Latest News from PAPA

April 4, 2008

PAPA 11 Registration Now Open

Online Registration for the PAPA 11 World Pinball Championships is now available!

November 29, 2007

Heads Up Results in PARS

Heads Up results can now be obtained from the Custom Rankings, or by clicking on any opponent when viewing a player's details page.

November 24, 2007

Custom Rankings in PARS

Custom Rankings can now be generated from the PARS database, offering restrictions such as by country, league membership, as well as customized sort options.

November 13, 2007

Flipside Archives Published

We are pleased to announce the online publication of every page of every issue of The Flipside, a black-and-white magazine produced by Steve Epstein in the early-to-mid 1990's.

Please browse the issues, available as JPEGs and multi-page PDFs.

October 17, 2007

PAPA 11 Announced

The PAPA 11 World Pinball Championships have been announced for August 14-17, 2008.

October 16, 2007

PAPA 10 Final Results

Detailed final results for all divisions of PAPA 10 are now online. We have also published the detailed results from PAPA 9.

October 10, 2007

PAPA Advanced Rating System

We are pleased to announce the launch of PARS, the PAPA Advanced Rating System. This system ranks all active pinball players, using the Glicko algorithm.

March 31, 2007

PAPA 10 World Pinball Championships

PAPA 10 World Pinball Championships have been announced for October 11-14, 2007.

November 28, 2005

PAPA 9 World Pinball Championships

The PAPA 9 World Pinball Championships have been announced for August 2006.

August 23, 2005

PAPA 8 Pictures

A small collection of pictures from PAPA 8 has been posted.

July 15, 2005

Sneak Preview Pictures

We have posted some sneak preview pictures of the facility as post-flood renovations are being completed:

pictures from July 1, 2005

February 8, 2005

PAPA 8 World Pinball Championships

The PAPA 8 World Pinball Championships have been announced for August 11-14, 2005!

December 6, 2004

PAPA Announces Plans to Rebuild

Your feedback is needed to help pick the best dates for PAPA 8!

November 7, 2004

Just to reiterate, since a few people have been asking, there was no flood coverage for damage to the facility or the machines. There is a federal tax write-off, but it doesn't go very far in terms of the total loss.

There has been little progress towards a decision on rebuilding lately because of unavoidable delays in renovation construction. We expect to have the matter resolved one way or another this year.

Please keep a spot open on your calendar, just in case.

October 7, 2004

Jake Prince, our Junior World Pinball Champion, has been busy with Mario!
Planet Gamecube article
Nintendo article

September 28, 2004

The cleanup is almost complete. Most of the pinball games have been stripped for parts, and in some cases, playfields removed wholesale. We will probably have an on-site sale in a couple of weeks. (No, please don't ask yet. Nothing is available yet.)

In the meantime, we're going on vacation. Our thanks again to everyone for the words of support and encouragement. We'll be deciding about rebuilding or not, very soon.

A few more sets of pictures have been posted.

September 23, 2004

The Post-Gazette has published a brief article about the PAPA flood.

September 22, 2004

Cleanup of the facility is underway. New pictures have been posted.

September 21, 2004

Our insurers have advised us that there will be no coverage for losses due to flood. Of course, the same insurers did not market flood coverage to anyone in the Carnegie area, as there has been no significant flooding in the past one hundred years. There is considerable outrage among homeowners and the local business community; many people have lost their homes and/or livelihoods, yet they are receiving nothing from insurers.

We are contesting this, of course, and in any case, we are proceeding with cleanup work. We have had many offers of assistance with this, but we are leaving the cleanup work to professionals. Please do not come out to the facility; it would only be a hazard that we don't want anyone to be exposed to. We are working to salvage parts from all of the games.

September 19, 2004

We have received dozens, if not hundreds, of sympathetic letters and offers related to the flood damage. Our most heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone. At this time, we have documented the damage and are waiting for insurance adjusters. There is no need for us to do anything, nor make any decisions, at this time.

We will refuse all cash donations! Please direct your money to the Red Cross or your local Humane Society. If you want to do anything to help us, you can benefit our primary sponsor, pair Networks, Inc. by using their Web hosting services or accredited domain registration service, pairNIC.

We may accept donations of parts, playfields, and complete or partial pinball or video games. If you have something right now you would like to donate, please let us know, but set it aside until we are ready. Please note that PAPA is not organized as a non-profit nor charity; if you give us something, it's a donation in the spirit of pinball, not a tax deduction opportunity (unfortunately).

Another very welcome offer is restoration services. If you are an experienced restorer of pinball games, we would love to have your time and efforts donated at some point in the future, if we decide to rebuild the collection. This would be restoration work done on games in a new collection, not the flood-ruined games. In some cases, restorers have offered to work on games shipped to them; in the long run, we may have an open house for restoration work. But nothing has been decided in this area yet!

We will also consider offers of parts, tools, or games "at cost" or "below cost". In addition to rebuilding the game collection, we would need to re-establish our stock of spare parts, tools, etc.

Once again, please do not send anything at this time. In the event we decide not to rebuild PAPA, the donations will not be needed. We do not know what decision will be made, nor when.

Thank you again for your support in this difficult time. Further news will be posted here as it becomes available.