Welcome to the club!!!

Unexplainable you either get it or you don't.

This. A thousand times this.

Though for me, it’s the satisfaction of bringing some run down game back to life, and then being able to share it with literally anyone who has hands and eyes. You can’t do that with stamp collecting or baseball cards. Everyone understands games.

I think it’s the mechanics of it. I’m willing to bet most of us were the kids that loved taking stuff apart. Loved moving parts inventions. Wanted to know how everything worked. Or I’m just crazy

To me it’s everything I always liked, the lights, the art, the electromechanical nature, even the collectibility aspect, the random precision of the silver ball, lotsa skill with a little luck what’s not to like. Yet there are people that don’t get it, cough(my wife !) since I was a kid I always liked coin operated machines wether it was a pool table, jukebox, candy machine, video game, electric crane whatever and pinball is the best of them all by far

It's a dopamine rush - your brain is rewarding you the same way it does when you get a Facebook notification, hear a great song or taste your favorite food. With pinball, you're getting chemical rewards whenever you complete an achievement, beat a timer or get it to make a certain sound or display a special light show or animation. Dopamine can be addictive.

I like the competetive aspect of it. I’m a 50 yr old ex-athlete who needs rotator cuff surgery from baseball and blew out my meniscus playing hoops last year. The silver ball is the only one I play now. Plus all the nostalgia of my childhood arcade days ...blah blah blah.

To add to what bonzo said, it’s a great well rounded hobby. You can collect, Restore, fix, compete, play, discuss among many other things.

Just a big box full of light bulbs not sure what you are all worked up about!?

It’s a working diaroma, rude goldberg machine, art show, light show, concert, comedy, peep show, drama, action, game of physics that you control the outcome to.

These are a beautiful amalgam of wood, glass, and extensive electronics. Everything a growing boy needs.

Women have shoes, we have hardware.

Special personal pride keeping these painted beauties running well.

I feel sorry for all the family and friends I make suffer with my constant pinball talk !

Let me ask you, have you been playing video games for years before finding pinball?

I think the the lure of pinball has something to do with the fact that it’s real. The tactile feedback is unmatched. You can see, hear and feel the ball rolling across the playfield. Pinball gives back in a way that video games just can’t match.

And then, you can take the glass off and explore the world in a box with your fingers. You can touch it, clean it, take it apart, fix it, put it back together better then it was before, and then to top it all off, you can personalize the machine to make it yours.

Video games, board games, physical sports, none of them have the same level of involvement as pinballs do.

To build on this, I’ve often reflected how pinball relies on certain mental abilities that were very important in our evolutionary past, but not so much in the modern world. Namely, mental geometry in calculating angles and using precise timing to hit targets, catch something, or prevent something from escaping. Think how close this resembles skills needed to hunt (hit a moving target by chucking a rock) or more advanced methods like bow and arrow or later guns. Or Spearing a fish in a stream. Or brains reward us for exercising skills important to our survival. So our brains like it when we play pinball. This is only one dimension of the answer and many others responses only build on this.

I don't need to play it to get a rush. It's like any other hobby you find enjoyable. I like bringing the past back to life and fixing broken things. I could just as easily be into something like restoring old arcade machines, old vending machines, jukeboxes, or automobiles. Any of those are useful items that you can do things with, just like a pinball machine. Hobbies that are static such as collecting stamps or most other "just look at it and that is all you can do with it" are not for me.

I cannot speak to the joys of ownership, because I don't own any pinball games. I'm sure I would enjoy some aspects of ownership too. I enjoy the "logic puzzles" of troubleshooting things. I enjoy the repair of both electronic and mechanical things. And I love playing pinball. However, tying up that kind of money just to have exclusive access to games seems outrageous, to a cheapskate like me.

I can certainly speak to the joys of playing pinball. I've played a lot of pinball in my 45 years.

At the basic level, the game of pinball is a battle of human against nature. "Nature" in this case is gravity and random chaos. The ball will always drain eventually (unless playing LOTR). It does not matter how good you are, you will lose. Nature's victory is inevitable, and likely just around the corner. But for brief periods of time, requiring skill, luck, knowledge and intense focus, you can do the impossible. You can become the master over nature. You can defy gravity. You can bring order to chaos. It is an amazing feeling to do the impossible. And that feeling is joy.

And then you brick the shot and get an air-ball that flies directly over the flipper and into the trough.

You step back (hopefully you laugh), take another sip, and plunge again. And then you try to get that feeling back again, even if just for a few minutes.

Like others have said, it’s a hard thing to explain. For me at age 54 it’s bringing me back to 1978 when at age 14, spending summer days at the Aladdin’s Castle arcade in the local Mall were awesome carefree times. I’ve got 4 1970s pins now in my game room and am enjoying learning how to work on the same games that brought so much joy in my youth. That’s probably a common theme among all pinheads. The sounds, sights and feel of these machines are special to me as much as any inanimate object could be. Addictive for sure and most of all fun. It’s also a great escape from the potholes of life. I close my gameroom door, turn on those machines and some music or a ball game and it’s heavanly.

It is because pinball is comprised of so many facets:

-nostalgia
-it is visceral,kinetic, and tactile; if you are doing it right you use your entire body
-it is interactive art
-it has mesmerizing dancing lights
-competition and the social aspect of playing
-ability of personalizing your machine via modding
-reward of repairing them, particularly a complicated problem
-reward of resurrecting/restoring a machine to its former glory
-collectibility
-oh, and it’s a game. Gaming is fun!

These are what attracts me. Some may not apply to you or you may have others.