Flipper fingers fly at upstate pinball wizard tournament in East Rochester

Bruce Nightingale bought his first pinball machine when he was 12. It featured the rock band KISS.

Now 47, Nightingale owns a room full of the flashing, beeping, bleating and buzzing tables. Yes, he invites his friends over to play.

Nightingale, who with his wife, Kathie, owns SilverBall Saloon on West Commercial Street in East Rochester, on Saturday hosted the Upstate New York Pinball Championship.

“I love seeing the people,” Nightingale said. “The two New York City guys came in late (Friday) night. At 1 a.m. the bar slows down and we were able to hang out and talk.”

For the 16 players from New York, New Jersey and Canada, who qualified through their point totals in tournaments last year, the event was as much reunion as competition.

“Everyone I know is here,” said Steven Bowden of New Jersey, who won the upstate title last year at a tournament in Broome County and is ranked No. 17 in the world by the International Flipper Pinball Association.

It also was Bowden’s first opportunity to see the Silverball Saloon, which opened a few months ago.

“This is the perfect excuse,” said the 39-year-old who successfully defended his title.

The best-of-five double-elimination tournament benefited Project Pinball, which buys pinball machines for children’s hospitals around the country.

The 16 competitors qualified through tournament play last year. The Upstate New York Pinball Competition is best three-out-five games, double-elimination format. It is the first time the event sanctioned by the International Flipper Pinball Association has been in East Rochester.

Competitors included Nightingale of Bloomfield, Ontario County, and Rochester Institute of Technology senior Zack Frey. Nightingale is ranked No. 410 by the International Flipper Pinball Association and Frey is No. 679.

Frey finished seventh and Nightingale was ninth.

Nightingale said that after years of being eclipsed by video games, pinball is back. Three companies make machines, up from one in 2009.

Newer machines have adapted some flashy aspects of video games, some video games actually train players on the finer points of pinball.

Frey started playing when his parents bought a pinball machine and said the genres require different skills. The computer science major has tilted away from video games toward pinball.

“The challenge feels less manufactured because there’s a physical aspect to it,” he said of pinball. “In a computer game, they design everything, so you know whatever your facing, that’s what the designer put in there, which I never liked for some reason.”

PSINGER@Gannett.com