Grandad dubbed 'Dr Pinball' with a four year waiting list to repair machines

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A grandad dubbed 'Dr Pinball' says the retro games are beoming so popular that he has a four-and-a-half year waiting list to fix the machines.  Mark Squires, 64, founded The Pinball Surgery where he repairs, renovates and services the retro games and said many are returning to play to "relive their youth".  His business has become so popular he has fixed more than 500 machines and owned around 180 himself.

Transcript

00:00I'm Dr Pimble, they called me that because after my apprenticeship in electronics when I was about

00:0516-17 years old I earned extra money repairing pinball machines in arcades at the coast,

00:11but I kept my brown jacket on that I used to wear in the factory to keep my clothes clean

00:15and walking in with that on and a set of test leads around my neck I somehow picked up the

00:19nickname Dr Pimble. I went through what most people do as they get older, family and all the

00:24rest of it and then about 20 years ago I went to see a customer of mine and in the corner of his

00:30room was a broken pinball machine and I remarked I used to repair them and ended up taking it home

00:35in the back of the car and that sent me back down the rabbit hole and I've been kind of running

00:40pinball repairs ever since and somehow it's grown into what we call now the pinball surgery.

00:46The number of machines I've fixed, well several hundred in different people's houses

00:51and I've owned almost 180-200 machines of my own so it's got to be around about 500 machines

00:57one way or the other. Pimble's making a comeback because it's a very social thing. Although people

01:03do sit around and play these on their own they tend to be a family game and they also are very

01:08heavy to move around so it's easy to go to somebody else's to do something different or go to a club

01:13where there are other things and let's face it these tables started life in coffee bars

01:18and student union bars where people used to literally play them while they waited for their

01:22friends to arrive and then when their friends did they turned into a kind of beer mat table

01:26or coffee table. I'm often asked if there's a machine I haven't been able to repair

01:31and the truthful answer is that pinballs are rather like cars. As they get older the parts get

01:36harder to get hold of but these days we have the luxury of being able to fabricate in plastic using

01:423D printing and there are plenty of small engineering companies so it's not a question

01:47of whether you can fix it or not it's a question of how long do you want to spend going to all the

01:52trouble of fabricating the parts to get them working. Some are more modern some are older

01:57but if I had to be pinned down it would probably be the 90s machine Medieval Madness by Williams.

02:03It's a great favourite of mine because it has a very python-esque theme and a lot of very silly

02:07call-outs and sound effects. I've had people who really want to spend money to get a machine back

02:15to better than factory condition and the reason is that it means something to them.

02:21They've either proposed their wife over that machine in an arcade years ago and found it again

02:25or that machine was in their student union bar or their rugby club or the coffee shop that was just

02:30down the road and means something to them. There's a big retro vibe going on at the moment which is

02:34driving pinball uptake and I think that type of thing for some people particularly whose children

02:41have grown up and left home and left them with a free space for a pinball machine

02:45has kind of brought them into it.

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