A multimedia powerhouse, Imoto travels the world exploring gaming culture and hyping local arcades across the globe. Her goal is to help these public and social gaming experiences thrive by encouraging everyone to get out of their houses and visit local arcades and gaming events. She hopes to inspire more people to embrace gaming culture and to help them find their passions in the gaming world.

John Borg is a pinball engineer and designer with more than 30 years of industry experience. In 1989, he received his first patent for a rotating mini-playfield that appeared in Gottlieb’s “Lights… Camera… Action!” In 1992 he released his first game, Star Wars, and went on to develop pins like Jurassic Park, Tales from the Crypt, Guns N’ Roses, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, TRON: Legacy, Metallica, and X-Men. Today, Borg serves as the head of Stern Pinball’s design division—when he’s not BMX racing or listening to heavy metal music.

Game designer, artist, and animator extraordinaire with over 80 video games titles to his name, including Rampage, Xenophobe, and General Chaos, Brian Colin has created of some of the most-popular, highest-earning & best-selling titles in video game history. Recently inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame, Brian is well-known for sharing first-hand, anecdotal insights into the early days of arcade game development.

Early in his career, Richard Ditton worked for IBM as a designer of the launch software for NASA’s Space Shuttle. He went on to co-found Incredible Technologies, a computer based entertainment company and a leader in the casino gaming and amusement industries, and now serves on the company’s Board of Directors.

After earning a degree in Studio Art in 1976, Greg apprenticed at an advertising company where he met Kevin O’Connor. When O’Connor left for Bally, Freres followed and, for the next 21 years, worked as an artist on various pinball and video games. He’s worked as an independent freelance artist and art director, developing artwork for everything from redemption games to microbreweries and now serves at Stern Pinball’s Art Director and Designer.

Best known as the renowned industrial designer behind the iconic look of the Tron arcade cabinet, George Gomez has a long career as a video game and pinball designer for Bally, Williams, and Stern Pinball, among many others.

Throughout his career he’s worked on many video game and pinball classics, including Tron, Spy Hunter, Monster Bash, and NBA Ballers. He is now the Chief Creative Officer for Stern Pinball, responsible for all of the company's product development efforts.

Photo: Pavlov Pinball

Jack started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball, which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines.

Two-time world record holder Linda Guillory got her start collecting vintage video games and gaming systems in 2003. But she’s loved video games since childhood, playing the Coleco Tabletop Pacman, Digital Derby, Conic basketball, and handheld football games.

These days, when she’s not playing Zelda or collecting world records, Guillory’s applying her electrical engineering education to her work as an Assembly Strategy Manager for Texas Instruments.

Jason Hedlund is the General Manager of Yetee Station, an arcade in Downtown Aurora, Illinois. He’s been diagnosing, servicing, and repairing vintage and contemporary arcade machines since 2010.

Rebecca Hinsdale is a pinball fanatic, leading the Chicago Belles & Chimes—a pinball league welcoming women and non-binary players—and serving as Stern Pinball’s Customer Service and Sales Manager. Hinsdale is also a content creator and one half of Hot Nudge on Twitch, a channel devoted to livestreaming pinball.

Elaine Hodgson began her career as an industrial chemist at the Kennedy Space Center working on the Space Shuttle project. Chemistry led her to programming, which led her to her lifelong passion: video games. She’s the co-founder of Incredible Technologies, a computer based entertainment company and a leader in the casino gaming and amusement industries.

Larry has worked in the entertainment, casino, and coin-operated gaming industries for more than 30 years. Hodgson co-created the award-winning Golden Tee Golf, one of the most successful pay-to-play video games in history. Today he is the Senior Vice President of Incredible Technologies.

As a pinball and video game designer and developer with Atari and Williams Electronics, he worked on classics such as Defender, Robotron:2084, Cruis’n USA, Pinbot, NARC, and Smash TV.

Currently the head of his own arcade game development studio, Raw Thrills.

Part of the new generation of arcade entrepreneurs. He’s a retro game enthusiast with a dream who was instrumental in the arcade renaissance we see today. A documentary filmmaker turned Barcade™ Master. His true love for the innovation, weirdness, and fun of 80s and 90s arcade games led him to create Barcade™ with a group of his friends - right before the financial meltdown of 2008. Against all odds, his arcade empire has only grown.

Owner of Village Arcade in St. Peter’s Village, Pennsylvania. His arcade specializes in quarter-operated, electro-mechanical games from the 1960s-70s. Mauger fell in love with the industry as a child when, while visiting his mother at her job with a vending machine company, he saw a technician servicing the interior of an old game.

As divisional sales manager of Time-Out Amusement Centers, George was right in the belly of the beast as mall arcade chains began disappearing and family entertainment centers popped up to replace them. He joined Edison Brothers as the head of Family Entertainment Centers. Edison also owned Dave & Buster's and George collaborated with Dave Corriveau on their companies parallel growth.

George was even involved with DisneyQuest and ESPN Zone. He’s got 40 years of experience in the industry and is still one of the major players in the business of fun.

An award-winning illustrator and designer who got his start as a video game artist at Bally/Midway. There, Paul produced art for classic games like TRON, Tapper, PacMan Plus, Super PacMan, Professor PacMan, WACKO, Spy Hunter, Satan’s Hollow, Mortal Kombat, and many others. These days, Niemeyer freelances for advertising and marketing agencies.

Roger once saved the Chicago-born arcade game in the 70s. A generation ago he was among the greatest players in the world and one of the architects of competitive pinball.

He also wrote the first serious book on the subject and worked in the industry in some shape or form for more than a quarter century. Now his sons carry on his legacy as game designers and as major figures in the world of pinball today.

Photo: Jamie Ramsay/Chicago Reader

Gary has lived his entire life around pinball, as his father owned Williams, the pioneering pinball and arcade machine company. And Stern started Stern Pinball in 1986. He sold it to Sega in 1994 and then bought it back in 1999. That set him up to be the high priest of the church of the silver ball.

A prolific collector and restorer of vintage games, in his former life Jon was a master of coin-op and vending. If you ever wondered just who put that candy carousel in the mall or that rocket ride outside the grocery store, it might have been him.

Hear tales of playing video games with his teenage son in a deserted mall at 4am, all night trips in a van loaded with bags of quarters. True stories of the front lines of a coin-op “route.”

After a brief stint as a semi-profession Magic The Gathering Player, Dave Zuchora fell in love with arcade machines while volunteering at MAGFest in 2016. A year later, in 2017, he founded Psychic Drive, a company that delivers and sets up pop-up arcades at events across the country.