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Ep 63: Road Tripping with Colin MacAlpine
PodcastAnalysis updated 4d ago1 hr 19 min listen
Colin MacAlpine joins us on Ep 63 to talk about competitive pinball, Spooky's success, and Pinball Hall of Fames predicament
Highlights
- Colin MacAlpine won the Pinberg championship in 2017
- Colin's first competitive pinball tournament was a Stern Tron launch party tournament on June 10, 2011, which he won
- Colin is a tournament director for the Texas Pinball Festival tournaments
- You cannot learn nudging techniques effectively by watching video; you must play in person with other people
- Texas Pinball Festival tournaments were already selling out due to limited entries based on machine bank capacity before the pandemic
- TPF was canceled two weeks before the 2020 event, and nearly all registered players (out of ~160) agreed to roll their entry fees forward to 2022
- Colin believes interaction factors between rules are key to good modern pinball rule design
- Classics prices have increased far more dramatically than new-in-box pinball machine prices
- A friend named Tony Murphy in Minnesota ordered both a CPR Mermaid Edition and Halloween remake
- Texas Pinball Festival is second only to Chicago Expo in terms of industry-level involvement, and may have eclipsed Expo in some areas
Notable quotes
“I'm going to do this. Didn't start until 10 years ago. 2011, I don't remember the exact date... It was at a Tron launch tournament.”
“You can't learn nudging techniques until you play in person, watching somebody physically move the machine and then trying it yourself.”
“I'm a pinball player. I'm a pinball player that likes to compete in tournaments. We still all play pinball.”
“We're all competing. It's just a matter of how you're doing it.”
“I wanted to have the tournaments be at a world-class level for the tournaments... I wanted those tournaments to evolve and be at the same level as what the show is at.”
“imagining the outlanes as two extra flippers”
“it was one of the most stressful days of our life... my wife was like super nervous”
“You have fully passed the test... you can actually come and stay over next time you're here.”
Entities
- Chicago Expo· event
- Pinberg· event
- ReplayFX· event
- Texas Pinball Festival· event
- Deadpool· game
- Simpsons Pinball Party· game
- Stern Pirates of the Caribbean· game
- Stern Tron· game
- District 82· organization
- Flipping Out Pinball· organization
- IFPA· organization
- LoserKid Pinball Podcast· organization
- Brad (Bradlet Frames)· person
- Brian Allen· person
- Colin MacAlpine· person
- Ed Vanderveen· person
- Josh Sharp· person
- Keith Elwin· person
- Kim Vander Veen· person
- Martin Robbins· person
- Paul McKinney· person
- Scott Larson· person
- Tony Murphy· person
- Zach and Nicole Mini· person
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