John Breen was a lifelong pinball player, a resident of Waynesboro, a member of Dominion Pinball League and regular at Decades Arcade. He found out in January 2021 that he had terminal cancer. In his last few months, John contacted Arcade Manager Lindsey and Dominion Pinball League Director Dan, asking us to keep his name alive with a charity pinball tournament. for Ronald McDonald House in Charlottesville. We were honored to do so.
The Ronald McDonald House of Charlottesville provides affordable housing, community resources & meals for families of children undergoing treatment at the University of Virginia Health System. With stays ranging from one night to multiple months, their always-open facility offers a home-away-from-home with 19 rooms, 4 kitchens, laundry facilities and a recreational area.
Decades Arcade placed our pinball machine “Comet” in the Ronald McDonald House of Charlottesville in John’s memory for the benefit of the patients staying there in 2023, in partnership with Project Pinball who also placed the pinball machine “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” John loved kids and talked about how they were much braver than him – he said had been blessed to live a full life, and his wish was to help them face hard diagnoses and treatments via his love of pinball. One of the pinball machines will go into the RMHC’s new isolation unit for immunocompromised children while the other stays in the Rec Room used by all who stay at RMHC. Both machines are maintained by Decades & DPL technicians.
THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
SUNDAY 4/27
12:30 – 2pm: Practice / Free Play during Public Hours if desired
2pm – until: Total Decades Collection IFPA Tournament
🟠 Registration cutoff at 2pm, tourney start time at 2:20pm sharp.
🟠 Match Play Fair Strike Tourney: 8 strikes & you’re out. You play in assigned groups of 3 or 4 players on assigned games each round. Winner gets 0 strikes; middle places get 1 strike; last place gets 2 strikes.
🟠 This is an IFPA-sanctioned event. Standard IFPA rules & procedures apply for any problems.
🟠 All games with chimes are set to 5-balls and all games with electronic sounds are set to 3-balls. One extra ball can be played on classic games (1990 and older). On single player games, tilt ends game.
🟠 Practice is allowed. Everyone needs to finish each round before next round is announced, so you can play open games as others are finishing.
🟠 Collection of 40 Pinball Machines from 1957-2024 (https://www.pinballmap.com/map/?by_location_id=10067)
🟠 PRIZES:
🐬 1st: $50 CASH + $48 to Decades + more
🐬 2nd: $48 to Decades + more
🐬 3rd: $24 to Decades + more
ENTRY DETAILS:
🎟 $25 Entry Fee – $10 of every registration fee is donated to the Ronald McDonald House directly, with the other $15 covering tournament costs.
👕 First 50 attendees receive a commemorative T-shirt! Select your shirt size at check out, or select if you do not want a shirt.
Select when checking out if you are:
🟧 Playing in IFPA tournament
🟧 Donation only – will not attend
🟧 Spectator only – will attend (Playing any non-tournament use game the arcade is included!)
*Please note this is not Public Play for the Arcade – it is specifically a Pinball Tournament*
