Pinball as an arcade attraction hasn’t actually bounced back much, at least compared to the early 90s. The biggest driver for the comeback now is home sales.

As previously stated, home consoles blew up in the early 90s and sucked away most of the casual arcade goers.

Also WMS’s business model of forcing dealers to buy a load of games then put them on close out pricing when they didn’t sell made pinball even less appealing to dealers, as ops would just wait for the close out price. Plus their manufacturing method of one game on the line and no going back to a hit really screwed them.

Almost every single pinhead I know did not grow up playing pinball - that includes guys like me in our 40s. We all came to it later.

There’s a few old cuckers but it’s mostly people in their late 20s, early 30s at league now. None of them ever played location pinball.

Ops stopped operating pins because video was easier, people stopped playing pins because there were less of them, plus vids were more compelling at the time. Feedback loop, pinball dies out for 20 years.

All I played when I was a kid was Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Robotron and Tempest. Pinball had ZERO impact on me at all. The fact that I have pinball license plates now says a lot about pinball as an adult hobby, which I got into in my late 20s. So it'll probably be a functional hobby for a long time.

So anyway, on topic, it was a cascade of things that killed pinball in the 90s - video games, increased pricing, lower profit for ops, etc.