Posts Tagged ‘have fedora will travel’

Pintastic NE 2024 The Final Day Success!

Posted: April 16, 2024 by datechguy in fun, pinball
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On the final day of Pintastic I woke around 7 (My son woke at five, went downstairs to play and then came back to snooze for an hour). The plan was to go downstairs, play a bit in the extra ball lounge, grab a bite of breakfast, pack and check out by 9:30 and then play we didn’t want to or couldn’t play anymore.

When I got to the Extra Ball lounge a few games such as Elton John were busy but the excellent Lord of the Rings was not so I took advantage of it.

There was a time when it would have been impossible to find this game empty as it’s, in my opinion one of the greatest games of all time, but then again two years ago you would never see a Willie Wonka empty either

Yet I saw it empty frequently.

Bottom line there were a lot and I mean a LOT of high quality new games there and as always the newest games get the most attention.

Traditionally the final tournament of Pintastic is the ladies tournament and that was no exception this year. I popped in to see it in full swing and spoke to the organizer, she was entered into the tourney as well so I filmed a bit as she played her ball then spoke to her at length when it was done.

Here are the trophies she referenced:

Longtime readers might wonder why I didn’t bring up a subject that I’m not shy about discussing or giving my opinion on, that’s rather simple, it’s pinball plus it’s a not my club, tourney or ox being gored.

Heading back to the Freeplay room I passed the vendor area where the Pinball machines were wrapped and packed and ready to go to the next show or back to the various showrooms. One of the things I noticed was I didn’t see the rental companies here. It could have been the economy or personal matters. After all Quigley’s cakes had to cancel for such reasons.

In the free play room the number of machines were slowly decreasing as the people who brought them packed up. I spotted game designer Steve Ritchie there signing a bunch of Elton John Pinball publicity shots.

He was packed and ready to leave but gave me a few minutes for a closing interview

I don’t know how many if any were sold at the show (I know Gabe bought one as it was in the Extra Ball Lounge) but either way it was a fun game to play and I thought I’d get some gameplay in before the end.

I had managed the 3rd high score the day before by the time I played that morning I had dropped to 4th.

Daniel dominated the high scores on that game holding 5 of the top 8 plus most of the mode championships but the #1 spot eluded him. Well there’s always next year.

By 2 pm they started shutting off machines. Last year I couldn’t find Gabe for the traditional closing interview, this year I found him but he was flat out however Michael was there as the 30+ EMP games were coming out of the club area one at a time to be packed and wrapped so we closed with him.

It’s a big difference between doing it all yourself and having a team so when you compare this video to closing videos with Michael from five years ago it’s a huge difference.

As we got up to leave the Rush games which had been there when we arrived were still being played. It was a tad odd to not be staying till the very last game was shut off as we had in prior years, but we had to be home in time for the 6 PM mass and the number and availability of Pinball machines all around the area had grown exponentially since the first time we attended a Pintastic.

It’s true you didn’t see too many pizza places with pinballs anymore but between barcades and arcades offering unlimited play for a flat fee and even some like Tycoon in Manchester that still work on the token based system there is plenty of pinball available within a 20-40 minute drive for us to enjoy with the prospect of a local club and barcade still in the cards.

That more than anything else is a solid sign that while Pintastic New England 2024 was clearly a success, Pintastic NE as a whole series of events to promote the hobby has been a bigger and resounding one.

UPDATE: By an odd coincidence this appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Pinball, and Stern in particular but the killer quote comes from Jersey Jack himself:

As digital as the guts of this thing may be, the experience is far from virtual.

You can see why, as wildly unpredictable as the industry has been, it requires a factory. “It’s such a handcrafted product,” said Jack Guarnieri, owner of Jersey Jack Pinball. “People forget, yet anyone who makes these things can tell you: build 10 machines in a row with the same parts and, depending how tightly a rubber is fixed to a post, or how a lever gets adjusted, that’s an assembly line full of small tweaks. It’s not a video game.

“And yet that’s also the best part — the randomness.”

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.

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