending upwards. He credits Capital City Pinball for organising monthly tournaments at Lanes. The two venues, which are independent of each other, have plenty of opportunities for people to take pinballing seriously, with approximately four tournaments happening in Wellington each month. Auckland has traditionally been the home of pinball in New Zealand and I don’t think it’s losing the title any time soon, but Wellington is modelling how the scene could start building up again across the country.  

Setting up a bunch of machines doesn’t come cheap, however. You can buy your own pinball machine to practise on at home – Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe sells them if you’ve got a cheeky $15k lying around. But for a punter like you and I, the convenience of games, food, and drink in one venue makes it easy. 

After two months of pinballing, I visited Vancouver, Canada, for a cousin’s wedding. While I was there, I decided to take the knowledge I had amassed from Mitchell, Kelly, and Hamish and use it to take on the world. I entered a tournament, and it went surprisingly average. I lost convincingly to former world champion Robert Gagno. After returning to Wellington’s Pōneke Pinballers this month, I reclaimed the familiar position of third-to-last – still unable to get even second place in a single game.