Welcome to 2025, the 50th year RePlay has been in business. It’s not our 50th birthday…that comes in October when the magazine was first incorporated (and when we’ll do a special section on this publication which has dominated my 85 years on earth).
The history of the magazine is very much like the history of the industry it has covered in terms of manufacturing (we’ve gone from photo offset to digital while coin-op has traveled from electro-mechanical to solid state electronic games). A long but fascinating journey for both.
While our original readership was dominated by route operators who ran jukeboxes, pool tables, pinballs and cigarette machines in beer bars and restaurants, today’s readership is liberally infused with game room folks. Our principal focus, however, has always been on the machines themselves. New products came in, like electronic darts for the routes while simulators showed up for the arcades. But the biggest “disrupter” in coin-op history was the video game.
Once called the “jukebox business” it became the “video game business.” Now, we use “coin-op” despite the fact that many of our machines run on a cashless system. Most of today’s route operators get their music from the Internet instead of little round records (thanks to TouchTunes). Pool is pool, while today’s pins give new meaning to the phrase “bells and whistles.”
Cranes, once looked upon as gaming, are all over the map now along with other kinds of merchandise dispensers. Clearly, gone are the machines that once ID’d the business to me like Bumper Pool tables, shuffle alleys and cigarettes, along with the laserdisc games and bar-top touchscreen boxes.
From the standpoint of people, I’ve personally known and reported upon hundreds of men and women in both leadership and rank and file positions. Most of my original contacts have passed on, including some I’d made solid friends with like my once-neighbor Al Kress and my favorite mega-operator Sol Tabb. Those from my early days still with us, like some other dudes now living in Florida, please take care of yourselves.
Here now is our new Directory of who’s in the biz, where does he or she work, what do they make or fix and how do I get in touch with them? To any newcomers paging through this issue for the first time, you’ll find a handy reference book to keep on the desk or in the shop. To the veterans, all I can say is “here’s the new one.”
To the long timers, I say “thanks for the memories,” and to everyone, have a prosperous 2025!”