OP, I understand the sentiment and why you are promulgating this idea, but it would have been a lot better received in 2012!
At this juncture, when prices are increasing, long lead-times are the norm, and it’s a perpetual mad dash to secure a new game, I’d say pinball is plenty “mainstream” enough as it is!
In fact, if it gets any MORE mainstream, everything will start sinking to the lowest common denominator as even the “good guys” join the race to the bottom, and the hobby will ultimately die with a pitiful whimper, crushed beneath the weight of its own mediocrity (and a landfill’s worth of discarded cost-cut flipper mechs and ink-jet printed MDF playfields).
Quoted from jackd104:I want to see pinball proliferate and on one hand I empathize with your sentiment. On the other hand, nothing great in this world is mainstream. If pinball started feeling like watching the New Years Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest, I would be very sad.
This is so true it almost hurts!
No better way to strip all passion and joy out of something than to sanitize it into universal inoffensiveness.
Imagine your disappointment when Metallica went “soft” and suddenly became palatable your girlfriend, the local AOR program director, your English teacher, and maybe even your mother, then shudder at the thought of the equivalent happening to this hobby!
Walnut Creek, CA
