He moves closer to the machine. Each move is calculated and deliberate, though he executes them at a lightning-fast pace. As the ball bounces off each target, his face gets a little closer to the glass. Finally, after a few moments of thrilling anticipation, the ball travels between two brightly lit ramps and rests in a shallow hole. “That’s multiball,” he says as the tension leaves his body.

He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular; it was more of a personal affirmation. This happens a lot at the Texas Pinball Festival, where every year, thousands of pinball fans gather in North Texas to play games, compete for cash and prizes and exhibit their work.

As I stood in line to play Bride of Pin-Bot, I made some notes about my surroundings. In its 15th year, the festival has grown tremendously. “Our first show had about 200 people at it,” said Paul McKinney, co-founder and organizer, ”and we have probably grown about 15 percent a year.” This year the festival drew more than 5,000.

———

McKinney is a spry 40-something from Cedar Hill who works for a software company. Throughout the day I see him jump all around the Frisco Convention Center, the home of the Texas Pinball Festival for the foreseeable future (at least until they outgrow it like their previous venues). He’s answering questions, dealing with media requests, shaking hands. His story is not uncommon among collectors I will meet at the show. He bought his first pinball machine in college.

When the opportunity arose to purchase a machine from a restaurant going out of business, he jumped at it. “I remembered playing pinball when I was 13 years old.” he said. “I would run to the 7-Eleven on my candy-apple green Schwinn bicycle to lose my quarters to Joker Poker.”

The hobby grew from there. Now, along with many other exhibitors, he shares his love for pinball with a new generation. “I’d like to think that we helped save pinball,” McKinney said with a wholesome smile. “We introduced a lot of new players to it.” Whereas the first festival was comprised only of hobbyists, who he described as mostly middle-aged white men, the demographics now are much more balanced. From toddlers in strollers, to tweens, to men and women on walkers, the crowd at Texas Pinball Festival runs the gamut.

———

I had heard about the festival from a close friend, Brian Davis, who brought several of his own machines from home. Davis, 44, lives and works in Sherman, where he owns Nervosa Tattoo and Body Piercing. A lover of all things strange, from the quirky to the macabre, he bought his first game in 2011 at A Touch of Class in downtown Sherman and continued collecting. When it broke down, he started searching for answers and found the North Texas pinball community.

Davis started out like the rest, as a kid in the arcade. Growing up poor made him appreciate the giving nature of pinball machines. While he lost his quarter in 30 seconds or less to a video game, he could sometimes earn free games of pinball and get his money’s worth.

After paying more to repair the machine than he had to buy it, he resolved to understand the game’s logic. Like many other members of the community he now calls home, Davis had a basis in electronics when he began tinkering with pinball machines. “I went to DeVry for a year, but I didn’t finish. I joined a death metal band instead,” he said, letting out a deep, bellowing laugh.

Davis is now well known in the pinball community for his mechanical abilities, but his artistic abilities also earn him praise among the group. Before the show, he spent countless nights working on an old 1970 machine called Four Million B.C. for a friend. While he granted that the art was a bit cheesy, he appreciated its simplicity. The dingey plastic parts of the machine were not the only thing that showed its age: The playfield, backglass and cabinet were covered in modern art dinosaurs, volcanoes and prehistoric trees. When Davis was finished, though, you could have mistaken the game for a new homage to retro art. By some magic — and a lot of clear coat — he was able to revive the machine’s vibrance.

———

I was relieved that the three men in line ahead of me for Bride of Pin-Bot were going to be playing a game together. I listened in on their conversation and others around me — they all revolved around tournament rankings, parts for games, paint jobs and prices. A couple passing by remarked on the beauty of the Bride. It is the handy work of Davis and Kevin Moore.

Moore is a technician at Texas Instruments and resident of Princeton. He has been exhibiting at the Texas Pinball Festival since 2009 and has a special affinity for arcade games. Moore can recite the history pinball like he was actually there. “I believe the history of pinball goes back to medieval times,” he began, noting, “the biggest thing in pinball history in America is when they deemed it illegal.”

Before the fateful addition of flippers to pinball machines in 1947, the game revolved more around luck than skill. Back then, players controlled only the plunger, the spring mechanism that launches the ball into play. An artful shot catapulted the ball onto a field lined with pins, cups and shallow holes with point values. One wrong move and your game could end as quickly as it began. This led public officials to recognize the game as a gambling device, and, in 1939, Los Angeles began what would develop into a rash of bans across the nation. Politicians in New York City took to the streets in a now infamous raid, smashing pinball games as a show of moral solidarity.

Incredibly, the game remained illegal until a fateful plunge by journalist Roger Sharpe in 1976. He had set out to prove the skill needed to play modern pinball games.

