What happened to pinball?

Answer 1

People of the early 80's moved away from the pinball tables and moved to the flasher new arcade machines instead. The pinball manufactures tried to combat this by making video pinball hybrids like 'Ms Pac Man' where the pinball table was inside an arcade cabinet along side the traditional Pac Man game. But when home entertainment in the mid 80's came along people moved away from the arcades so the pinball manufactures had no choice but to move away from the hybrids and make the traditional pinball table for the pinball loyalest. During the 90's the pinball popularly kept on dropping and manufacturers started going bankrupt including, in 1996, the formally big company Gottlieb that has been selling pinball since 1927. Two other big company's merged becoming Bally/Williams to keep alive during this period. In 1999 Bally/Williams created a table so revolutionary they calmed it would save pinball, it was named 'Pinball 2000' and it included a holographic display on the playfield. However only two tables got made, and where profitable, before Bally/Williams ceased production of pinball too concentrate on the more profitable slot machines. The last pinball company, Sega Pinball, went bankrupt after Sega's failed Dreamcast in late 1999. Determined not to let pinball die Gary Stern brought out Sega Pinball and named it Stern Pinball and now remains the only pinball manufacturer and with no completion they are returning a profit.