I wouldn't expect anyone in their 20s to buy a pin for home use. I may be London biased here, as I know it's different in other parts of the UK, but most young people in London simply don't have the physical *space* for a pin - even if they could pick up a cheeky EM for a few hundred.
Okay. I keep mentioning this, but I never went to arcades growing up. Or, at least, I have a couple of faint memories of going to a seaside arcade in Scarborough with my uncle and playing on slot machines - but I don't think that's what you're thinking about. My entire childhood experience with pinball was a Tomy Astroshooter Pinball. I spent hours playing it, even though - returning to it as an adult - it's an unfair drain monster. The only other place that anyone in our family has played pinball is motorway service stations. Lethal Weapon and Terminator were apparently very common in service stations in the late 90s.
Our decision to buy a pin (and now two pins) was shaped by my memories of Tomy Astroshooter Pinball and the fact that we had already decided to turn part of our house into a games room to accommodate our board games. I'd had this vague idea of having some kind of arcade machine and it became obvious, thinking about it, that I was thinking of a full-sized version of my Astroshooter Pinball. We then investigated pins and experimentally bought a Fish Tales during lockdown. We've subsequently bought a LoTR and are considering a Stern Godzilla, mostly TBH, because it became so popular with our older boy.
But you're assuming that online pinball doesn't exist. I chose Fish Tales based on the Williams app on iOS. I'd already played it about 1,000 times before we bought a physical version. It was the cheapest fun pin from the app IMO, but I was still worried - at the time of purchase - that it would be a terrible mistake because I'd hate a pin in real life.
I think Stern is missing a massive source of revenue by not digitising their modern machines. Most of my favourite pins are 90s era and earlier because that's what I get to play the most online. There are pins I desperately want to play in real life where there are simply not physical versions on public access anywhere, to my knowledge, in Europe. Other pins, I've been using the Pinside Map to hunt for a physical version.
That is such a shame
My four year old can wax lyrical about his favourite pins (currently Godzilla, unfortunately) and my 20 month old can not only say 'plu-nge' (it's very sweet) and 'pinball' (pronounced 'Pin-Bo'), but he can just about launch a ball from Lord of the Rings. In fact, he loves plunging and his favourite activities is running madly between Fish Tales and Lord of the Rings, plunging a ball, letting it drain, and then running back to launch a new ball - while yelling "PLUNGE". Both my boys have access to iPads and enjoy watching CBeebies/playing computer games, including online pinball, but they prefer the physical pins.
, but interesting that the mechs are the same, didn’t realise that
