Summer Games Done Quick: The Pinball Tournament

Every year literal thousands of gamerz descend on the Downtown Hilton in Minneapolis, bringing their skillz, deep cut anime shirts, and BO with the power of a thousand suns to Summer Games Done Quick, THE biggest speedrun festy in the world. It’s truly an amazing feat, put on entirely by volunteers and raising MILLIONS of dollars for Doctors Without Borders (and other worthy charities over the years).

Beamed directly from the main ballroom, it’s an impressive display of streaming to thousands of folks online who watch basically the entire week. What are they seeing? Sure, classic speedruns for games like Cuphead or Mario Kart, but where SGDQ really excels is weird stuff — watch a dog play video games? Check. Playing Mario 64 with Drums? Check. SO (Extreme Blazing Saddles voice) WHERE DA PINBALL AT????

While SGDQ has embraced virtually every area of game streaming, there’s one glaring omission: there ain’t no pinball! But there are signs this is starting to change. For several years, SGDQ has had a freeplay arcade for attendees and speedrunners to enjoy in their time off. This year, for the first time ever, they held a pinball tournament. WE played in it — and it just whet our whistles for more. Let’s break down the SGDQ pinball tournament and where we see it going from here. Could we ever get on the mainstage? Let a pinball boi dream!

SGDQ’s Pinball Tournament

The SGDQ pinball tournament happened on a whim. I was there “with” Bad Penny who, alongside Psychic Drive and a few other folks, provided the games for the free play arcade. It ended up being a pretty poppin’ spot, whoulda thunk that a bunch of awesome video game streamers would also want to play a shitload of arcade and pinball for free?

But for real, you’d regularly just see the folks from the main room trying their hand at any assortment of crazy activities. Take this thing for instance, which I’m not even really sure what it is. It’s sort of like if Tron had a Beer Pong level. Right? I took some video too, but this is print and photo only mfer, so figure it all out from this:

But anyway, amidst all this — one of these arcade guys had his birthday. If I was a true journalist, I woulda been paying more attention, because these people were extremely sweet, and it would be nice if I had written his name down. But guys, I was smoking Js outside and power walking in for these rounds. Coming in hot. So, anyway, it was this guys birthday and everyone was really happy for him! Including us, right now! Hell yeah!

It was this fine fellow’s one wish to have a pinball tournament. Something totally doable, since Bad Penny provides a dozen or so pinball machines in pretty damn fine condition. And thus a tournament was had. I don’t think it was IFPA sanctioned, but we had like 20-30ish people? It was a good crew. I played kinda shiddy and got my ass handed to me in the finals by Dave, from Psychic Drive, who ran the tourney. Here he is saying, “I wanna learn more about… finals?”

I think I musta ended up 8 outta 8, but I had to move my car, so I used the excuse to wander my way back the slow route. And I gotta admit, SGDQ does things the right way. They’ve built this huge audience of fans from the stream that watch every year — literally raising millions of dollars — and now those fans come in droves to not only watch the stream, but participate in any number of rooms that had all kinds of console and computer gaming stuff.

This included some rooms that I’ll dub, “experimental.” There was a band room where a bunch of folks were just jamming on instruments, playing a series of low-fi Adult Swim type beats and vibing on hipster versions of video game music. It was sick. I wish we’d do something like this for a pinball expo. Why not? They encouraged other people to jam out.

For anyone who remembers our coverage last year, yes the Pringles game was still represented.

The streaming room is insane

All this is obviously dwarfed by the sheer weight and majesty of the streaming room, which can house IDK how many, but at least a few hundred people. And watching streams in there? You feel the weight of the moment. You feel the roar of the audience. It’s awesome. It really feels like what your teenage dreams of professional video game player could be. They portray the stream out on these giant screens, and the audience is fully engaged in the moment. I actually felt weird walking up to take pictures because I didn’t want to get in folks’ way.

And so I ask myself — why not pinball? It’s not out of the question. They stream non-console games regularly, including Japanese Rhythm games. Historically, SGDQ hasn’t streamed pinball — but their sister event, ABGQ has! Back in 2016, Deadflip and Steve Bowden and Co did a sorta head-to-head/speed run thing that felt… well, kinda awkward. So how would we do pinball streaming the right way? Let’s talk it out.

A clear pin-golf style objective

The model for a great pinball speedrun already exists: pin-golf. For those who don’t know, pin-golf tournaments give you specific objectives and based on what ball you do it in, give you a score. For me, this makes sense for a great pinball player. To play to casuals, I don’t think it should be score based, I think it should be event based. Like a wizard or mini-wizard mode. Something that visibly signals they did something dope. Let’s say, and we’re just giving an elite pinball player an entire weekend to practice on this game first, we say you have to get to Planet X in three balls? Not counting extra balls. Can it be done in front of a live studio audience? I think it could.

Someone WAY smart commentating

Play-by-play for pinball streams is intensely difficult to do. I know, because I’ve struggled through having to do it on rare occasions. You not only have to know the games rules, you have to know strategy. You don’t just have to know strategy, you have think about ways to simply explain it to pinball simpletons like me (and everyone else at SGDQ).

Who is good at that? Steve Bowden is a great commentator, as is Bowen Kerins. Really anybody could be on that couch, but we want someone who is gonna have fun with it BUT MAINLY be the rockhard foundation. The concrete that we build this stream around.

A personality playing the game

It doesn’t have to be someone famous. We basically only have one of those (Shouts Jack), but it DOES have to be someone who can give the crowd a show. I’m thinking someone like Walt Wood, while a wild card, is always good for entertaining and intense pinball streams. It doesn’t have to be someone like THAT, per se, but it does have to be someone engaging with and playing alongside the crowd. That’s what makes for the best streams, and it definitely plays the best in the room.

I love the idea of someone young — like Jason Zahler taking this mantle. The Jersey kid has that detached East Coast cool that I think could play really well in an event like this. But honestly, there are tons of good options from the young crop of kids, maybe even our own gloved assassin, Kassidy Milanowski? Hell yeah. Point being.

A sponsor or two wouldn’t hurt

SGDQ is a non-profit event, and it raises money for a good-frickin’ cause every year. They still have sponsors there! IDK, Stern and JJP, To me it feels like a no-brainer to show up here in full force and show these lil’ freaks how cool pinball really is. You want someone to creative direct that for you? I know a guy. Well, I know a guy who knows a guy. That guy is a total nutcase, but you’ll want to give him the address to your crypto wallet and just wait and see what happens next. You won’t believe what happens next!