Spring Loaded

This week it's The Bobby Lees — "New Self." If you took the rage of Zach de la Rocha, ran it through therapy, and came out the other side with self-compassion and some very funny memories of a night with Shaun White, you'd land somewhere close to this track. Sam Quartin's vocals are jagged and huge, but the lyrics are unexpectedly tender — a diary entry set to late-90s nu-metal and garage punk.

The Bobby Lees are from Woodstock, NY. They went on indefinite hiatus in late 2023 after burning out on touring economics, and would've stayed gone if not for Jason Momoa, who funded the new record. New Self is their fourth studio album and their Epitaph Records debut, produced by Dave Sardy, out June 12.

Every few months, someone in the pinball community pulls up Project Pinball's 990 filings, sees $600,000 in net assets and a 3-star Charity Navigator rating, and starts asking questions. Where does the money go? Why does the founder take a salary? Why no independent audit?

We sat down with Daniel Spolar for nearly three hours to get answers.

The conversation covered everything — the origin story, how the raffles actually work, what the $600,000 is made of, why he took zero salary for eight years, and the stories behind the placements that the public rarely hears.

There were no bombshells. No red flags. No moments where the math didn't add up. What there was, mostly, was a guy in a hotel room in Phoenix, bike wedged against the bed, somewhere between dedications, answering for a charity that's grown faster than the community's understanding of it.

Read the full piece — One More Dollar, One More Game.

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Dennis Nordman's spiritual successor to White Water is real, and it had its public debut at the Texas Pinball Festival last weekend.

Klondike Gold Rush-themed, built around a 5-ball avalanche lock and four flippers. It's $9,999 for a single 500-unit run, and word is Turner has already sold at least half. Could take up to two years to produce all 500 — a reminder of what "small batch" actually means at this scale.

Audio took some heat at the show and Turner is bringing on more help to address it. Art has split opinion too. The audio is fixable. The art is what it is. Either way, there's a lot of mechanical ambition here. Full breakdown with rules, pricing, and design history on Kineticist.

HEXA Pinball planned to unveil its second title, The 3 Musketeers, simultaneously in Bordeaux and at the Texas Pinball Festival. There was just one problem: customs held up the TPF demo units, so attendees couldn't actually play it.

Tough break for a French manufacturer trying to prove itself with unlicensed IP.

Designed by Luis Dos Santos, themed around Alexandre Dumas's classic novel (public domain — no licensing fees). Classic Edition runs €7,890, Elegance Edition €10,390. First shipments targeted for June. HEXA also announced AdaptiveFlip, an accessibility program they said was "quite easy to do on a technical point of view".

Full breakdown on Kineticist.

American Pinball came to Texas with two announcements.

First, a Houdini 100th Anniversary Edition — new cabinet artwork by Christopher Franchi and a new topper. They had units on the floor at the fest. Second, and bigger: the Cirqus Voltaire remake is confirmed and scheduled for 2026. For anyone who caught our TPF preview a couple weeks ago, the rumor mill was right on this one.

There was also a small dust-up over a promotional flyer that was pretty clearly AI-generated — it still had the Gemini watermark on it. Similar vibes to the Harry Potter AI art situation from earlier this year. I don't think using AI for promo materials is inherently a problem, but you've gotta check the details before you send it out.

Word out of TPF is that Chicago Gaming Company may do another production run of the Attack from Mars Remake. About time — demand for AfM has consistently been strong. Like Medieval Madness, AfM is another game CGC could probably run in perpetuity.

The latest Score Card covers three major tournaments from competitive pinball's spring season.

Daniele Acciari won INDISC for his fifth lifetime major. Jason Zahler took the IFPA North American Pinball Championship with a 4-0 finals sweep. Keith Elwin won Pin-Masters at ORD Pinball, clinching it on NBA Fastbreak. And Dalton Ely quietly showed up in the top four at both NAPC and Pin-Masters — watch that name.

We also interviewed Noah Crable about his run to the NAPC finals. Noah writes rulesheet guides for us at Kineticist and isn't really on the national tournament circuit — he qualified through state competitions, knocked out Eric Stone in the semis, then ran into Jason Zahler in the final. Fun interview. He talks about learning games through location play, why he kept picking X-Men (short version: he knew it cold and everyone else didn't), and his VHS tape collecting hobby, which is somehow the perfect parallel to writing rulesheets.

Read the full interview — Noah Crable on His Surprise Run.

New Moving Units tracker is up for paid subscribers. JAWS crossed 3,000 units in market, Harry Potter hit a milestone, and Pokémon posted the fastest start we've ever tracked. Read Moving Units #6.

A few things from our end.

The site got a ground-up rebuild. If you've visited kineticist.com recently, you may have noticed it's faster and works better. We rebuilt the entire site on a new custom stack, replacing the hodgepodge of subscription services we'd been using. Already live: game reviews, comments on articles, custom lists for games and locations, and the ability to save your game ratings and hype ratings to your profile. More features coming — we'll do a proper write-up once we're further along.

Your TWIP sub just got an upgrade. First feature we built on the new stack: paid TWIP subscribers can now browse kineticist.com completely ad-free. Create a Kineticist account, link your subscription, takes about a minute. Your sub now gets you ad-free browsing on top of Moving Units, subscriber-only articles, and everything else.

We're still looking for writers. The response to our call a couple weeks ago was way better than I expected — we're in talks with a bunch of potential new contributors and have some new things in the works. But it's an open call, and it stays open. If you're interested in covering pinball, arcade culture, or adjacent beats with a business lens, reach out anytime: [email protected].

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