Quoted from Betelgeuse:I have been collecting for 7 years and have had lightening strike issues 3 times. It's a major pain to unplug all my games as I have to crawl under some of them, so sometimes I am caught off guard. The first time, 2 pins had the varistors and fuses blown. Fortunately after replacing those parts they still worked fine. I started unplugging the games when a storm was rolling through, but that can get unpredictable. The last time I had unplugged everything except for one vid. The plug is a real pain to get to on this vid, so I pulled the transformer fuse. You guessed it, the surge jumped the gap where the fuse was and the varistor was blown. Breakers sure won't save you. It's a major pain for me.
Considering the past 2 weeks we have had around here I feel better just leaving them unplugged. Not sure how they are at your place but we got huge storms for nearly a week straight, flash floods and all...