Tower Cinemas Pinball Club Newcastle

10/06/2026

We had 13 players join Tower Cinemas Pinball Club last night including two special guest visitors who made the trip up from near Wollongong! Thanks Sierra Charalambous and Theo Charalambous for making the trip. It was great to have you here.

We ended up with 3 groups of 3 and one group of 4 so the rounds seemed to move through pretty quickly. We were able to get everyone to play Stern Pinball's Pokemon Pro machine side comp before, during and after the main tournament. In the end it was:
Brett Goodwin 1st - $100 Tower Cinemas - Newcastle gift card
Mal Cawthorn 2nd - $50 gift card
Steve Cox 3rd - Double movie pass

For the main comp we had a 6 player finals with the top two seeds receiving byes. This was Brett Goodwin and Sierra Charalambous respectively. Brett had a great qualifying run with 5 wins and a second.

No tie-breakers this week (I think the 3 player groups helped with the scoring there) but it was still very close. Tom Nichols had a 2 point round 2 and then a 14 point round 3 which saw him fall 1 point outside the top 6.

It may be the 3rd week in a row that Richard Suters has had a perfect final round to jump into the finals.

Peter Schmalenberg had a perfect first round which helped him make another finals appearance.

It was great to see Brett Jeffrey back after a 7 week hiatus, but he proved he hasn't lost his touch and qualified in 3rd spot.

The last player in the finals was Steve Cox who finished strongly and pipped Tom to take 6th spot. Steve, Craig Andriessen and Richard had an interesting 2nd round where they managed to break 2 different machines :) Addams Family Thing kickout died during ball 3 so we had to move to Fish Tales. Then during the 2nd ball on Fish Tales the flipper button fell out. So we moved to Indiana Jones - thankfully nothing went wrong with that, but its always disheartening when you are winning a game and it breaks...

We did our random draw for the Pokemon Pinball translite which was won by David Bailey AUS! Congratulations to David. Pat Nichols won some merch from Amusement Machine Distributors and Melinda Louise won some GOAT Movie merch. A ball that turns into a drink bottle? hahah. Something like that anyway.

Semi Final game was on James Bond 007. I was asking the staff for the key to remove a stuck ball earlier in the night but they couldn't find it. They did find a key for a game called L00 though... And somehow it fit :) haha.

I missed the action on that game but the end result was Richard 1st, Steve 2nd, Peter 3rd and Brett 4th. If anybody wants to add a summary of the game feel free :)

The finals was Bretts pick of Theatre of Magic.
He managed to score over 700 million in 2 balls. Sierra had a great second ball and was neck and neck with Brett going into ball 3 but wasn't able to produce the goods.
Richard ended up on 270mil and Steve on 217mil. Brett didn't need to play his last ball but he did so he could get over a billion. :)

A reminder to everyone that there will be NO pinball Club next week. I am heading up to Brisbane to play in the Brisbane Masters Pinball Tournament. It will be my 12th year of attending and I will join over 200 other pinheads entering the main event. There are also side tournaments over the 6 days, so lots of pinball to be played.

It is the biggest pinball event in Australia and I recommend everyone go and check it out - https://www.bnepac.org

Until next time.

09/06/2026

Tonight at Tower Cinemas Pinball Club we will be running 2 separate tournaments. Our regular Tuesday night group matchplay tournament and a special Pokemon Pinball Best Game comp.

Tower Cinemas - Newcastle have donated prizes for the top 3 scores on Stern Pinball Pokemon Pro pinball machine.
1st place - $100 Tower Cinemas gift card
2nd place - $50 gift card
3rd place - Double movie pass

Come in and register for both comps (or only 1 if you want) from 6pm. The Pokemon Best Game comp will run from 6pm - 10pm. Every player gets to play the Pokemon machine once, and then time permitting, can opt to play again for a $4 fee the second time round to try and improve their score. A third play will cost $6 etc.

Players who enter the Tower Cinemas Pinball Club comp will go into the running to win a Pokemon Pinball translite courtesy of Stern Pinball. These retail for $99 US so are a great prize to win.
The winner will be randomly selected from wheelofnames.com and announced at the end of the second round.

