Archive for the ‘special events’ Category

Pintastic NE Day Three Oh the People You’ll Meet

Posted: April 15, 2024 by datechguy in fun, pinball, special events
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I know I should have gotten this post up yesterday but there was simply too much pinball to play and not enough time to play it so here goes…

Pintastic NE 2024 The Map

Day 3 of Pintastic NE started late for me as I stayed up much later than I expected both uploading videos and getting in a pair of games in my 1972 Dynasty Baseball online league (getting my first series loss of the season by losing two games to the Yankees now tied for 1st in the AL Alpha division)

After a late breakfast I headed to the freeplay room and finally managed to get in line to try the Looney Tunes game.

It’s one of the best game to be waiting to play because you get to watch the old cartoons while you’re in line.

But the game in the free play room I really wanted to play wasn’t The Godfather, wasn’t James Bond or even Elton John, it was Paragon!

Paragon is one of my favorite games hands down and it’s has never been at Pintastic before at least not in the free play room, so whenever it was open (which was not often) I made it a point to play.

After a bit I checked out the homebrew room and found that Brian had fixed this Boarderlands 2 game (it turned out to be a software bug) and had it up and running and what I saw was incredible.

A game whose playfield moves in the X-Y AND Z plane during gameplay? Absolutely amazing!

After another stop in the Tycoon room where the line for the Princess Bride was out the door but the line for Batman 66 which I wanted to play the most was short I headed back toward the Extra Ball Lounge where I saw a familiar face.

Saturday is generally the kids day at Pintastic NE so of course Maggie the Clown would be there again as she has for so many years at Pintastic painting faces and making balloon animals for the tots and others.

At this point I ran into Michael who showed me something that I had never seen at a Pintastic NE a NASCAR racer and team with their car:

While what he said about people being in too much of a rush might be a tad ironic for a race car driver it mimicked what a trucker once told me about his driving philosophy: “I’d like to be 1st, I’m glad to be 2nd but I don’t want a tie.”

Incidentally Michael let me know the next day that there is an unwritten rules against mentioning crashes to a driver during interviews. Having never met a NASCAR driver or team I was unaware of this and I’ll make it a point to observe said rule when they return next year.

This was followed quickly by another sight I’ve never seen at Pintastic, the Sock Fairy:

When the booth was closed late in the evening I saw her getting serious playtime in.

BTW she occupied the space next to what usually would be the Cupcake Lady, who was scheduled to be there but alas had a personal issue pop up while required her to cancel leaving many a sweet tooth unsatisfied.

When I went back to the extra ball lounge the team that produced the Happy Gilmore game that I wrote about for day 2 was there.

And THAT’s when I realized that the lady sitting down behind me as I played Elton John with my son was Reby Hardy and this was the same team that produced the excellent Ferris Bueller Game a few years ago who where back with their new game. They kindly game me a second interview:

It astounds me that I didn’t recognize Mrs. Hardy but what really caught my attention was my conversation with Brian afterwards about the whole personal custom Pinball business. It simply had not occurred to me that the rich and famous who might be pinball fans might order specialty pinballs made for themselves. And the idea of a family having a custom pinball made of a parents life was simply astoundingly clever.

Daniel my son was very interested in playing the Labyrinth pinball game again, having not seen the movie I wasn’t all that excited about it as there were quite a few games I wanted to repeatedly play but as it had a pretty good reception I thought I should give it a try. We were waiting in line when my son noted that the creator for the new company Barrels of Fun was standing right behind me so I jumped at the chance for an interview:

David was rather proud of his game and team and when I got a chance to play as part of a four player group I enjoyed it. After my first ball I noticed them packing up the 2nd Labyrinth game as a family had just purchased it. They graciously consented to an interview was I awaited my next ball:

I admit it now I want to see the movie and I suspect that while I liked the game, I’ll like it even more once I see the picture.

We took some time for dinner and a bit of prayer at a local church that had an adoration chapel (that when I found out about the Iranian attack on Israel but I’ll blog on that later) when we came back it was some serious pinball time, but as I passed the main area I noticed that for the 2nd night there was stand up comedy another first for Pintastic NE. I caught the end of comic Trent Wells set and he gave me an interview afterwards:

It looks like the comedy might return next year as well. I played for a while longer and had intended to get upstairs before midnight but ran into a fellow named Mark who I had met the day before and we chatted an chatted and before you knew it was after 1 AM and I had to head up.

This was actually a common theme of Pintastic NE 2024 for me. Many people came up to me saying: “I’ve seen you at every pintastic but never knew who you are” and introduced themselves. It was quite a pleasure.

I had planned to crash at once but the upload speeds were solid so I uploaded all I could before I could keep the eyes open no longer. It was time for sleep perchance to dream about the final day of Pintastic NE 2024 that would follow.

Todd Tuckey and Dave Marsden Day two of Pintastic NE

Posted: April 14, 2024 by datechguy in pinball, special events
Tags: , , , , ,

For some reason these interviews won’t embed in my 1st post so I’m running them solo here

First Todd

Then Dave even though I talked to Dave first

I have no idea why they’re working here and not there but as long as they work that’s what counts

Abbreviated Pintastic NE 2024 Day Two Post

Posted: April 13, 2024 by datechguy in pinball, special events
Tags: , ,

Well the early day for day one caught up to me on day two and instead of waking at 5 I woke at seven so by then the bandwidth of the Hotel was at full tilt and files that uploaded in a few minutes took a half hour or longer but here is what I have up so far:

I got a VERY early start for day two as I woke up before 5. This allowed me to upload all my day 1 stuff and write yesterdays post quickly and got me down to play pinball by 6. I headed straight to the extra ball lounge:

This was also the first chance I had to play the custom Happy Gilmore machine and so I jumped at it:

It’s a fun game but not easy to play while using my camera.

