The Pinball Compendium are a series of wonderful books about pinball machines. The author, Michael Shalhoub, made a book for every era of pinball history.
My favorite in the series is The Pinball Compendium 1982 to the Present. As the title would indicate, this covers pinball machines from the solid-state era right up to the machines made in the past few years.
This is my favorite era of pinball, but whatever your preferred era, Shalhoub has your covered.
There is a brand new edition of 1982 to the Present book coming soon. You can pre-order it. This will update the book to cover games from 2005 and beyond.
The obvious benefit is newer games such as Iron Man can be included in the mix. But also the original edition was out of print and only available used at much more than it cost new.
The great thing about all of these books is that the author made contact with the designers, technicians, and managers who actually worked on the games. This gives you the inside scoop on how these classics came to be.
You can gain some interesting insights about the games this way and there are some engaging stories here.
The books are also riddled with great photography all around.
These are easily my most treasured pinball books. The Complete Pinball Book is wonderful, but the Compendium books give you more in depth coverage.
Additionally they are special because the books cover nearly every game made — not just the most popular or groundbreaking pinball machines.
For More Information:
- The Pinball Compendium 1982 to the Present
- The Pinball Compendium: 1970-1981
- Pinball Compendium: The Electro-Mechanical Era
- The Pinball Compendium, 1930s-1960s
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