Space City Open

The Space City Pinball League is proud to present premier tournaments before and during the 2024 Houston Arcade Expo! We are pleased to reveal our 2024 Space City Open poster designed by Houston illustrator, Rene Cruz! The poster will be available for purchase at the show in the Space City Pinball mega-booth. T-shirts for the SCO and Week of WPPRs can be ordered through Sliverball Swag. Be sure to check out the calendar on this website for all the upcoming tournament details. We kick off the Week of WPPRs on October 4th! Get ready for takeoff!

Women’s Fall League Nights

Women of all ages in the Houston area are invited to join the Belles of Space City during our fall league nights. We will play at the home of one of our members on her private collection.

The women’s league season will consist of six weeks of matchplay qualifying. Each week players will compete in groups of four on six different games. Players will be awarded points based on finishing position. Points will accumulate across the season to determine overall league standing. The best 4 weeks will be used, so players can safely drop two weeks. The top players will be eligible for a finals, which will use a group elimination format (aka PAPA style). $20 entry for season. Season: Wednesdays at 7pm, October 16-November 20. Finals December 4.

Join Our Team!

The Space City Open and Women’s Interstellar Showdown pinball tournaments are organized by the Space City Pinball League of Houston, TX. The tournaments are designed to be fun for players of all ages and skill levels. This year the tournaments will take place on Friday, October 11 to Sunday, October 13. Without our volunteers and sponsors, we couldn’t put on these amazing sold-out tournaments! Organizing events like this have many expenses such as conference room rental, internet, and repair parts to name a few. We would like to recognize Jim Mueller for once again donating $300 to purchase flipper rebuild kits!

Please consider one or more of the following sponsorship opportunities to join us in this amazing collaboration. If you’d prefer to donate prizes or other giveaways we are always grateful for that support too! If interested please email spacecitypinball@gmail.com.

Sponsorship Opportunities Include:

1. Naming Next.MatchPlay Qualifying Sessions: $30 each. We will also announce the sponsorship over the microphone. (Sold Out)

  • EARLY session (Friday): “SCO 2024 EARLY GROUP sponsored by The James Hernandez Law Firm”
  • LATE session (Friday): “SCO 2024 LATE GROUP sponsored by The James Hernandez Law Firm”
  • EARLY session (Saturday):  “SCO 2024 EARLY GROUP sponsored by Bee2Bee Honey Collective”
  • LATE session (Saturday): “SCO 2024 LATE GROUP sponsored by Craig Hughes”
  • Women’s Interstellar Showdown Qualifying: “Interstellar Showdown sponsored by Pinball Rebel”

2. Naming Space City Open Finals: $200 (Sold)

  • The Matchplay session will be named: “SCO 2024 FINALS sponsored by Wormhole Pinball”
  • The finals will be streamed by Wormhole Pinball who will also include your logo and mention your sponsorship on the stream.

3. Finals Streaming by Wormhole Pinball

  • Logo featured on Space City Open Finals Stream (Saturday) $150 – Total of 4 spots
    • The James Hernandez Law Firm
    • Einstein’s Pub and Einstein’s Pub and Arcade and Joshua Mitchell
    • Jim Mueller
    • Craig Hughes
  • Logo featured on Women’s Interstellar Showdown Finals Stream (Sunday) $50 and Women’s Matchplay Finals named: “Interstellar Showdown sponsored by Top Rope Pinball” (Sold)

For tournament information, visit https://www.houstonarcadeexpo.com/

We appreciate your support!

Tournament Team

PhysXXX Returns as a Series

EinStein’s PhysXXX Syllabus – Fall Semester 2024
Q1: August 27-October 1
Q2: October 15-November 19

Instructor: Space City Pinball League 

Course Curriculum: The PhysXXX curriculum includes interactions of matter and energy, velocity, accelerations, force, and momentum. Space Cadets will test their skills to manipulate physical matter using electricity and mechanical engineering constructs.

Course Instructions: SCPL Cadets will assembly in small study groups of 3-4. Each group will attempt to outperform their group peers in a test of skill on one of the specialized electromechanical PhysXXX simulators available. 

SCPL Cadets will perform 3 rounds of 2 games each class session.
The series will be 6 weeks long with a minimum attendance of 4 weeks. 
Cadets desiring to audit for less than 4 weeks are welcome to attend.

SCPL Cadets best 4 overall weekly class session scores will be aggregated to determine final class rank. (No finals)

Material’s List: $1 for IFPA fees & coin-Dropbox

Prerequisite: age 21+, familiarity with concepts such as “fun” and “a good time”

Electronic Devices: Students should be able to access http://Next.Matchplay.events/ on a personal electronic device.

SCPL Cadet Handbook: http://www.spacecitypinball.com/

WOW 2024!

