
Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 30: Neil McRae In The USA
Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 30: Neil McRae In The USA Hosts: Joel Engelberth, Tom Graf, & Travis Murie Special Guest: Neil McRae This episode we have Neil McRae as our Extra Ball! We...
Highlights
- Europe's pinball market is significantly smaller than the US, with only one distributor in the UK compared to two or three per US state
- The UK Open 2023/2024 drew 150 players, up from the co-op's typical capacity of 65
- Every competitive pinball player in the UK except one who was out of town attended the UK Open
- Carl D'Angelo was unwell during Indisc and experienced severe hardware failures with his streaming rig (PC wouldn't boot after the event)
- Travis managed to plunge and score zero points at Indisc finals, a moment that became a meme in the pinball community
- The zero-score incident on Paragon was caused by a code bug in multiplayer mode where hitting three switches would end the ball, not present in single-player
- There are only a few consistent pinball streamers in the UK, with Neil being the only regular one
- The UK has approximately four barcades total, none near Neil's location
Notable quotes
“It's hard to tell you what you're missing. I think the market for pinball in Europe is so much smaller than in the U.S. And we don't have the venues that you have. We don't have the big tournaments that you guys have.”
“I would kill for something like that in Europe but it just doesn't exist... all-day local pinball on Twitch, everyone going for it.”
“The level of effort the Indisc guys put in... Carl wasn't very well over the Indisc weekend. And also he had some really bizarre hardware problem with his streaming rig that actually when he got it back, it didn't even boot. The machine's completely dead.”
“I've got two goals one to enjoy it and two to play as good as I could play and if that means I'm first hooray if that means I'm last that's also hooray”
“When it does go right, holy moly, is that an epic feeling. Yeah. I mean, it's just – it really is amazing when you go like, yes.”
“The best thing by far that I did was I just turned all my Stern games at home to, like, just murder pins... No ball save. There was no parachute. and no restarting games.”
“If you can turn your games at home into the most difficult games you'll ever see, it makes life a lot easier... If there's 10 other people not making that adjustment, you have the advantage right off the bat.”
“There's probably like a couple of people that you don't necessarily want to approach when they're in the middle of a game or something like that, just out of respect. But the vast majority of people are very cool, very approachable.”
Entities
- Gottlieb· company
- Stern· company
- European Championship Series (ECS)· event
- Indisc· event
- UK Open· event
- Paragon· game
- Backhand Pinball· organization
- Flippin' Out· organization
- Pinball Republic· organization
- Triple Drain Pinball Podcast· organization
- Carl D'Angelo· person
- Joel· person
- Neil McRae· person
- Tom· person
- Travis· person
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