Interesting thread; I was drawn into pinball collecting by the Sterns of 5 years ago; the flash of them, the beautiful powder coats on the LE's, and the dazzle of the LED's. But now I find myself really digging the 90's B/W pins.

I think the parallel here is the same as with video games; games in the 80's and 90's in arcades had to be easy to pick up and learn, but hard to master, and overall addictive to play. 90% of the video games that are released nowadays, especially the AAA mindset of most studios, are way too complicated to play; there are 10 buttons on a controller with two sticks, and by the time you end up learning how to really play it, it loses you with mundane tasks.

Very much like most sterns, hit this flashing light, then that one, then the other one...It all becomes so boring, never really natural flows into a game task. And definitely doesn't clearly become obvious from game 1, like say T2 does. In T2, it's shoot left/right ramp, or go for that drop target under skull, load cannon and there you go.

I think that's overall complexity is now becoming a key detractor to me, while Stern games can definitely be very fun, they lack that ease of getting into them that embodies the golden age of the arcades. To me, at this point, whether it's an Arcade game, console game or a pin; I judge it purely off of gameplay, that a big part of that is ease of getting into, difficulty in mastering, and overall addictive-ness to it that draws you back in.