A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Roger Sharpe’s landmark publication “Pinball!” and wondered aloud if the recent Pinball Magazine publication of Santiago Ciuffo’s book “Pinball” would serve as a companion piece to Sharpe’s book or run in a completely different direction. I’m happy to report, it does both.
The goods arrived from the Netherlands, packaged superbly in reinforced cardboard. The mail carriers would’ve had to work extra hard to inflict damage upon it. The cover price of €30.95 (plus shipping from Europe) is admittedly quite rich, but you are getting a professionally printed, tightly bound hardcover coffee table book in return. Typically, photography books such as this tend to skew on the expensive side, so perspective is everything here. If you have ordered an issue of Pinball Magazine from their site, you are already familiar with the costly cover price, but also the suburb product Jonathan Joosten and the Pinball Magazine staff have to offer. My hat is off to Mr. Joosten, for without his dedication to the project and securing the international rights to publish this book, it probably would not have seen the light of day outside its native Argentina. Packaged with Ciuffo’s book is a supplement under the Pinball Magazine banner that 
features an interview with the photographer (in 12 languages) and contains photos that are exclusive to the supplement and not found in the bound publication. As a bonus to early adopters, the first five hundred books ordered also include a set of ten postcards featuring exquisite photos from Ciuffo’s image bank. This postcard set is absolutely suitable for framing, as the quality is akin to something you’d find in a museum gift shop. My book came with a set of these postcards, so as of writing, we are still within the “first five hundred” quota.
Whereas Roger Sharpe and photographer James Hamilton presented pinball as a global phenomenon (and it needed to be presented that way, as nobody had bothered to organize the game in such a historical framework prior), Mr. Ciuffo presents pinball as a national phenomenon in his home country of Argentina. For North Americans, and many Europeans, this is a unique and fresh look at the game, both historically and culturally. Mr. Sharpe punctuated Mr. Hamilton’s photos with an outpouring of love for the game; Mr. Ciuffo lets his pictures do the majority of the talking. Other than a brief introduction and a few end notes, the book is packed with nearly 200 pages of incredible pinball photography.
The written word is not needed for the most part. The games themselves tell the story. I would surmise that the target audience of this book will already be familiar with the majority of the games photographed, which reduces the need for descriptions or footnotes. During the three language introduction, Mr. Ciuffo teases the reader by including black and white images of the games we love. Page after page is devoid of colour, until your visual sense is overwhelmed with the bright colours of a Bally bingo game called Variety. From there on out, the colours and visual textures of the machines in their natural environment are on full display. Many of the machines are worn, beaten or otherwise blown out. Other photographers would have balked at the chance to photograph a severely cracked and worn Gottlieb Charlie’s Angles backglass, but Mr. Ciuffo did not. To me, this is the book’s most gorgeous photo, and conveys, without words, the Argentinean aura of pinball that Mr. Ciuffo was trying to capture. In a hobby where collectors are obsessed with the terms “completely restored” and “collector’s quality”, it is refreshing to see that well-loved and well-used games are getting their due. Mr. Ciuffo would probably have a hard time tracking down expertly restored games to photograph on Argentinean soil (compared to their abundance in America), but something tells me that wasn’t what the photographer was after anyhow. There is also a fantastic photo of a completely blown out Stern Nine Ball playfield, worn to the wood, that is unrecognizable save for the mylar’d portions of paint in front of the vertical drop targets.
Image from http://www.pinball-magazine.com
Most of the games photographed are from the 1960s through the early-1980s (historical factors are discussed in the intro to the book as to why these games are prevalent), with a few of the earlier bingo-style pin games thrown in for good measure. Late solid state games do make cameo appearances though–I spotted a Fish Tales, a Hurricane and a Lethal Weapon 3 in the background of some photos, but they are surely not the focus here. Half the fun is picking out the games lurking in the shadows, whether they be complete or in parts. Many photos capture the less-than-perfect machines in their natural Argentinean environment, packed into storage sheds or piled high in humid warehouses waiting for a former operator to part them out. The games are not the only focus, though. One fantastic two-page spread shows members of a Buenos Aires pinball club huddled around a topless Medieval Madness, talking repair strategy, while meat roasts on a nearby outdoor grill. This photo, in conjunction with the aforementioned Angels backglass and Nine Ball playfield, capture the current state of the hobby in Argentina–passion for the game fuelled by a kinship that exists between fellow collectors, while simultaneously existing within less than perfect, sometimes downright ugly, collecting conditions. We North Americans take a lot for granted, as these pictures portray, however pinball comradery appears to be universal (and is probably stronger under trying and challenging circumstances).
Hopefully this book is met with success. It really deserves it. And hopefully more books follow in the same vein. We have all seen these games before at shows or in our own private collections, but when was the last time you looked at, I mean really looked at, the playfield art of a Gottlieb Roller Disco? Mr. Ciuffo included a two-page spread of a detail close-up, with its almost blinding pinks, oranges and purples, and it highlights the absolute beauty of Gordon Morison’s original artwork. The success of this book will probably foretell the possibility of future projects, but this book really begs for other photographers to capture the games and players in their own nation, and create a pictorial history of their own country. I mean, how does a coffee table book of pinball photography, from special pinball events and notable private collections around the United States, not exist yet? Someone needs to quit their day job and get on this! Gene X. Hwang, are you reading this? Jonathan Joosten, can you please make it happen? However, it will not be an easy task, as Mr. Ciuffo has set the bar quite high under an optimal set of cultural circumstances. The photographer can be absolutely proud of what he has accomplished and bestowed upon the pinball community.