We will also have prizes from Amusement Machine Distributors to give away as well.

As always, new players get free entry and if you have already played in a comp before and bring a new player along, you also get free entry for yourself.

See you there!

05/06/2026

We are tuning in to the IFPA World Pinball Championship being held at District 82 in De Pere, Wisconsin.
https://www.twitch.tv/foxcitiespinball
Follow along with the live stream to watch the best 80 players in the world battle it out.

We have 3 representatives from Australia: Jason Lambert, Tom Casey and honorary Australian Escher Lefkoff. Good luck to all.

02/06/2026

One of our favourite numbers of players turned up for Tower Cinemas Pinball Club last night. 16! Perfect for 4 x 4 player groups.

No new players but we had former finalist Annette Vickery returning for her second pinball club.

Mitchell Joy continues his attendance streak with 15 tournaments in a row! Well done to Mitch. After a good start he unravelled a bit in rounds two and three and missed out on finals.

Tom Nichols has only missed one comp and he continues to improve, narrowly missing out on a finals spot in a playoff on Addams Family. Bouncing back from 2 last places in the first round, he scored wins on Jaws and Indiana Jones to keep him in contention.

Matthew Page ran the gamut of results with first, seconds, thirds and fourths, coming up just short of making the finals by 2 points. Matt is right on the cusp of getting to finals and has been improving each time he plays.

Richard Suters had another perfect round 3 to secure equal 3rd spot in qualifying alongside Anthony Bougatsas who also had a perfect round 3. They joined Nomie Goodwin on 30 points to qualify for the finals.
Peter Schmalenberg and Nicholas Schmalenberg both made it into the finals in 6th and 7th respectively. Nick showed that you don’t need to win a game with 3 second place and 3 third place finishes.

The tie breaker for the finals was on Addams Family. It was between Brett Goodwin, Annette and Tom. Addams was pretty cruel to Tom and not much less cruel for Annette. Brett managed to get Multiball started and finished in about 80 million to move into the finals.

Pokémon from Stern Pinball has arrived at Tower Cinemas - Newcastle and was used in the comp during qualifying as well as the semi finals as Clint Starrett chose to play it as one of the top qualifiers.
Clint put up a respectable 204 million for Peter, Nick and Anthony to chase and Peter was able to get 250 million and secure his spot in the final 4. Anthony and Nick falling short with scores of 66m and 140m.

Pat Nichols chose Jurassic Park in his semi finals match. Pat had a great ball 1 on JP, managing to get to the King of the Island mode after capturing the spinosaurus and finished ball one on 800 million. Laid down the gauntlet for Brett, Naiomi and Richard to chase. In the end Richard got the closest and progressed into the final 4.

Pat opted for another game on Jurassic park (for the 3 free credits) Clint went first and scored 15mil, Richard went second and scored 20mil, Peter went third and scored 16mil and Pat secured the win with another good game and 500mil in two balls.

The lucky door prize winners were Annette, Brett and Nick. They scored merch from our great supporters Amusement Machine Distributors and Newcastle Pinball Association. Annette and Nick both chose Pinfest branded schooner glasses and some AMD beer coolers. I think Brett chose a shirt? Is that right Brett?

Next week we have our Pokemon Launch Party. Tower Cinemas have put up a $100 gift card for the highest score on Pokemon. $50 for 2nd and a double movie pass for 3rd. I will also be giving away a Pokemon translite but this will be a random giveaway.

I will run the Pokemon high score comp as a side comp to the pinball club. Each player pays for one game on Pokemon (just so one person can’t keep playing the game all night) and their score is recorded. Once everyone has had a turn, you can opt to buy in another game, however, the catch is the cost of the buy in is double. Your second shot at the high score will cost $4. This will all depend on how much time we have. We may only have enough time for everyone to play one game.

I will also try and get a trophy or two made up this week.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

02/06/2026

This sounds like a great plan!

"Stay up late. Play pinball. Watch cult movies. Sleep in on the Kings Birthday public holiday."

www.fivestarcinemas.com.au/newcastle/movie/pinball-free-play

01/06/2026

Tonight is Tower Cinemas Pinball Club night!

