Customer Reviews

Bally Bingo Pinball Machines (Schiffer Book for Collectors)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book with beautiful photography that explains a lost colorful segment of Americana. The author has done a loving and thorough job of research.

The only difficulty, and it doesn't detract much, is that the writing style assumes a bit of familiarity with these machines so if you're new at it, as I was, it takes a bit of time to understand some of the detail available, and the author goes into ALOT of detail about the various machines. So, it's an enjoyable read like a delicious super-rich dessert -- you'll enjoy it, but you have to read it slowly.

On the other hand, you can just skim the beautiful photos whenever you want to be taken back to a bygone era.

The book has the best of intentions, like many hobbyist titles that Schiffer produce for electronic games, but the production is average at best and I'm getting a little sick of buying title after title of their's and receiving the same thing. Poor quality photos, sourced from all sorts of amateurs, and text that is so personally anecdotal as to be almost totally obscure, means the content of the book is only of interest to the most myopic of pinball fans.

I like Bingo machines, and would love to read a good thorough history of their production across the years, but this book is not the title I require. Instead, you'll read page after drawn out page about how to *play* these antique titles - what to look for to gain maximum scores and how the colour wheels are arranged for each. Honestly, one brief chapter on scoring would have sufficed. Instead, you'll endure 160 pages of it.

The history is basically missing, there are no interviews with anyone from the industry involved, the human interest around these unique machines is entirely absent therefore, and the illustrations are at best, amatuer. Honestly - my Mum takes better photos than these.

Skip it. A dissapointing title in a really narrow field. We deserve, and the genre to which these machine belong, deserve a better effort.

This book is a history of Bally Bingo Pinball and covers each type of machine from the 6 cards to the 20 hole models and even goes as far as basic troubleshooting and repair tips at the end of the book. If you have a machine or just remember playing them years ago, this book is for you.