Image from http://www.pinball-magazine.com
If you are still reading this, I believe it is time for you to head over to Pinball Magazine’s webstore site and order Santiago Ciuffo’s book for yourself…if you have the funds at your disposal. The price, again, is the only stumbling block, however, a project like this cannot be successful if done on the cheap. The book is museum quality, and the quality of the contents cannot be beat. Mr. Ciuffo’s book will be placed next to my copy of the Sharpe/Hamilton tome on my gameroom bookshelf–a higher honour cannot be bestowed. I will be taking it out frequently and letting my mind wander off to a musty, humid old Argentinean warehouse where an old man has Stern and Bally pins stacked to the rafters…
Who among us has a deep appreciation for Gottlieb System 1 games? I mean, a real appreciation. A basement full of appreciation. Countless are the collectors who have a wide assortment of early Stern games, and I can name a few people in my circle of collectors who pride themselves on having multiple examples of Gottlieb wedgehead EMs amongst their prized pinball possessions. But where are all the Gottleib System 1s? The same could be asked about System 1’s big brother, the Gottlieb System 80, but with a strong representation from Black Hole and Haunted House in that operating system, their numbers are more robust and examples easier to find. The System 1 was trouble from its inception, and the Gottlieb Co. did itself no favours along the way to alleviate it. Once a mighty giant of the industry, the System 1 experiment was the first move in a convoluted series of events that knocked Gottlieb from its throne, and ultimately began its long, slow demise. History has not been kind to the System 1 platform, and those difficulties only quantified as time marched forward, and pinball machines marched from the confines of the arcade to the privacy of our homes.
Another downfall, not tech related, would be the lack of licencing. Bally had the likes of Ann Margaret, Elton John, Bobby Orr, Evel Kinevel and the Six Million Dollar Man as a part of their pinball stable before Gottlieb even began to venture into viable licences. Their early System 1 games harken back to popular wedgehead themes that were recycled ad nauseam—generic sports, historical time periods, card games, and sci-fi absurdity. Moving forward into the 1980s, Bally kept it current and cool with the Harlem Globetrotters and the Rolling Stones, while Gottlieb used limited licencing, choosing to continue the EM tradition. Thus, we were met with futuristic bucking broncos and girls with big hips in joker costumes.
To complicate issues, Gottlieb’s foray into Solid State coincided with their buy-out by the Columbia Pictures corporation. I’m sure the merger with the massive entertainment corporation based on opposite ends of the country (New York and LA–Chicago left in no-man’s land in the middle) only furthered Gottlieb’s lack of direction and corner cutting approach to building machines. It speaks volumes that the once iconic Gottlieb logo was slowly swallowed up by the image of the Columbia “rising torch”. It boggles my mind that Columbia, rich in potential music, television and film licences, waited as long as they did to push crossover licences onto Gottlieb pinball machines. When they eventually did, it was nowhere the pace set by Bally. The bottom line here is that Gottlieb now had to march in line with a coastal, multi-faceted, entertainment-driven corporate agenda, rather than a corporate family philosophy that had been previously driven by one thing: making a profit by building great pinball machines.
There is certainly a leftover wedgehead “vibe” to these early System 1 games and for that reason you’d think they would be more popular with collectors as Gottlieb wedgeheads are top of the heap when it comes to Electromechanical style and substance. However, collectors and techs alike seem to steer away from this era of Solid State game due to various technical and mechanical issues that include, but are not limited to: 1) a hellish CPU mounted, fixed battery, that if not removed will obviously corrode and deteriorate the board and connections, 2) edge connectors, that are probably the only connection style more unreliable than the Williams IDC that everyone gripes about, 3) the nearly non-existent and difficult to navigate self test procedures, 4) grounding issues that were present right out of the factory, 5) availability of parts, and 6) cost of replacement parts.
I say “large numbers” above, but it is all relative…Gottlieb System 1 production numbers could be dismissed as minuscule compared to the massive production runs of Williams games from the same era. Gorgar, Flash, Black Knight and Firepower all eclipsed the 14,000 unit mark individually. Gottlieb released an impressive number of different titles per year (five in 1978, six in 1979) with respectable production runs, whereas Willaims seemed to craft one big hit (more often than not it was Steve Ritchie doing the crafting) and built it in prolific numbers…on a more reliable operating system at that. You can kind of follow the numbers here, and see how Williams carried pinball into the 1980s and 1990s while Gottlieb limped to their eventual demise. There seems to be an endless supply of Flash and Firepower units on Craigslist…the same cannot be said about Count-Down or Solar Ride. Operators perhaps didn’t have the patience or parts to prepare the Gottlieb games for the home market when their days of earning were through.
The entire System 1 boardset is readily available from aftermarket manufacturers like 
I would not mind taking a crack at restoring one of these games myself, however their reputation of being bottomless money pits, accompanied by countless stories of collectors chasing ghosts in their machines, have me a bit worried, much like the majority of the collecting community. One overall saving grace is that the art on these games is superb. They are absolutely stunning to behold, as I stated when I reviewed a System 1 game, Cleopatra, earlier in the month. I think Totem holds claim to having one of the greatest art packages of this period, and even though Gottlieb was quite late to the party in the licencing arena, licences don’t get much better, for me, than Charlie’s Angles (even without Farrah). Sure Williams was doing volume during this era, but their art could not match that of Gottlieb workhorse 
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