Why Pinball Moved from Bars to Basements

What’s your earliest memory of pinball?

For me, it’s a sleepover birthday party in a suburban hotel. I’m ten. It’s late. And even though snow is falling outside, I’m soaked and steaming from the indoor pool. This isn’t a nice hotel; I’m not sure nice hotels even exist within a 500-mile radius. But who needs nice when you can walk from the pool directly into the adjoining mini-arcade, dubbed The Game Room. The other kids had figured out how to rig free games from the pinball tables by rapidly unplugging and plugging the power cords.

In hindsight, a few quarters would have cost less than the potential insurance bill for four kids playing with electricity while standing in puddles, soaking wet. I digress. What I remember is the sensory overload. The stickiness of the buttons. The resistance of the plunger, followed by its whiplash spring. The smell of spilled soda, sweat, and, in this particular venue, chlorine so potent it burnt my nostrils.

As a friend jammed my table’s cord into the socket, the machine awoke with bright, colorful lights and gaudy lo-fi noises. It was March, but it was Christmas.

I ask for your earliest memory, because I suspect it’s similar. Whether you first got your hands on the side table at a bar in the ‘80s, an arcade in the ‘90s, a cruise ship in the ‘00s, or a Dave & Busters last week, you experience the thing pinball does that video games can’t… a full-bodied sensory experience.

As an elder millennial, I caught the tale of the pinball golden age, experiencing first-hand the declining interest in this gaming relic from the days of discos and conceptual rock musicals. And the rising obsession with elaborate video games that, now playable at home, transported players to new worlds.

Who needed a wooden table and a steel ball? Who needed a game they could touch and shake and sweat all over?

In the ‘00s, a single American company kept pinball alive. Stern Pinball, run by Gary Stern, managed to keep the lights on by finding new audiences, first internationally, and then, surprisingly, with an aging and expanding set of Gen Xers who, unable to find pinball in arcades, opted to bring pinball into their homes. They craved something tangible. And they had the money to buy it.

By the late 2010s, competition reappeared. Jersey Jack in 2011. Spooky Pinball in 2013. Pinball Brothers 2017.

But Stern has remained the dominant force in pinball, building off its decades-long reputation in the good times and the bad. In recent years, it’s produced tables inspired by Stranger Things, James Bond, Dungeons & Dragons, Godzilla, Star Wars, and now Pokémon.

How did Stern survive pinball’s apocalypse? And how has pinball – as a game and a piece of technology – changed over the last 20 years?

To find out, I called the CEO of Stern, Seth Davis.

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This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: How Stern Survived the Pinball Apocalypse

• Act 2: What Makes a Pinball Table Special in 2026?

• Patreon Bonus: Adapting Pokémon into a Pinball Table

• Act 3: The News of the Week

Guests:

• Seth Davis: President and CEO, Stern Pinball

• Lewis Gordon: Reporter and Critic

• Closing Song: “A Musical Tale” by bermei.inazawa (Chicory: A Musical Tale)

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Image: Pinball at some bar in the early 2010s via Plante

Act 1: How Stern Survived the Pinball Apocalypse

• The History of Stern Pinball (Stern Pinball)

• For a Pinball Survivor, the Game Isn’t Over (NYTimes)

• Pinball losing its ping and zing of storied past (Chicago Tribune)

• No Place like Jersey: Inside the factory of the wizard of pinball (Polygon)

• Pinball Expo (pinballexpo.com)

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Image: Jaws Pinball

Act 2: What Makes a Pinball Table Special in 2026?

• STERN PINBALL ANNOUNCES HIRING OF NEW PRESIDENT (Stern Pinball)

• Jersey Jack Pinball: The Pinball of Oz (Polygon)

• This Wrestlemania pinball machine is Stern’s newest, most technologically advanced table (2015) (The Verge)

• The Best Pinball Machines of 2025 Ranked (Kineticist)

• Pinball Top 100 (Pinside)

• What is Stern Pinball’s ‘Insider Connected’ Feature? (Liberty Games)

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Patreon Bonus: Adapting Pokémon into a Pinball Table

• Pokémon Pinball (Stern Pinball)

• Pokémon by Stern Pinball Game Trailer (YouTube)

• Pokémon by Stern Pinball Live Gameplay Premiere (YouTube)

• Pokémon Pinball for Game Boy Color (Bulbapedia)

• Pokémon Pinball is Finally Here and It’s Not What I Expected (RetroRalph)

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Image: Crimson Desert

Act 3: News of the Week

• Crimson Desert review - it’s a bit like prestige Candy Crush (Eurogamer)

• After K-Pop and K-Drama, Here Come K-Games (NYTimes)

• Crimson Desert reviews suggest Skyrim is safe for now (Polygon)

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Image: Pokopia via Mothership

This Week in Video Game Links

• What happens when all the Pokémon fans are dead? (New piece by me at Mothership)

• How Outersloth’s investment fund contracts upend the status quo for indie developers (Mothership)

• Nvidia’s DLSS 5 is like motion smoothing for video games, but worse (The Verge)

• Marathon is a satire (ReaderGrev)

• I’ve Killed Runners (Ed Smith on Google Docs)

• Paranormasight series director Ishiyama & producer Oushu speak on how The Mermaid’s Curse was created. (RPGSite)

• Funi Raccoon Game Is Queer, Funny, And Irish (Aftermath)

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Free Game of the Week: The Ratline demo

Owlskip Games consistently publishes some of the most interesting narrative deductive games on Steam. The latest game has one hell of a pitch: “A murdered priest. A secret list. Hunt Nazi fugitives across the globe in this gritty 1971 detective thriller. Analyze evidence, follow leads, and make sharp deductions before the trail goes cold. From the creators of Family, Rivals, Conspiracy, Echo Beach and Riley & Rochelle.” (Steam)

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Image: Wallace and Gromit

What Else I’m Enjoying

• What Actually Happened to the Clay Behind ‘Wallace & Gromit’? (WSJ)

• Against Rigour (Will Sloan)

• Love in the Time of A.I. Companions (New Yorker)

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Image: Chicory: A Musical Tale

Song of the Week: “A Musical Tale” by bermei.inazawa (Chicory: A Musical Tale)

• Available on Bandcamp

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Image: Murder at the Birch Tree Theater

PSA: Murder at the Birch Tree Theater Released on Steam!

In August, I interviewed musical composer, orchestrator, lyricist, conductor, and musician Mike Pettry about his first video game. Murder at the Birch Tree Theater splices Golden Idol deduction with community theater drama. The demo has been available for a while, but now you can play the full game on Steam! (Steam)

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