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400 Pinball Machines and Counting at the Texas Pinball Festival (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the we're-all-pinball-wizards-on-this-bus dept.

Yes, folks. Step right up. It's the 2013 Texas Pinball Festival, except... Whoops! You missed it. But don't despair, because Tim Lord was there with his camcorder to interview organizer Paul McKinney and to point his lens lovingly at pinball machines new and old, complete with whistles and bells, oh my! It was a riotous time, with players of all ages. Pinball machines were played, bought, and sold. There were plenty of exhibitors, including some with shiny-new machines. The most interesting of these may have been Multimorphic, which is making "the world's first modular, multi-game, pinball platform." In other words, one machine that can become many games, sort of like a video game console. There's a separate, short, "bonus video" about Multimorphic (with no transcript), for anyone who is interested in their open source, "open platform" pinball machine concept -- and that may not be just old fogies trying to recapture their youth, when they had the high score on the Evel Knievel machine at a local pool hall, because McKinney says the people coming to the Texas Pinball Festival are younger every year.

12 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. fans of nerd face rejoice by pezpunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the producer here decided to show us this guy's mug for 90% of the run time. i am struggling to understand, though, why it was interrupted with occasional 3-second snippets of PINBALL MACHINES, though.

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    i could live a little longer in this prison
    1. Re:fans of nerd face rejoice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Scientologists disagree with you

  2. Bay Area Pinball by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Pacific Pinball Museum is a great day in the Bay Area. I go up twice a year (as much as my wife can stand)
    http://pacificpinball.org
    They usually organize a similar event Pacific Pinball Expo

  3. Pinburgh 2013 is this weekend! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't forget about Pinburgh 2013, which is happening this weekend near Pittsburgh, PA! http://papa.org/pinburgh2013/

  4. Memories by folderol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Used to be a nice little earner for me repairing these in the late 1960s - the real ones. All electromechanical, none of your wimpy solid state rubbish.
    sigh

    1. Re:Memories by pezpunk · · Score: 2

      old man yells at solid state pinball machine . jpg

      --
      i could live a little longer in this prison
  5. You know what would be nice? by MasseKid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we heard about this before the festival? I have to think a lot of the people who would be interested in actually watching this video who live in Texas would have been interested in going to this festival. I understand it's not SXSW, but do you think we could squeeze an article between the global warming and slashervertisements for neat things like this so we could go to them instead of watching a video about someone else having all the fun?

    1. Re:You know what would be nice? by timothy · · Score: 2

      You're right.

      Really, we should (and hopefully you'll see this actually happen -- it's been a long stretch of nagging so far ;)) have far more interesting events announced like this. In the case of this one, though, I have to point out I only found out about it myself a few days beforehand, and wasn't sure what to expect.

      If you have any thoughts about exactly *how* you'd like to see interesting events mentioned (A calendar link? on the Slashdot twitter feed? etc) and what sort of events you'd want to be shown, I would like to use them to inform my own ongoing brainstorm on this.

      I don't know from your comment whether you're in Texas, but on May 5th, there's a mini Maker Faire in Austin ;)

      Cheers,

      timothy

      --
      jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  6. I'm part of that in-between age bracket by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm old enough to remember pinball machines having their own prominent corner in the local video arcade (and old enough to have had local video arcades), but too young to have experienced pinball in its prime. The big hits in pinball when I grew up were Addams Family, Terminator, and Playboy. Not too long after, when arcades started closing, pinball went into a downward spiral.

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    Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  7. Pinball musuem by Garion911 · · Score: 3, Informative

    For pinball fans that happen to make it to Vegas, there's a pinball 'museum' a few miles from the strip on the Tropicana. Might not be as many machines as this, but fun nonetheless.

    http://www.pinballmuseum.org/

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    Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
  8. Next best thing... by DeathElk · · Score: 2

    http://www.pinballarcade.com

  9. For those in AZ by ArcadeNut · · Score: 2

    Did you make it to Zapcon? (http://www.zapcon.com>)?

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    Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com