Pinball has had a pretty interesting hacker-y sort of space for years, so I'm glad to hear this. I remember going to a few conventions pre-covid where enthusia

Pinball has had a pretty interesting hacker-y sort of space for years, so I'm glad to hear this. I remember going to a few conventions pre-covid where enthusiasts would bring out their machines, often so old that they had to be completely restored under the hood, and there's a surprising amount of complexity that goes into them. Even simple games need each and every bumper to be wired up without obstructing the other parts and maintained such that they work every time. A player will notice when a bumper doesn't go off even once. More complex games that do fancier things with the ball need all kinds of interesting physical mechanisms to do so. Many games have multiball mechanics and there are multiple novel ways to tuck those balls into the board and route them back up after they fall out of play. I suppose it's sort of a weird middle ground between watchmaking and car repair. Would love to see more novel ideas enter this space if it really is picking up again as the article says.