For the final weekend in October, we head up England’s North-West coast to the city of Blackpool and the Norbreck Castle Hotel, home of this year’s Play Expo show.
The Norbreck Castle Hotel
Play Expo is being held in the Exhibition Centre, which is in Norcalympia – the left part of the somewhat sprawling complex of function rooms and guest accommodation.  The building looks rather run-down and in need of either significant restoration or something more drastic.
The part of the complex housing the Exhibition Hall
Play Expo is a large retro gaming show featuring hundreds of PCs, consoles, handhelds, arcade video games and, of course, pinballs. For the last few years it was held at the EventCity exhibition hall in Manchester but, apparently, the owners of that facility had become too difficult to work with, and so for this year only the show has returned to the place it all began – Norbreck Castle in Blackpool.
We arrived on Friday evening during the set-up time to check out the pinballs provided and managed by the Northern Lights Pinball team.  These machines are located in a corridor running down the length of the adjacent main hall.
Setting up the last few machines
These seven had just arrived
The main hall was also looking pretty complete, with all the games, computers and consoles in place ready for the start of the show at 10am the next day.
Inside the main hall
We returned on Saturday morning before the doors opened to the public, and there was a sizeable queue of visitors waiting for the start of the show.
Part of the queue to get in just before 10am on Saturday
Members of the Northern Lights Pinball team were going over some last minute organisational details and fixing machines which didn’t survive the journey to Blackpool unscathed.
Getting everything straight before the doors open
F-14 Tomcat gets some last-minute attention
In a small side room, a curated set of machines formed the Pinball thru the Ages collection, complete with explanatory cards showing how pinball progressed through its history.
Pinball thru the Ages thru here
The older pinballs on the left – Kick-Off, Space Ship, Wizard!, Paragon and Mr. &

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