The Dutch Pinball Open / Expo 2017

The Dutch Pinball Organisation celebrated their 25th birthday in 2017. And how better to celebrate than with a pinball party ? Any not just any party - it was the largest pinball party ever held in the Netherlands !

OK, technically it wasn't just a birthday party, but the DPO: the yearly dutch pinball open competition. As it was the 25th birthday, people wanted to do something special. Bigger and better than before. In the first brainstorm sessions the idea of a very large venue was suggested, the Evoluon in Eindhoven. This used to be a museum by Philips, now it's a venue hall. It's designed to look like a flying saucer, but it also resembles a pinball popbumper..
While the idea was first dismissed as being too large and expensive, after a while it was considered to be an option.. especially as the number of available pinball machines began to grow in the months before, first 250, then 350, and the last weeks it became clear that the magic number of 500 machine was within reach.

It also wasn't just a competition, it was set up as a pinball expo. There were seminars, game designer Barry Oursler and artist Kevin O'Conner were invited to talk about their career.

I'm happy to say that the dutch pinball organisation reached their goal. This was the most impressive, spectacular, largest DPO ever held. There were over 500 pinball machines in one location, in a spectacular setting, the largest popbumper building of the world ! The venue consists of 4 floors (rings), and from the top level the view below was amazing: hundreds of pinball machines, all over where you could see.

The entrance / registration. This was also the DPO shop.

A rolling ball sculpture.

Pinball Magazine had a booth, selling posters and their books.

Pascal Janin's booth selling replacement boards.

Mirco Playfields selling their replacement playfields and a lot of spare parts.

PinSound replacement sound boards. They had 3 pinball machines with their boards installed.

More vendors with parts.

Belgian Carl Jacobs selling games and backglasses.

Dutch Pinball had two The Big Lebowski machines. One of the previous versions made by Ara, and one by their new chinese contractor.

More new Stern pinball machines.

The impressive view from the top floor !

The competition area.

More games used for competition.

The DPO offered pinball for young and old !

There were special and rare pinball machines everywhere, but most were setup together on the top floor, like this Atari Hercules.

Pacman converted pinball machine

Two homemade pinball machines by a dutch pinball organisation member - a converted Data East Star Wars and Medieval Madness.

The Minions home made pinball machine, a new from scratch made pinball machine.

Captain Nemo pinball machine.