A wild Stern Pinball Pokemon pinball machine has made an appearance and will join the lineup which makes 21 pinball machines available to play. Sign up at https://insider.sternpinball.com/insider and scan your QR code on the apron of the new Stern machines to track scores, earn achievements, and participate in global or local leaderboards.

Come down to check in and practice at 6pm and we will kick off at 6:30pm. As always everyone who enters will be in the running to win prizes from our supporters Amusement Machine Distributors
New players get free entry and if you bring a new player you also get free entry.

See you tonight

28/05/2026

The John Wick LE at Tower Cinemas - Newcastle will be updated ready for Pinball Club next week.

Sorry EDY, you'll just have to come back and GC the new code.

27/05/2026

13 players showed up for Tower Cinemas Pinball Club last night. No new players this week but happy to see a regular crew forming each week.

After round 1 I withdrew from the comp so that we had a nice even amount of players and 3 x four player groups

Swiss pairing kept the scores close and allowed David Bailey to jump from the bottom group into the finals with a great 12 points from a possible 14 in round 3.

Unfortunately it wasn’t so lucky for Clint in the top group who managed only 2 points to drop out of contention. The other players in the top group all walked away with 10 points each

In group 2 Richard Suters had two wins, Tom Nichols two seconds, Naiomi Goodwin two thirds and Mark Oakwood two last place finishes. This allowed Both Richard and Tom to make it to the finals and knocked Naiomi and Mark out.

We had a 6 player finals where the top 2 qualifiers received byes. These were Brett Goodwin and Anthony Bougatsas

Peter Schmalenberg was highest qualifier for the semi final match and chose Foo Fighters.
Tom led and had one of his best games on Foo Fighters, remembering to bring a mode into Multiball and putting up a score of about 70 million for everyone to chase. Nobody was able to catch him but David Bailey came the closest and wrapped up the other spot in the final 4.

Richard Suters and Peter missed out and it seems to be highest seed game choice curse coming to haunt Peter again. 🤬

Brett chose The Mandalorian for the finals and it wasn’t until ball 2 where anybody got some kind of score on the board. There were a lot of sub 1 million scores after ball 1 😬
Brett was player 4 and didn’t end up needing to play his ball 3. Gotta love a plunge out ball 3.

Tom couldn’t continue his form going into the final game and ended up in 4th position. He couldn’t get anything going on Mando. Talking to him after the comp I asked if he was nervous because of the big prize money on offer and he acknowledged that he was 😀 $25 is a lot of money for a 12 year old

Anthony ended up second and I was waiting for a ball 3 comeback to overtake Brett but it was not to be. David Bailey commented that this finals game on Mando probably shouldn’t make the report but here we are 😀

Mark Hopwood was the lucky door prize winner and opted for the Newcastle Pinball Association Pinfest schooner glass and Amusement Machine Distributors beer cooler.

I think Pokémon will arrive some stage this week so will look at doing some kind of special launch party for it next week. Thanks to Stern Pinball for the prizes

Also some new Grand Champion scores were set outside of the competition with EDY putting up 1.5 billion on John Wick and Pat Nichols bumping PJ off the top spot on James Bond with 3 billion. Unfortunately the James Bond wasn't connected to Insider Connect :(

25/05/2026

IFPA results from last weeks Tower Cinemas Pinball Club. Players in yellow are not applied to the strength calculations until they reach 5 tournaments played. This will mean David Bailey Anthony Bougatsas Ben Schaeffer and Anthony Ross will start adding their "strength" to our results from tonight.

Pokemon is meant to be arriving some time this week. If it is not in by tonight I might hold off on giving away the Pokemon translite until it arrives. Will look at having some kind of launch party for when it gets to Tower Cinemas - Newcastle

Hope to see everyone there again tonight. Remember new players get free entry and if you have already played in a comp before and bring a new player YOU get free entry too.

6pm for check-in and practice. 6:30pm start.

23/05/2026

At Flipper Fellowship at Flippermania 12.

Representing Tower Cinemas Pinball Club Newcastle Pat and Tom Nichols. Also Con GeorgeSuze LouiseMichael Bird