Yes There's a J6 Themed Pinball Machine

The January 6th Pinball Machine

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Since it's now making the rounds in national media outlets like Kotaku and The Hill, figured I may as well tell this minor story from an article I was working on last year.

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Last August, The Boston Globe published an article about the annual PorcFest in New Hampshire. For those unfamiliar, PorcFest is like Burning Man for Libertarians. I had never heard of it till seeing this article, but quickly saw mention of a January 6th themed pinball machine.

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Naturally, this being a pinball publication, I felt inclined to dig a little deeper. After cold emailing a bunch of PorcFest organizers and mining public social media posts from the event, I finally managed to track down the game's creator.

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I only managed a single email exchange with him before he went dark on me, but you could tell he was quite proud of his efforts, having video and marketing materials for the insurrection-themed game at the ready. The image above is from the game's promo flyer.

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It's a custom virtual table produced by "Freedom Dawg Games" which is mostly just a reskin of the classic Williams game, Dirty Harry. It's without a doubt the worst virtual pin work I've ever seen.

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I shelved the story once he went dark, so suffice it to say I was shocked to see it crop up again stemming from coverage of this year's CPAC conference in Washington, D.C.

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Let's just say that I'm not a fan of this particular effort in any regard, but it's also rare to see pinball covered in this way from national outlets, I have some prior insight with the story, and I'm not immune to the realities of trying to grow a niche digital publication.

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Anyway, despite publishing this on Feb. 22nd, 2024, I'm backdating it to an earlier date because I don't really want it on our home page.