I have stern (2009?) and bally (1994) both need to be repaires from time to time, from flippers to simple light change, fuses ..etc
I have to fix my IM board because of a flipper issue a month ago, now I'm having some issues with my start button and pumber jey on my AFM, but I'm learning to fix through this forum and searching the web.
from my own experience, pinballs will always have issues here and there, if you dont have the time to fix (which I enjoy fixing my pins) you might have to get arcades since they dont need that much fixing.
I have no idea if there is a pinball that doesn't breakdown
I dont have early pinball machines, so I cn't comment on that