Retro Gamers Face Drought of Pinball Repairmen

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.)