I always have to laugh at people who make these sweeping generalizations and have no understanding or knowledge of Pinball history, and have not for one second considered what it would have been like if pinside had previously existed and every single defect or break had been photographed and shared instantly with tens of thousands of anal hobbyists.

I’m not gonna rehash every single thing but you should at least attempt to learn yourself and employ the faintest attempt at perspective. I’m sure 90s pinside would have been thrilled about Williams GI connectors, and defective flipper opto interrupts, peeling cabinet decals and the TZ clock. I’m sure 80s pinside would have had lots of nice to things to say about every gottlieb premier digital system from 1978-1990. 70s pinside would have really
Liked those gottlieb latch trip relays, garbage bally light sockets, fuse holders and connectors, and the janky Williams match units and terrible drop target mechs that to this day need constant attention.

There is zero evidence - zilch - that pinball machines being built today are of worse quality or less reliable out of the box than the sainted glory games built in the 90s. It’s all confirmation bias by people who want to complain and are nostalgic for something they didn’t experience and didn’t exist: the impeccable glory days of unimpeachable pinball quality.

They are pinball machines. Shit breaks. Always been that way.

Stop your uneducated whining. It’s unseemly and dull.

Disregarding the unprovable, hypothetical inanities of the question you pose about 30 years from now...are you really congratulating yourself for provoking a response on a forum where the entire point is to respond to other people’s posts?

Well played. You are truly a strategic genius and I fell right into your trap. You have
Trolled me.

And furthermore, you did it easily!!!

Damn you.

Yeah but here’s the thing buddy.

I was 3 steps ahead of you.

You see, I knew that YOU would respond the way you did!

Boom. BOOOOOM!

Now I admit, I do admire your skills, and I think you have a future. But for now, you are still but a student, many steps behind the master.

And yes, I do think plenty of these sterns will be around in 30 years. Probably
More so than the 90s classics, as you said, so many more are sold now into home use.

And people will probably be complaining about whichever new pins are being made and waxing nostalgic about the glory days of 2019. I guess we will have
To check in then but I’m not really planning on being around that long.

For me it’s like this.

Look, I know some stern stuff sucks. I know those speaker wire optos on games like Spider-Man always cause trouble. I know they used crappy cabinet bolt plates. There’s always stuff that could be done. There’s always corners cut so a game can meet the Bill of Materials. There’s always been problems on the production line, and designers have always butt heads with the bean counters. Read steve Ritchie’s interview from 1999 - this has always been the case in pinball and it always will be.

What drives me nuts are these blanket generalizations that “quality is worse than ever” and that these games are garbage and that is a crime and they think we are all suckers etc etc etc.

Take a brand new t2 and a brand new Munsters and put em on location.

After 5 years you have gone through 3 sets of flipper buttons on your Munsters. Maybe a node board cooked. Maybe something else happened. Who the hell knows it’s a pinball machine. With a little work it’ll keep working and making money.

After 5 years your t2 has no GI working, because three connectors on it are completely crispy and black. Your game is unplayable because the BRs are dead and it’s resetting. Your cannon won’t fire because there’s a broken wire in the loom. Not a big deal - with some work it’s still on location and making money.

All I’m asking for is some goddamn perspective here people!! It’s so easy to do and so many of you get carried away with the drama queen act and selective memory and don’t even want to try to be reasonable about it.

Nobody has ever made a perfect, maintenance free pinball machine, and nobody ever will. Pointing that out doesn’t make you “a fanboy” or “shill.”

You guys gotta lighten up. Please. I’ll put you all on my holiday card list if you just give it a shot.

90s williams games had the backbox latch crudely exposed on the back of the the game. Now that takes the Williams lovers don’t get upset I’m just saying (and super coherently, I may add)!

And also, look at this abortion on a Dirty Harry I picked up!!! Hard to believe these kind of lapses in quality happened back in the 90s but it's true. I guess the stenciler was drunk that day and had no consideration for the resale value of this machine 24 years into the future.

I was hyperventilating about this and about to write an angry letter to [email protected], but then I realized you don't actually look at the back of the game and I got over it, a perspective that might help people who are upset that the head bolts are "exposed" on a Stern game.

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Exactly. Leg bolts are plentiful. Giant allen wrenches are not.

These complaints always seem like people trying to hard to find something to whine about.

The "stern lockdown bar" that Whitey is griping about? I guess he means the latches? They work better, cost less, and are far less complicated than the old spring-loaded contraption that has been a pain in the ass on so many old games. Don't see what the problem is. They found a simpler, cheaper solution that is much less likely to cause issues down the road.

Moving the on/off switch? I mean...I guess I wish they kept it where it was. Because I'm middle-aged and fear change. But like...what exactly is the drawback? I guess if I were 5'4 with a 44 inch waist it might make it harder to turn games on and off but I haven't faced any hardships.

Metal backbox? Yeah I prefer the wood ones. Again, because I'm old. Not sure what the exact drawbacks of the new design are though.

I group these gripes into two areas, legit and trying-too-hard.

Splitting cabinets, instant insert ghosting, those ridiculous "playfield pegs" and peeling off cabinet decals fall in the "legit" category. Moving on/off switches, "exposed bolts" in the backbox, "dimpling" and lockdown bar latches fall into the "TTH" category. All the noise can be a pain to wade through but you know a legit quality complaint when you see one. Maybe even Stern can.

After all they went back to actual playfield support rails, right?