Retro Gamers Face Drought of Pinball Repairmen

Interest in hobby outlasts machines
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 7, 2010 5:38 PM CDT
Retro Gamers Face Drought of Pinball Repairmen
Pinball repairmen are in short supply, much to the chagrin of the vintage gamer.   (Shutterstock)

Pinball is largely a distant curiosity at this point; a mechanical stepping stone on the way to the fully-digital video game. Still, the machines bring joy to those who spent hours pumping coins into them during their youth—if they work. That's the problem for the vintage pinball enthusiast: the games were made to last only about 5 years, and that doesn't account for the rough, near-"tilt" style employed by most gamers, explains the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper tags along with one of a rare breed these days: a pinball repairman willing to make house calls. (He fixes locomotives in his day job.) "Nobody sells a working pinball machine," observes the editor of the webzine Pinball Repair Tips & Tricks. "If it was working, they wouldn't sell it. If you buy one, it's always broken." (More video games stories.)

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