———

As I finally step up to the Bride of Pin-Bot, I feel oddly nervous. The lights below the glass are so bright that I squint a little to read the values under each target. The extra-bright LED lights are apparently some of the “bells and whistles” that Moore’s girlfriend Jenny Beard had told me he liked to add to his games. I spend minutes admiring the perfect condition of the playfield and cabinet before taking the plunge.

Though it looks pristine, this game was actually made in 1991 by Williams Electronics, one of the biggest names in pinball at the time. Davis told me that it was originally designed by John Trudeau with art by Python Anghelo, names I heard over and over from pinball enthusiasts at the show. While Moore had spent months restoring the machine — new plastics, $1,000 worth of chrome, extensive wiring work — Davis had also put 60 hours of his life into the game restoring the machine’s art. No nick or scratch was left untreated, and the playfield was so perfectly smooth and glossy you could almost see your reflection in it.

Judges at the show pore over the machines in an even more critical way. At Texas Pinball Festival, competitors are not the only ones that walk away with prizes and bragging rights. Exhibitors can earn titles for machines they bring, such as, Best ’60s Game, Best Unique Game and the coveted Best of Show.

———

The Texas Pinball Festival is a one-of-a-kind experience, both for longtime fans and newcomers to the game. It offers visitors a chance to touch a piece of history and engage in unique social experience. “Imagine going to a car show and getting to drive all of the cars,” said Ken Kemp, another of the festival’s organizers, “that’s what you get to do at the Texas Pinball Festival.”

Kemp is an elementary school principal at Collinsville Independent School District. He runs the festival’s tournament play each year and hosts tournaments of his own in his home arcade from time to time. An avid collector, Kemp has 43 pinball machines, along with a number of other coin-operated amusement devices and pieces of drive-in movie memorabilia.

Having worked as a festival organizer since 2004 and a collector for much longer, Kemp has seen the booms and busts of the pinball industry. “There is a longing on people’s parts to have an experience that’s real,” he says, as opposed to the virtual experiences we have daily on phones and computers. “The hobby is getting bigger every year.”

———

As my last ball whizzed into the drain hole, I glanced behind me to find that a line was forming for the Bride of Pin-Bot once again. Nearly every one of the hundreds of machines in the convention center was occupied. Brand-new games like Alien and Houdini garnered lines that stretched well beyond their respective booths. But pinball hasn’t always enjoyed this amount of fame or attention.

Before the Texas Pinball Festival started, only one major pinball machine manufacturer remained in business. Davis attributes the public’s revived interest in the game both to events like the Texas Pinball Festival and another very unlikely source.

“Have you heard of a game called Pinball Arcade?” he asked. Pinball Arcade was a widely popular, reasonably priced game for the PlayStation 3 and PC that came out in 2012. Davis explained that he believed that this virtual version of the game had not only introduced pinball to a new audience, but had also prompted those who were already familiar with it to seek out the real thing.

“It’s weird because video games killed pinball,” he said, “and then they brought it back in a way.”

———

I woke up the day after my festival debut with a renewed sense of vigor. I needed more. I hustled back to Frisco on my own dime, just in time to see the exhibitor’s awards announced. As I re-entered the packed convention center that Sunday afternoon, it struck me that I was in the presence of something big. This marriage of art, technology and entertainment had brought together so many people, not only as patrons of the show but as a kind of collective. As Moore put it, “It’s a very large, dysfunctional but happy family.”

As judge Bill “The Mayor” Morrison handed out award after award, the tension in the room began to build. This was it. After the announcements, players would be thrust out of the doors to allow vendors and exhibitors to begin the tear down process. Months of painstaking work and thousands of dollars in paint, wire and mechanical components were now on the line. The crowd gathered tightly around the stage.

The thrill of it all got me thinking that I needed a pinball machine of my own. I hastily pulled out a five dollar bill and rushed to the raffle table, buying the last ticket before the drawing. “The market has gone way up,” Moore has said. It would be a while, then, before I could buy a game of my own unless I got lucky. Davis had also predicted, though, that the market would crash in the future. “The generation below us doesn’t know pinball the way we know it,” he said, “and I don’t know that they’ll ever love it like we do.”

I rushed back to the stage to hear the final award announcements. For the first time all weekend, there was a hush in the convention center. When the Best of Show category finally came around, Morrison laid on the suspense by drawing out the last few agonizing seconds. When at last he motioned for the slide with the winners name to be revealed, the crowd grew frenzied. It was Bride of Pin-Bot. Moore’s girlfriend squealed with delight. “It was a well-deserved win,” she said after the show, her face still beaming. Moore held the plaque proudly above his head before exiting the stage. Soon the work would begin again.

“I have high hopes for pinball, don’t get me wrong,” Davis said, “I hope that the world rediscovers it, and it goes on into the future.”