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Pinball show bounces into the Expo Center
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
NILES
Limber up your flipper fingers. The Ohio Pinball Show is coming to Eastwood Expo Center this week.
The show, a first for the area, will feature more than 150 pinball games open for free play, including new and rare machines. There also will be pinball tournaments with cash prizes, a flea market, auction and vendors.
The event opens today at 3 p.m. and closes at midnight. The show is also open Friday from 3 p.m. to midnight, and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Mike Pacak is the man behind the Ohio Pinball Show. The North Lima resident has worked with pinball games nearly his whole life, and has been staging pinball shows in Chicago and Akron for decades. He moved his Akron show to the Mahoning Valley this year for the first time.
The Ohio Pinball Show is expected to draw fans of the game — once a common American pastime, but now more of a collector’s item — from across the region and several states. For the $20 price of admission, attendees can play every game for free all day. Pacak is hoping attendance tops 2,200 for the three-day event.
Many of the machines at the show also will be up for sale. Collectors who want to display a machine are welcome to bring it to the show.
A new pinball machine sells for around $5,000, said Pacak, while older games can fetch anywhere from $300 to $10,000, depending on rarity and quality.
Pacak’s connection with pinball — with its silver balls, flashing lights and clanging bells — began when he was a child growing up in Campbell.
“My father brought home a pinball machine when I was 5,” he said. “I still have it.”
The 63-year-old started tinkering with electronics while in grade and high school, and went to Youngstown State University where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. He got a job as director of operations of Fun and Games, a pinball palace with two locations — Eastwood Mall and Richmond Mall in Cleveland — after graduating in 1975.
Fun and Games would grow to 76 stores before the company met its demise in the mid-’90s.
Pacak would remain in the pinball business. He and Rob Berk of Warren, who is also in the pinball business, started staging annual shows in Chicago and, 10 years ago, Akron. Both the Chicago and Ohio shows continue to this day.
Chicago, explained Pacak, is the epicenter of the pinball industry and the home of almost every pinball machine manufacturer and designer. “People there relate to the industry,” he said.
Pacak decided to move the Akron (actually, Cuyahoga Falls) show to Eastwood Expo Center this year because he needed a bigger facility. He noted that there are quite a few pinball machine collectors in the Mahoning Valley.
Pinball is not only a livelihood for Pacak, but also a pastime. He is both a collector and a player. “I have 25 machines in my home,” he said, adding that he has competed in tournaments over the years.
He says the games are making a comeback, in a limited sense. “Most new machines being made are going into collector’s hands,” he said.
The occasional game can be found in a bar, but most young people prefer video games.
“They want to master a game,” explained Pacak. “You can master a video game, but there is no end to a pinball game.” Players can rack up points but never reach the “final level” where they can declare themselves a master of the game.
“Plus, there is a randomness to pinball,” said Pacak. “The ball bounces any way it wants to go. The player can’t control every move with skill alone.”