I recently had the pleasure of speaking with a gentleman from France named Simon who shared information about his great new pinball and arcade app with us. The new app, called "Insert Coin" was created to track every arcade location in the world. This not only includes pinball, but classic and modern arcade games, billiards, darts, foosball and all sorts of amusement devices.
The app is a rework of an existing pinball tracking app called "Pinmyballs." Simon was able to take over that app, re-write it from scratch and expand it beyond just pinball.
The new app looks really well done. It is completely free to use and contains no ads. Its database of games and locations is still missing a number of locations, but anyone can contribute locations to it so hop on there and add some. Given its global scale, the Insert Coin app is currently available in six languages (English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish).
Users can save their favorite locations in the app and it will notify them when games are added or removed.
The app is off to a great start with 10,000 unique monthly visitors, 2,700 listed locations, and 12,000 games in its database so far.
The app is available on:
- Web: https://www.insert-coin.app
Last night, Luke and Bug from Spooky Pinball held a live Q&A session on Twitch. Not surprisingly, most of the talk discussed the company's brand new game Evil Dead. Spooky has begun shipping games to customers. By mid-next week, around 20 Evil Deads will have shipped.
The folks from Spooky pinball are bringing several Evil Dead machines with them to the new Pinball at the Beach show, which takes place from February 7th through the 9th at the TradeWinds Grand Island hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida.
Other notes from the broadcast:
Despite the recent rumor based upon seeing a drawing of Sonic the Hedgehog on a whiteboard in the background of a Spooky Pinball factory picture, they are NOT doing a Sonic the Hedgehog pinball machine
Spooky is looking into giving customers the option to add Invisiglass to games shipped from the factory
Spooky is using much higher quality servos in games now than it has in the past. They have completely stopped using mini-servos, which were the main source of problems in Halloween. They also are "using them more intelligently" to improve reliability.
Spooky is developing games for 2 to 3 years in the future.
They currently have close to 750 orders for Evil Dead
They scale their production to build all ordered games of a machine done in 12 months
Evil Dead code is probably 50% to 60% complete at this point
Below is a link to the Q&A session for anyone who wants to check it out:
Bug and Luke Evil Dead Q&A Margarita Happy Hour
Over the past week or so, I stumbled across two great new (at least new to me) pinball videos on YouTube that I wanted to share with everyone. The first is called "One Day Film Challenge: Making a Pinball Arcade!"
This mini-documentary goes behind the scenes at The Rewind Arcade in Sebastopol, California.
"To test a set of cinema lenses, Joey visits his local pinball arcade to shoot a short documentary, and then goes into detail about how he puts together a One Day Film during his camera tests.
Learn more about The Rewind Arcade at https://www.therewindarcade.com/"
The second video is "Shoot Again: the Resurgence of Pinball." This one is a lot longer, clocking in at a little over an hour. It contains a lot of interviews with heavy hitters in the hobby and talks about the resurgence of pinball.
"Shoot Again: the Resurgence of Pinball is a feature-length documentary film about pinball's return and its appeal to a new generation of pinball enthusiasts. In an era of digital, streaming, cloud-based, and electronic entertainment, pinball is a paradox. With most forms of modern entertainment downloadable to the palm of your hand, how does a 300-pound box of wires and lights survive, and continue to thrive? That's the story we set out to tell with this documentary."
YouTube won't allow me to embed the video here for some reason, so click on the link below to check it out:
Another app... I try my best to update "find a pinball" and "Pinballmap" already. Sad that they don't speak to each other. Thanks again for the great content
Great post and thank you for the app link. I loaded it on my phone right away.