The Inside Story of Pinball’s Renaissance

Editor's note: This feature was originally produced back in 2015, and has since been updated.

Before mobile phones, home consoles, and arcade cabinets, there was pinball. With flashing lights metallic dings, and a satisfying physicality, these machines transfixed people across the world, creating celebrities out of the most skilled players, and spawning a massive multi-million dollar industry. For anyone interested in games, pinball was the cultural norm.

But with the turn of the century, pinball’s popularity began to fade. Machines were too expensive, and too hard to maintain. A new generation of video gamers grew up with little knowledge of the mechanical machines that preceded them. Arcades across the world moved pinball machines into storage to make room for their pixelated counterparts. Pinball came close to flatlining, and for 12 years, only one company kept the game alive, Stern Pinball, creators of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

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