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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Strong" data-source="post: 57964" data-attributes="member: 3">If pinball machines were only designed to make money, then pinball never would've boomed like it did. Pinball machines had to fun too, otherwise people wouldn't keep coming back. Also, it's debatable that TPA's recreation makes them more fun. It all depends on your definition of fun. To me, a lot of the fun of pinball is the adrenaline rush I get from trying to keep the ball alive. Quite a bit of that is lost when they make things too easy (such is the case with Scared Stiff and TZ). To me, long marathon sessions just aren't as fun. And lastly, I don't think you can blame hardcore pinball fans for the "death" of pinball. If you look back at the 60's and 70's, pinball was huge, and by huge I mean HUGE...there were tons of casual players (and also tons of female players, my mom was one of them). The machines were hard in terms of difficulty, but people didn't care because it was fun and because it was cutting edge at the time....that was all before pinball didn't have to compete with video games. As soon as video games started booming, pinball machines became more and more neglected by players (and owners). Arcades that were once filled to the brim with pinball machines were suddenly forced to make room for video games because that was the new rage that all the kids wanted. Sure, pinball pressed on, but it began to steadily dwindle in popularity from that day forward. Through the 80's, it was still quite popular, but it couldn't hold a candle to video games in terms of demand. The 90's saw pinball machines that were more high tech than ever, but most common arcades only had a few pinball machines because kids simply weren't playing them as much as video games. So I think it's pretty clear that videos games had much more to do to the so-called "death" of pinball...which is why it's kind of ironic (and very cool) that video games such as TPA and Zen are helping to revitalize it.</blockquote>

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