Date: 8th-10th June, 2018 Location: Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center, 1500 Broadway, Tacoma, WA 98402, USA We got to the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center around 2pm on Thursday to check on the set-up, and sure enough everything was being done to get ready for Friday’s opening.  The Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center The lobby was looking a little sparse, but most of the action there doesn’t take place until later in the day and early on Friday morning. The machines for the kids area were arriving, and the seminar area was fully-built and ready to go.  The lobby where registration takes place  Some of the machines for the kids play area  The seminars area Mike Lorrain had an impressive set-up with three cameras, a new mixing desk and a multi-mic radio system. The seminars will all be streamed live and available to playback online, so we won’t be recording them here. We will be photographing them all and summarising the talks though.  Mike’s seminar control station Let’s go through the main doors and see what was happening in the main show hall.  Into the main hall The main show desk is directly in front of the entrance. It is here that raffle tickets are sold and the show announcements made. They already had the Houdini machine which will be the grand prize which will be drawn on Sunday afternoon.  Setting up the show desk Turning left, we came to the Nitro Pinball stand. Nitro usually has the latest machines and this year is no different, with the big draw being two new Thunderbirds machines from Homepin.  The two Thunderbirds machines on the Nitro Pinball stand This is the first time these machines have been shown in North American, so there is bound to be much attention on them once the show opens. We took a bunch of pictures, but rather than spend too long on the game here you’ll find them at the end of today’s report. Elsewhere, things were coming together.  The hall  Trucks unloaded  Unloaded machines waiting to go into the hall  Pinballs to go into the hall  Video games, carefully-wrapped The hall was filling up, with vendors also setting up their stands.  There’s no mistaking the Hercules machine  It’s too  But don’t worry, there are plenty of pinballs  Tournament machines  More tournament machines  Free play machines in the central area  More pinballs  The show always has an impressive EM section  But machines  Houdini, stand OK, so that’s what was happening in the main hall. Now we’ll take a close-up look at Homepin’s Thunderbirds game. Note that the original title of Thunderbirds Are Go seems to have been changed to just Thunderbirds.  The Thunderbirds playfield  The Thunderbirds backglass which is all one piece  Thunderbirds cabinet side art  Backbox side art which is backlit  The Thunderbirds cabinet front  The left ramp area  The centre movable-ramp shot  The top left playfield area  The mid-left area  The left orbit shot  The top rollover lanes  The mid-right area  The bottom right area  The bottom left area  The feature grid  The whole playfield  The instruction card That concludes our look at Thursday’s set-up at the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show. We’ll be back tomorrow reporting live from the show and will be adding and updating our reports right through the weekend, so check out all our reports at the main NWPAS page.