All posts by Shawn K. Quinn

Texas Pinball Festival 2025 part 1: Northbound and down

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Texas Pinball Festival 2025

And so it began.

Months of anticipation and many emails from both the main Texas Pinball Festival staff and the tournament directors later, the day had finally arrived. I had stayed up later than I wanted to packing everything in a carry-on-sized suitcase and two backpacks. (This was about the equivalent of one checked suitcase and one carry-on suitcase, though since I was driving I only needed to worry about what could fit in the trunk and not airline regulations.)

The first stop was to get a quick snack and drink from QuikTrip on I-45 at Richey Road. This store has become my go-to in the area (over the Flying J across the street), primarily due to their roller grill items.

After that it was non-stop to the Golden Chick in Corsicana, West 7th Avenue (aka Texas 31 Business) and South 18th Street. The only hiccup was a stretch north of Huntsville, which if I remember right was construction (I only have the GPS trace to refer back to, I did not take many notes of the trip). My hope was to check into the hotel and make it over to get my wristband and name badge, and hopefully have enough time to enter and play in the Thursday night scrutinizer tournament. I would need to be in line at close to 16:15 to 16:30 for that to happen.

After missing the first turn given to me by my navigation app (which would have been a slightly more direct route via I-45 Business instead of US 287 Business), I arrived at Golden Chick at 13:47. After another brief stop at the CVS just east of Golden Chick (West 7th Avenue and South 16th Street) to get some cash from the ATM, it was back on the road.

The freeway traffic was not moving, so I took a detour. My navigation software naively directed me west on West Roane Road and then north on I-45 Business/North 7th Street. I would arrive at the ramp to get back on I-45 North only to find out it was closed due to construction. So I would have to backtrack to FM 3041/West Roane Road and this time head east.

I got around the traffic jam via two roads called Northeast 1040 (great road for a CPA/tax preparer to put an office!) and Northeast 0220. The trip down Northeast 1040 was interesting. What appeared to possibly be the northbound half was gravel while the southbound half was paved. We all wound up using the paved portion while being ready to move over for oncoming traffic if needed (there was none). Northeast 0220 wasn’t like this, it was more consistently paved after the first half mile or so.

This road ended in a T intersection with FM 1603, which would, thankfully, lead back to a free-flowing I-45. And that was the last hiccup before Buc-ee’s in Ennis, where I made one more brief stop for supplies and another drink.

I would get back on the road at 15:37 and everything would go smoothly until… yep, Dallas rush hour traffic. I would arrive at I-45 near Bryan Street at 16:18, and would exit the freeway at that time to take the surface streets. At this point I’ve given up on making it to the scrutinizer tournament so I’m taking my time and trying to relax a bit for the rest of the drive.

I would proceed up Lemmon Avenue (including a one-way portion named Lemmon Avenue East) to Inwood Road, which joins the Dallas North Tollway just south of I-635. I would go ahead and hop on the (relatively) free-flowing tollway all the way to the exit for Gaylord Parkway. Then, back to surface streets once again to the hotel. Check in, bring my bags up, and then walk over to get my wristband and name tag. I walked in, waited in line for a brief time, got my wristband and name tag, got to play a quick game or two at the Wormhole booth, and then went back to the hotel to relax, shower, and ponder my options for dinner.

I considered everything from old standbys like Subway, Denny’s, and Chipotle, to slightly pricier options around the area. My eventual choice was Boomer Jack’s over in Plano (a short drive south) where I ordered the Texan Flatbread (smoked brisket, mozzarella, BBQ sauce, red onion, and cilantro). It was a hearty meal and I feel like I had earned it after the rather tedious drive north, especially on the legs between Corsicana and Frisco. (I had briefly considered the Carnivore Flatbread instead but wanted to try something a bit outside my usual tastes.)

And with that, time to get some well-deserved rest and prepare myself for the weekend.

March 19 Cidercade Houston

So on the morning of March 18 I get a text about my free admission rewards at Cidercade expiring in three days. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have dragged myself out to Cidercade this late on the night before I’m set to drive up to Frisco for the Texas Pinball Festival, and after a day on which I have to get a ton of work done to boot. But, it was a good excuse to get in some last minute pinball practice, though most of the games I played were not part of the tournament lineup.

Given the hour and my state of relative exhaustion, a lot of these scores weren’t all that great. I actually wound up playing quite a few video games before going back to pinball at the end of the night. I feel like despite this being a somewhat abbreviated visit, I got what would have been $12 worth of play out of it.

Highlights: 68.4M+ on Iron Maiden, 43.9M+ on Led Zeppelin, 101M+ on Star Wars. 47.7M+ on Metallica Remastered, 146M+ on Game of Thrones (Premium/LE, I forget which).

March 16 Einstein’s Katy

And then it was time once again for the monthly Einstein’s visit.

There were a few of relative gems on this outing: 150k+ on Stars, 54.3M+ on Black Knight: Sword of Rage (Premium), 3.9M+ on Rick and Morty.

I would fit in one more arcade visit before it was time to head north to the Texas Pinball Festival.

March 3 Little Dipper

Highlights in brief: 80.5M+ on Star Trek, 796k+ on Jacks to Open. The rest weren’t really anything special.

(This was originally supposed to be a league night for Bayou City Pinball League, but cancelled due to low attendance.)

Texas Pinball Festival 2025: Back in the saddle again

It’s that time again. The Texas Pinball Festival is this weekend, March 21-23. As you may have heard, the tournament format has completely changed this year. Instead of the previous “limited entries” format, the field of 160 players will be divided into two groups of 80, an “early” group (Friday 09:00-16:00, Saturday 09:00-14:00) and a “late” group (Friday 17:00-24:00, Saturday 14:00-19:00) for a matchplay qualifier. This year, I am in the “early” group.

One good change deserves another. The live updates will be moved to a new Telegram announcements channel. This should hopefully be easier to follow and will allow me to keep announcements separate from my usual posts to Mastodon.

I may or may not be able to update this blog post with the tournament scoreboard link when it becomes available. It will likely be posted to the Telegram group linked previously before I update this post.

The livestreams of the finals will once again be on Wormhole Pinball’s Twitch feed. With the new format and required schedule, this unfortunately wreaks significant havoc on my plans to play in other tournaments being offered over the weekend. If those happen they’ll be on the Telegram channel.

I’m looking forward to being “back in the saddle again” for what is now the fourth year in a row. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s now time for me to start packing and rest up for a long drive tomorrow. See you in Frisco.

(Edit: I will likely have one or two arcade visit posts to make before the TPF recaps. There’s just not enough time left to catch up.)

February 21 Eureka Heights

I headed down to Eureka Heights with the primary goal of socializing with a few people I knew would be there for a tournament (even though I would not be able to play in it, or really, didn’t have much desire to try to play in it even if able).

Amazingly, I managed to squeak in a couple of games of pinball while I was there. This includes a game on The Jetsons, which is a rare game from Spooky Pinball with only 100 units manufactured.