Quoted from Blake:they play the way they were intended too all those years ago. And that only comes from bringing a 50 year old machine back up to that level. You can't grab an old machine put it in your arcade, do the minimal and expect it to be as reliable as one made in the last ten years. If thats what this topic is inquiring about then I misinterpreted the question.
But if you do decide to go through a machine, and I mean really go through it. Not necessarily spend a bunch of money, but certainly a bunch of time. Then I think you can have some very good success playing the hell out of an older (50's-90's) machine and not see it break down in the manner some folks would have you believe.
One of the most personally rewarding things I've done is take complete wrecked basket cases and rebuild them to a state where they survive 3-day pinball shows with constant lines; in addition to compliments from peers and players, I've even won best-in-class awards and TV interviews over machines that were literal garbage when I got them. I even sold a couple to a local bardcade where they continued to earn day-in-day-out for over 2+ more years. So it's very possible to make an old game play new and troublefree and you might yourself be shocked at how resilient the bones of these games are, with a little (OK, sometimes maybe a lot of) TLC.
If anyone remembers the "barn auction El Dorado" thread I opened a few years ago, that machine was GARBAGE. It took a long time to restore, and it's still far from perfect... but it just came back from Louisville Expo (last show before the covidocalypse) where the only thing I had to do for it over 3 days of non-stop play, was replace a bulb and unstick a score reel from from transit-related wire movement. Amazing, honestly. And yet not amazing at all.
I understand not everyone is a masochist who can or wants to spend that kind of time. But it's certainly possible to make old games rock solid reliable. And not always too expensive or overwhelmingly time consuming (I just tend to like the extreme before-after projects). But you don't have to drop $7K+ on a NIB game to have something dead reliable. I'm not too far over that amount spent on my entire collection over the last few years (in fact I'm well under that if you remove the lone two games I bought fresh and turnkey), and they're rarely forced dark for extended time once I'm done with them.
