13th Hour

I flagged Chalk’s Pain a few weeks ago because it had some Nine Inch Nails industrial electronic rock vibes, and everyone at the time was talking about Nine Inch Nails and their new work on the Tron: Ares soundtrack. The music video is what really sold this pick for me, however, as they fully lean into that 1990s/2000s vibe. They even shot the whole thing using the same camera used in 28 Days Later (2002), the Canon XL1, which was first released way back in 1998.

Chalk is a duo (they were a trio, but their drummer recently departed) from Belfast, and they are set to release their debut album sometime in 2026.

Is the Barrels of Fun team back up to their old tricks? A moment ago, they shared an update on the Barrels of Fun Facebook page, inviting you to visit the page at the 13th hour of the 13th day (Monday, 1 pm CT) for a new team member announcement.

Some will note the callback to their original launch campaign for Labyrinth, which took the pinball community on a journey of hints and puzzles before the final reveal at the 13th hour of the day. In all likelihood, this is just a simple personnel announcement, as the graphic notes. But maybe it’s something more than that?

We called it. Pinball Legends turned out exactly how we predicted. But did the production team nail it, too? I don’t think so, and here’s why.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, it feels like a miss. Cary Hardy’s involvement as lead messenger is a nice signal boost, but I’m not sure he or his core audience totally understands or appreciates this type of product. Obviously, the pinball market is not a monolith, and just because you are a pinball fan doesn’t mean you are a fan of pinball-themed collectibles. This mismatch tells me the creators don’t fully understand what they are making or who it’s for.

This feels like more of a box-checking exercise — and, in my best Bruce Nightingale voice, a caaaaaash graaaab — rather than something that respects, honors, and builds on the legacy of these characters and brings something artistic and truly collectible to the market.

Take, for example, anything you can find at a place like Sideshow, like this Limited Edition collectible action figure of The Dude. Similar price point to the larger-scale Pinball Legends, with orders of magnitude more detail, artistic merit, and character than this line appears to offer.

What I might have done is partner with an artist already steeped in the world of collectible action figures and toys, have them create a new design that was more of a riff on the B/W characters, and then produce those in partnership with someone like Lior. Then present it in a format or with packaging that enhances the collectibility or uniqueness of the product itself, opening the door to crossover opportunities with collectible markets, not just hardcore pinball markets. As presented now (as someone who does and would buy things like this), it’s cringe-level hokey that probably won’t help move these things the way they could have.

I would also have gotten a bit more creative with the rollout campaign, partnering with less obvious creators with audiences more receptive to this kind of release (Cooltoy and Nudge are a few who come to mind).

And don’t even get me started on the convoluted Pinball Legends Club / Pinball Legends Patreon (?!) thing.

This is what frustrates me most of all. The idea is cool. It should exist. But it could have been so much better, in a way that injected some artistic pop culture energy into what is otherwise a dusty corner of pinball history.

Paid subscribers received this interview with Jeff Dodson (Dirty Pool Pinball) earlier this week. It’s been fun to see the immediate impact he’s made on the sound design for Dune pinball, which, for pinball, was already in a good place to start. This is also contributor Noah Crable’s first interview for us, which is exciting in its own right.

Speaking of Noah, he wrapped up a new tutorial for Stern’s Star Wars: Fall of the Empire this week so that everyone can learn to play it before Expo, and as it continues its public rollout around the country.

Final major piece for the week, as we clear our pending content banks before Expo, is the latest update in Matt Owens’ regular series (I think we should start calling these columns), recapping recent major happenings in competitive pinball. In this edition, he recaps PAPA 22, CLEPIN, and the UK Pinball Open.

See? The anxiety was unwarranted. The Media Mixer sold out. Now I get to worry about everyone actually showing up and having a good time. You can still add yourself to the wait list here Scorbit & Kineticist Pinball Media Mixer 3. If we’re able to accommodate more of you, we’ll let you know.

Ryan and Scott from Pinball Map run a regular series that highlights one new or interesting pinball location each week. This week, Ryan writes about Push Start Play.

Sometimes, in order to identify a location of the week for you, we dive like Uncle Scrooge deep down into our location bin like a porpoise, and burrow through it like a gopher, and toss the locations up and let them hit us on the head. And then we sometimes find, pressed into our foreheads, a rare doubloon. It may not be worth much on the surface. It might not have 50 pinball machines, but only five. It might be in Alaska, or Key West. But if we inspect it closely, or just completely make up some things about it, we’ll find that there’s something special about the place that’s worth sharing.

But then there are other times when a new place in Texas opens up that has 61 mostly-LE machines and that makes it the de facto location of the week. That time is now. Welcome, Push Start Play, to your new home in Lewisville, Texas. Push Start Play appears to have lodged into an old Planet Fitness, which was vacated after everyone in Lewisville got buff and they had no more customers. In case you care, Push Start Play has a lot more than pinball, including old fashion arcade games, precision hoop games, games where you pretend to drive, miniature hockey, and skee-ball.

Unlike a rare doubloon with only five machines that needs a unique feature like a t-shirt club at the end of a seven mile bridge (see two weeks ago) in order to capture our attention, Push Start Play immediately commands a flock based on the heft of its catalog. Their 61 machines is twice as many as any other location in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. It costs $12 to enter and play things, though pinball, as we know, is a premium product, and so the machines also cost $1 to play via card. This is the only week that it will claim the title of location of the week, so it’s a good time to go.

Push Start Play
1165 S Stemmons Fwy Suite 192, Lewisville, TX 75067
Website

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