Better leave one of those unfixed to prevent future repairs!

Well, my Doctor Who was made in 1992....sure, you remember 1992, it wasn't that long ago, right? 1992 was 20 years ago. Almost all of these machines were made to go in an arcade or be played publicly somewhere. When your business depends on working machines and the repair guy won't be around till next week, or even next month, people did their own repairs. I've got a lot of crazy patching in mine - wire soldered into the middle of other wires - likely because someone had a soldering iron but not the replacement for what was actually not working. It did the job, so when the repair guy came around, it was working. OR, you have a home user that doesn't want to trace the problem and buy the part, they just want it to work.

I think it's a combination of bad solder and it just getting old and brittle over time. Your wires where you work don't get used religiously for years and years and then not much, and then stuck in a garage or shed where they are exposed to extremes of temperature and humidity, and possibly critters. My Ford (actual truck, not a game lol) has a bad solder point in the dash lighting, so the odometer will only light up when it's cold. I know where the bad point is, and I know how to solder, but from everything I've read, tearing the dash apart is a monster job. And that's an issue specific to my vehicle....bad soldering job.

For whatever reason, you should expect solder to need retouching when you buy a used pin, and sometimes, other things too. If not now, eventually.