I don't really miss it but I really appreciate the phase of being a total pinball noob.

Unless you were born into it most of us have come to the hobby as total beginners at some point. Once you've completed your heroes journey and learned to maintain games you'll never lose those skills, but it's a path fraught with frustration and lots of basic questions for LTG.

I try to remember this when talking about pins to new owners or new people to the hobby. There's always a lot of fear when it comes to dealing with this giant wooden box filled with complicated bits of plastic, steel, and silicon. I let them know it's not so bad and you just have to work slow and use all the available information resources out there.

But what I REALLY miss is that inner spark of joy you would get as a child when a random game or an entire arcade would appear on whatever errand your parents were dragging you around on. Even if you didn't get to play the game, just seeing one and touching it and imagining you were playing it was a thrill!

Now there's just none of those around. Although I think if I did stumble across a random game in a 7-11 or something it might spark a little bit of that feeling again!