IX. End of the Line
Out of Order
Steve Kordek, pinball designer, oversees production on one of the last games made by Williams™ Pinball in 1999.
As the 20th century drew to a close, the outlook for the coin-op industry was bleak. Innovations in the arcade space that had driven growth through the first half of the 1990s were beginning to flatline. There was mounting pressure to develop something revolutionary to entice operators, whose bottom lines were being affected by the emergence of social media and internet-based gaming. Despite their best efforts, the giants of the era began to fold, and by century's end, only one major pinball manufacturer remained in the world. Difficult to automate and requiring a lot of time-intensive labor, there was real concern that the skill and artistry of these machines might soon be lost forever if the industry wasn’t able to quickly turn things around.
"The opposite of play is not work —
it is depression."
BRIAN SUTTON-SMITH
Atari employees review the backglass artwork for the Airborne Avenger pinball game sometime around 1977.
While some of the most popular arcade games manage to outlive their expected lifespan and remain operational for decades, these machines face an inevitable mortality. Components wear out, replacement parts become scarce and circuit boards fail. Eventually, even the most dedicated operators and collectors reach a point where maintaining these aging machines becomes prohibitively expensive or technically impossible.
While market forces determine which new games are developed and which ones disappear, organizations like the Video Game History Foundation and The Strong National Museum of Play are working to preserve classic games through the archival of source code and schematics as well as digital reproductions. Their efforts and that of others ensures that this beloved pastime will endure for generations to come.
