WHEN MOST people think of pinball, if they think of it at all, they probably imagine an old, unloved machine, starved of coins and gathering dust in the back of a bar or pizza parlour as its lights ...

At the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, the first blinking, brightly lit machine to catch my eye is “El Dorado,” a 1970s-era game, replete with bucking horses and cowboys, that once made an ...