The past two weeks a lot of work has been done, and as a result the first issue of Pinball Magazine has been put to bed and sent off to the printer!

 

Now that the issue is complete we can be a little more specific about its content. The preview magazine mentioned that the Roger Sharpe interview would be forty pages, but that was just a rough estimate because the last revisions by Roger himself had yet to come in. Once these had arrived the final layout was set up. When all the photos and other pictures had been put in, the interview stretched to fifty six pages. That’s not counting the pages with images only, or the  “Others about Roger” pages. So, in total, the entire Roger Sharpe section now covers over seventy five fascinating pages.

 

Roger talks about a wide range of pinball-related topics, from his pinball-deprived childhood to his latest pinball  design – The Muppets Haunted House Adventure – which dates from 2000. He shares his ideas about how operators  could embrace  pinball machines, he talks about marketing, licensing and pinball leagues, and much, much more. To sum it up: it’s a must read for anyone interested in the world of pinball.

 

And, yes, there’s more: there are articles about the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA), online pinball community Pinside.com and the Pacific Pinball Museum, and I have included a bonus feature about specialty collectors. For this issue it seemed appropriate to talk briefly to Jeremy Fleitz, the world’s premier collector of Game Plan pinball machines.

 

So while the original plan was to do a minimum of sixty eight pages, that number kept on growing and growing. In the end the magazine weighed in at a pinball-packed one hundred and twelve pages! When I thumbed through the issue I seriously considered adopting a tagline like “It’s a magazine that thinks it’s a book.”

 

Anyway, with the magazine being printed we’re right on schedule to have the first issue available at the UK Pinball Party in Daventry on August 17-19. Straight after that the pre-ordered copies will be send out,  so if you haven’t put your order in yet then there is still time to do so.  Once the initial batch of magazines has sent out, the plan is to send out new batches on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

 

This news was first sent out via the Pinball Magazine Newsletter. Did you already subscribe?