Dave Marsden one of the organizers of Pintastic NE since the start had some free time early and we went to the media room for an interview.

Dave Marsden interview

A bit later after breakfast my son came down and we hit the homebrew room the game he wanted to play was Critical Mass which is about as rare as it gets but in the middle of the game the fire alarms went off and the entire Pinball crowd and the staff ended up out in the wind and rain:

By a very odd coincidence when we went in the first person we ran into was the person who found and restored the game Eric who granted us an interview:

There was apparently a lot of work to do to create this prototype as a playable game but not only did he do the work he wrote a manual for it:

At this point we headed to the homebrew room to finish our game, Eric joined us and filled us in a bit more

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We then took a peek at all the games in the homebrew room and talked to a man who brought a homebrew that developed some problems during the drive in;

Afterwards we checked out the interesting mechanical game setup. My son played the baseball game.

We had lost a half hour due to the fire drill and wanted to get more pinball playing in but then I ran into Todd Tuckey who was free so again it was to the media room for a long sit-down interview.

Todd Tuckey interview

And that’s when an extraordinary thing happened as we finished up a film crew came in who had press credentials for Pintastic. They spotted us and for some reason decided I would be a good subject for their interview. The irony of a film crew making a documentary on Pinball deciding they wanted me before Todd was not lost on me. I chatted with the crew and it was a United Nations of folks. the filmmaker from the US and his crew from Columbia, Argentina and The Ukraine.

I spoke to the young lady from the Ukraine at length before the interview which required a lot of prep just before we started I spotted my son who had been looking for me and he shot this brief video

They then wanted shot of me playing various games both alone and with my son. Ironically the Ukrainian Girl in her 20’s had never played pinball so before we let her leave us we insisted she try a game, we found a Cactus Canyon game open in the vender room and she got a game in.

Having lost an hour and a half of prime pinball time between the interview and the fire alarm the camera went away and pinball ruled the rest of the night interrupted only by dinner with my friend Hanna who you might remember from this photo from many Pintastics ago

Hanna came here as a refugee from Iraq. That was her first time playing pinball it would certainly not be her last.

I can’t believe that was five whole years ago.

I’ll update this post with the videos that have placeholders as soon as time and bandwidth allows

Update: For some reason the Todd Tuckey and Dave Marsden interviews won’t work in this post I’ll make an extra one with them.

Pintastic NE 2024 Day 1 Oh the Things you can Play!

Posted: April 12, 2024 by datechguy in fun, pinball, special events
Tags: , , ,

Well Pintastic NE 2024 has begun and it’s a doozy

As soon as I got in line to register I ran into Gabe D’Annunzio who is always my first interview

While circumstances forced me to get to Pintastic 5 hours after it started on day 1 the upside is that most of the moving of pinballs by Gabe was done and he had time to speak and was very relaxed compared to many other opening day videos because by the time this was shot most if not all of the normal opening day fires were already out.

One of the first things I saw was a very interesting Mechanical Setup in front of the conference rooms.

and an even more interesting setup on the back of a fellow named Andrew of the Southern NH Pinball Club he gave me a few minutes of his time.

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I eventually found the person who made the setup we were in front of but he didn’t want to go on camera at that time, maybe later.

Of course Pintastic wouldn’t be Pintastic without Mike and Emily of the Electromagnetic Pinball Museum of Rhode Island. I spotted them at the Project Pinball booth (a charity that places pinball machines in children’s hospitals) with a machine they donated to their booth for the event doing some upkeep on said machine before things begin. They gave me some time.

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There is as always a friendly rivalry with Gabe to see which of them will bring more machines.

Unlike other years EMP was in the clubrooms (needing several) and the freeplay rooms. At their old location was Tycoon Arcade who under a different name was in the clubrooms last year but with a bigger and better selection than before that demanded more space. I spoke with two folks from there as they tested a Southpark machine

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Their selection was an A-List of games, the star of the show was their Princess Bride machine. The line was so long I didn’t get a chance to play it day one but with a Lord of the Rings, James Bond Dr. No, Batman 1966 and Godfather 50th Anniversary game in the same room there was plenty to keep me busy.

During my interview I saw Todd Tuckey doing some of his filming there. He got a glimpse of me playing the Jetsons game (another rare one in the room) I shot him doing his shoot:

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and he shot me playing the Jetsons.

It may seem odd but I didn’t shoot any more video day one. This was due to the fact that there were simply too many pinball games that I needed to be playing

Managed to get 4.1 Billion on Theatre of Magic for the high score, Best I ever did on the game, this year however the line for Tales of the Arabian Nights was constant showing that this larger crowd has great taste so I’ll have to wait till this blog post is done to go play more.

The number of games and the selection of stuff I like is beyond what I thought and I took full advantage of same. Some I haven’t gotten to yet:

Before the free play room opened

Thanks however to my new shift I woke up between 4 and five this morning so I had time to upload all these videos and as soon as I get a shower I’ll be downstairs while the folks who have been up all night are just heading to bed.

So if you’ll excuse me I have some pinball to play.

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