Join Space City Pinball for a tournament every night leading up to the Houston Arcade Expo! We challenge you to “Order the Combo” by attending Friday-Thursday (7 tournaments) to earn a special prize. Visit the SCPL calendar or IFPA calendar for details.

Sub-Zero League

Pinball is so hot right now! Cool yourself off at Space City’s Sub-Zero Fall League at the Eureka Heights Brewery now with AC! The league will use six weeks of group matchplay qualifying and seventh week for playoffs. Each week players will compete in groups of four on six games. Players will be awarded points based on finishing position. Points will accumulate across the season to determine overall league standing. Players must play in at least 4 of the 6 weeks to qualify for playoffs and for their participation to count for IFPA points. The best 5 weeks will be used to determine eligibility for playoffs. The top 16 players will be eligible for finals which will use a group elimination format (aka PAPA style).

Space Camp – Women’s Weekend at Wormhole

Space Camp, Women’s Weekend at Wormhole was a BLAST! Congratulations to all the ladies who earned trophies and mission patches! Thanks to Wormhole and our tech, Brian for the amazing games. Thanks also to our camp counselors for organizing and party planning: Elizabeth, Liz, Christina and Lauren. We also appreciate the balloon decorating crew and the snack and drink crew!

Belles and Chimes Reunion

Time to party! The Belles of Space City invite current and past members to join us for a reunion at Wormhole on April 13, 2024! RSVP here. We have also added new B&C shirts to our league store in a variety of colors.

Belles & Chimes is an international network of women’s pinball leagues. The Houston chapter was founded in 2018 with a goal of providing a fun, safe, and supportive environment for women and girls to socialize and play pinball together.

Beginner and novice players of any age are encouraged to join. Playing with others is a fantastic way to improve your pinball skills!  For the more experienced players, Belles & Chimes tournaments offer a unique opportunity to earn IFPA points available specifically for women’s-only competitions.  

The Belles kick off summer with Space Camp! A Women’s Weekend at the Wormhole. We invite women from the Houston area and BEYOND to join us for this WPPRtunity! 

Houston Women’s IFPA events are qualifying events for the IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series. For details regarding qualifying in Texas, please visit the Championship Series page. 

In addition to local tournaments, the Belles of Space City are proud to direct the women’s tournaments at major events including the Texas Takedown at the Texas Pinball Festival and the Interstellar Showdown at the Houston Arcade Expo.

Houston Arcade Expo Recap

Space City Pinball League, The Premier Pinball League of Texas
Space City Open: 1st Wesley Johnson, 2nd Preston Moncla, 3rd Mark Meserve, 4th Garrett Shahan
Interstellar Showdown: 1st Alice Young, 2nd Melody Zisman, 3rd Rachel Morris, 4th Kelli Raisler
Interstellar Showdown Semifinalists: Miette Dronet, Jessica Thaxton, Summer Ellington, Hope Love

Holy smokes, y’all! That was awesome! As a tournament director, I could not have asked for a better event. All the games arrived in excellent condition. There were so many volunteers willing to help with set up. Even when games went down, our techs, Jesse Bodell and Mike Flanagan, got them back up and operational in short order. The players were respectful and jovial. The rounds started and ended on time. There were very few malfunctions or complicated rulings. And the finals…my goodness the finals. I’ve been on the tournament scene for over 10 years. That was, without a doubt, the most fun and electric finals I’ve ever witnessed. Legendary!

While I would love to take credit, the reality is none of that could have happened without there being such an amazing pinball community here in H-town and Texas. The positive energy this past weekend was truly special. I could not be more proud of what this scene has matured into. We’ve really come a long way.

Big congratulations to Wesley Johnson for taking the crown — the first Space City pinball player to do so! That final shot on Fish Tales was so clutch! Congrats also to Alice Young for earning the rhinestone hat in the Interstellar Showdown after a tough battle on Tron. Well played!

Thanks to Keith and the Houston Arcade Expo for trusting me to run the tournament all these years. Shout out to my assistant TDs: David Pollock, Marc Gammons, David and Elizabeth Dronet, Leslie Speights, Lee Balusek, Matt Quantz. Thanks to Jim Mueller for bringing the spare parts. I think we used most of them! Thanks to Jamie Burchell, Erin Anthony and Wormhole for streaming the tournaments! Finally, thanks to everyone else who brought games and helped with set up and tear down.

-Phil and the Space City Team

Space City Open & Interstellar Showdown

The Space City Pinball League and the Belles of Space City will once again host tournaments at the Houston Arcade Expo on November 10-12, 2023. Mark your calendars to preregister for these events. The SCO registration will open on September 3 at 11am and the Women’s Interstellar Showdown will open on October 7 at noon. Click the images for details.