The past, present, and future share a show floor at Pinball Expo 2026

My all time favorite was Beat the Clock. It was in the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ. Instead of three or five balls you got an allotment of time. The hook was you could pause the clock and until it restart you had extended time.

https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/beat-the-clock

I liked several others too, I'm old enough I recall the time before video games being born in 1968. Pinball has the visceral feel once you master the gentle nudge and flipper skills.

About a decade ago I took my then little children to Seattle Pinball Museum for a day of tremendous fun for everyone. The machines were rated on 1-10 "grin factor" scale They had a machine there that wasn't your typical pinball, it was twice as wide and it shot a stream of balls from the center like a machine gun, in a continuous stream and you controlled the direction above with goals of hitting the targets that would light up. The balls would cascade down and get fed back into continuous loop.

This machine's "grin factor" was marked as 11 (naturally!!) and yeah, it was tremendous fun. It felt like I imagine it feels operating a seriously big machine gun! There was momentum of the heavy steel balls in the feeder so one couldn't swing it around willy nilly, so one had to really put some force into it. It was also really loud, and the feedback from the pusher vibrating through the handles was very visceral. Loved that machine!

> it’s a very exciting time to be a pinball fan.

Indeed it is. I've been a pinball enthusiast since the 90s and in recent years pinball is seeing a truly incredible resurgence. In the early 2000s the number of places you could play pinball was lower than any time since the 1930s and the world was down to one (barely) surviving pinball manufacturer who very nearly went bankrupt in 2010. Yet in the last decade the number of manufacturers, new titles launched and machines sold has kept increasing fueled by a new generation of barcades and a flood of new home machine owners and collectors driving creativity and new technologies into the hundred year-old hobby.

One thing TFA didn't mention is that even small towns now have growing hobby communities based around leagues and tournaments. Tournaments are usually at barcades or local pin shows and weekly league nights are held at private collector's homes where all the machines are on free play. We've lived in our suburb for years with no idea there were nine houses within a mile of ours with 10+ pinball machines hiding inside. It's not uncommon to walk into a league night and get to play a rare, lovingly restored, museum-grade classic pin you'll never see in a barcade.

Local leagues are welcoming to newcomers, can be very social and are the closest I've felt to the vibe of my dad's bowling league or my mom's bridge club. A few years ago my wife joined a league and now dozens of 'Pin Neighbors' we never knew existed are new friends. It's also the best way to play a huge variety of machines and get better at pinball. Plus, if you're interested in getting your first pinball machine, there's a mantra in Pin culture to 'Keep good pins in the community', so the best machines for sale your area are offered on private local community forums first. Outside of the rare garage find, most of what's on local CraigsList or FB are considered 'trash machines'.

Our game room collection of 7 pins was acquired gradually over the last 20 years as my wife and I fell in love with various titles and found one at a good price. It's diverse with machines built in each decade from 1970s EM to 80s & 90s solid-state to 2020s ARM CPU, IP networked machines. Interestingly, every decade is fun in different ways because pinball kept evolving. Older machines tend to play slower and focus on making precise shots while newer machines have deeper rules with combos, stackable modes and rare but massive bonuses.