After more than two years of work that included research trips to Peru, Chile and Poland, Michael Thomasson has released his latest book, “Pinball Pin-ups: A Visual Celebration of Pinball Art.” Thomasson is a historian and teacher who is best known for his work on video game history, a career that has seen him on an MTV program, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Good Morning America, in The Guinness World Book of Records and even to Springville, where he worked at GameStop for many years. He said that one of the reasons he wanted to write about pinball is because he had mastered many of the games he has written about in the past, something you are unable to do with pinball. “Pinball every time you play it is different. You think you’ve mastered it and it humbles you,” he said. “It doesn’t get boring. There is always new life to them.”
Michael Thomasson poses with his book with Roger Sharpe, a pinball player credited with getting the pinball ban lifted by proving it is a game of skill and not chance.
More importantly, he wrote the book to archive the art of pinball machines, explaining that because of the lights used in the machines, most of the artwork is damaged over time. That, combined with the fact that many early pinball artists were never credited for the work, and how few of each machine were produced, it’s possible that a lot of pinball art will disappear before being archived. He said “Traditionally, you think of artwork as sculpture and classical paintings and such, but just because it is a form of entertainment and not something you see in a museum, doesn’t mean it isn’t a type of art.” To achieve this, Thomasson visited pinball halls and had permission to dim the lights and remove the glass to photograph the machines. He then had to spend hours editing out the cracks in the images, spending over 932 hours on layout alone for the book.
The book also gets into the strange history of pinball, and how technically the game is still illegal in many places across the United States due to its association with gambling and the mob. He said that while it started out as an art book, it became more of a trivia book.
Thomasson recently spoke at Pinball Expo in Chicago, where he gave a speech with famous pinball artist Doug Watson, who wrote the foreword to the book. At the expo, Thomasson sold all 100 of his advanced copies in just a day and a half. Currently the book is available for purchase through his website Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This March he will have a booth and speak at the Augusta Video Gaming Expo in Georgia.
For announcements on his upcoming appearance or to book him for events, he can be reached through the Facebook group he runs “Good Deal Games & Homebrew Heaven.”
He currently has two books in the works, including a follow-up to Pinball Pin-ups, but due to how long the research takes, it won’t be released for years. Readers impatient for more from Thomasson, can read his two previous books “Downright Despicable Games: Video Games that Triggered Rants, Rage, Dissent and a Whole Lot of Hullabaloo” and “Downright Bizarre Games: Video Games that Crossed the Line.” Both are available on his website.
