Ontario man takes love for restoring pinball machines to the next level

As a child, Nick Angel couldn't get enough of playing arcade games.

"I promised myself when I got my first house, I would get an arcade machine of my very own," he said.

That's exactly what the Georgetown, Ont. resident did.

As soon as Angel became a homeowner, he headed to an auction to purchase an old Star Wars arcade game. "And then suddenly, I had 20," he said.

While he initially acquired classic video game machines such as Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, it didn't take long before the collector began purchasing pinball machines at auction. In 1996, he obtained a two-year-old Twilight Zone-themed pinball machine.

"It had a hundred things wrong with it, which was typical of games in the auctions back then," said Angel. 

But that machine became the catalyst for Angel's repair hobby. With the help of the internet, he learned how to not only repair the machine but to make it even better than when it was brand new.

Now, with nearly 60 games filling his basement, the self-proclaimed "pinball addict" has turned his decades of knowledge into a business.

"There's a lot of broken ones out there," he said. "We're going to help people fix them all."