Pinball championship coming to Calgary this long weekend

A bar in southwest Calgary is going to be buzzing like an old school arcade this Labour Day long weekend.

The first ever Silverball Rodeo pinball championship is happening at Atlantic Trap and Gill.

It’s part of a two day event called Rock’N’Roll Pinball, hosted by Major Minor Music Project, who have partnered with Stampede City Pinball.

“They always have eight to ten machines, that’s their headquarters,” says Major Minor Music Project Founder Graham Mackenzie. “So we’re bringing in another twenty machines for the tournament, and that’s the most amount of machines that have been in one place in Calgary for maybe three decades, since the end of the arcade era.”

There’s going to be everything from old classics like The Twilight Zone, all the way up to new machines such as Game of Thrones.

The championship is open to everybody, with an entrance fee of $30.

“People say, ‘oh I’m not very good,’ it’s any level, because it’s round robin, everyone plays everyone else and it’s all based on points. So, there’s no knockout, you are there and you have to dedicate your day to pinball because you’re playing through the whole tournament with everyone else,” says Mackenzie.

Then if you make it into the top twelve, you move on to the finals on Sunday.

But if you don’t make the cut, the fun and the flipping doesn’t stop there. All the machines will be turned on free play, and live music will play at Atlantic Trap and Gill for eight hours, featuring bands from across western Canada.

It costs $15 just to attend the free play and live music on Sunday. Some of the proceeds will go into the winner’s pot for the Silverball Rodeo, then the rest heads to Major Minor Music Project, to help raise money for their all-ages music venue.

All the details on the festivities can be found on eventbrite.ca.

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