I totally miss pinball--but I disagree with Choggie's implication that it's just about nostagia. Now that we all have decent computers/game consoles, I figure it's coin-operated video games that are obsolete, but not so for pinball, which doesn't translate well to video. Pinball is great because it's there, physically. You can bump it, press it and feel the vibrations of the ball and bumpers. I think that's why "fusball" kept going strong before, during and after the "video-game arcade revolution". Of these, the pinball games with all of their fiddly moving parts, must be the most expensive to maintain, which is probably also a big component of their doom. Personally, I'd refuse to play a pinball game if as many as one single feature could be seen as not working (unless of course it turned out for the player's advantage--but it almost never does).

I remember when those "holographic" types of games mentioned in this video showed up (I've tried both "Mars Attacks", seen here, and "Star Wars, Episode I"--both are lame). My first thought after playing one: "this is the end of pinball". Already, new/working machines were rare and these were an obvious last-chance try at getting back into the game. Trouble is, all they are is a crappy pinball game combined with a crappy video game--i.e., crap squared.