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Pinball Pin-Ups: A Visual Celebration - Pinball Expo 2025 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2025)·video·27m 50s·analyzed·Oct 17, 2025
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TL;DR

Pinball Pin-Ups book launch with Doug Watson on pinball art history and design philosophy.

Summary

Michael Thomason, author of 'Pinball Pin-Ups,' presents his visual celebration book at Pinball Expo 2025 alongside legendary pinball artist Doug Watson. Thomason discusses his 1,488 photographs and extensive research documenting pin-up art across pinball machines from the 1940s-2000s, while Watson reflects on his artistic philosophy, technique, and the collaborative team-based design process that defined Williams pinball games in the 1990s. The conversation covers artistic integrity, playfield design principles, licensing challenges, and the historical role of art in pinball machine appeal.

Key Claims

  • Michael Thomason invested 648 hours of research and 324 hours of writing into the Pinball Pin-Ups book

    high confidence · Thomason directly stated during presentation: '648 hours of research and 324 hours of writing'

  • Thomason photographed 1,488 pinball machines for the book, traveling to South America, Europe, and Poland's Pinball Museum in Krakow

    high confidence · Thomason stated: 'I took 1,488 photographs' and described visiting multiple international locations and Pinball Museum in Krakow

  • Doug Watson claims to have done more unclothed women on pinball games than any other artist in history

    medium confidence · Watson stated: 'I have gone on at this stage of my career, I believe it's still true, to have done more unclothed women on pinball games than any other artist in history'

  • Williams pinball games in the 1990s were created by teams of 5-6 people working in proximity, which was the 'secret sauce' for their quality

    high confidence · Watson explained: 'pinball games are made by teams of people not by individuals...usually about five or six. That's the whole team.'

  • Doug Watson hand-drew all his pinball artwork over his entire career without digital tools, Photoshop, or computers

    high confidence · Watson stated: 'while we were doing it we didn't have the internet we didn't have computers we didn't have photoshop there was nothing digital all the work I did for pinball in my entire career was by hand'

  • Watson convinced Steve Ritchie to let him redesign the Terminator 2 playfield insert layout, establishing Watson's signature playfield design style

    high confidence · Watson described approaching Ritchie's office: 'he was in his office literally with the blueprint of that play field on his desk with the inserts in his hands, laying them out himself. And I said, let me show you something...and that became my style'

  • Watson's design philosophy prioritized player clarity—making playfields immediately readable for shot locations and rules without needing instruction cards

    high confidence · Watson: 'I wanted you to be able to walk up to a play field, take one look as a non-player, and understand completely how you're going to play it...You look at a Doug Watson play field in the 90s and you know exactly where to find the extra ball'

Notable Quotes

  • “I've been doing books for a long time since the 90s...most of them are boring college textbooks and they're black and white with black and white pictures or no pictures at all and they price them at like $180 to $220 and I don't know who buys them but libraries”

    Michael Thomason@ 1:12 — Explains motivation for self-publishing beautiful pinball books instead of traditional academic publishing model

  • “I had a bunch of kids that were thalidomide kids...they had no arms. Their hands were actually on their shoulders. And not long after that, we got a pinball machine...we re-engineered it so they could have a button and hold it up on their shoulders and play. And that's when I kind of really started getting into pinball.”

    Michael Thomason@ 2:22 — Personal origin story explaining how adaptive pinball mechanics sparked his lifelong passion for the hobby

  • “I studied pin-up art my entire career. I wanted to make sure that the women I portrayed on my games were beautiful, sexy, tasteful, and not sleazy.”

    Doug Watson@ 6:30 — Watson's artistic philosophy on depicting women in pinball art—distinction between tasteful and exploitative approaches

  • “I have gone on at this stage of my career, I believe it's still true, to have done more unclothed women on pinball games than any other artist in history.”

    Doug Watson@ 7:06 — Watson's claim about his historical dominance in pin-up art creation for pinball

  • “pinball games are made by teams of people not by individuals...usually about five or six. That's the whole team. That was the secret sauce that made those Williams games in the 90s as good as they were.”

    Doug Watson@ 15:33 — Critique of modern pinball development praising 1990s Williams collaborative team-based approach

Entities

Michael ThomasonpersonDoug WatsonpersonSteve RitchiepersonMark RitchiepersonRoger SharppersonChris GrannerpersonScott Slomianiperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo 2025 featured dedicated presentation on pinball art history and book launch; indicates community values art and design history discussion as conference content

    high · Michael Thomason and Doug Watson scheduled for formal presentation slot at Pinball Expo 2025

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong nostalgia in pinball community for 1990s Williams collaborative design era; positioned as superior to modern manufacturing approaches in terms of quality and innovation

    high · Watson repeated emphasis on team-based approach and dot matrix animation quality of that era; audience receptive to this framing

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Watson criticizes many pinball machines for poor playfield layout that obscures rules and shot locations from new players—reflects ongoing design philosophy tension between aesthetics and usability

    high · Watson: 'Anybody ever walk up to a pinball game and have any idea how not to play it? It's completely confusing oftentimes. When the artwork does not help you understand the rules.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Doug Watson's playfield design philosophy prioritized functional clarity (helping players understand shots/rules) over aesthetic complexity—contrary to trend of busy playfield art

    high · Watson: 'The play field should be about helping the player play it. That's the top priority...I didn't throw extraneous illustration in there to make it busy or to make it complex.'

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball Pin-Ups book frames pin-up imagery as important historical art documenting design evolution and cultural context rather than exploitation—positioning comprehensive documentation as scholarly responsibility

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.083

0:00
Seriously, thank you for coming. I'm Michael Thomason. I'm the author of the book. This is Doug Watson. He doesn't need an introduction. He did the artwork for so many great games. You can rattle them off if you want to, Doug. No, I can't.
0:16
Okay, well, you can look it up or Google it, but there's a whole list. It's fantastic stuff. A lot of it's covered in the book.
0:27
You all know him. You probably don't know me. I'm more known in the video game world than I know in the pinball world. That's sometimes a bad thing because we all know what games did to the pinball industry back in the day. Fortunately, it recovered. But my goal was to make the most beautiful pinball book ever. And there aren't a lot of pinball books, and there's never been a pinball book done by an artist. I used to be a 3D animator, a senior animator for two firms. I teach classes. And so that's what I set out to do. I've been doing books for a long time since the 90s this is the book we're talking about is Pinball Pinups and Doug did the forward for it it's my 14th or 15th book most of them are boring college textbooks and they're black and white with black and white pictures or no pictures at all and they price them at like $180 to $220 and I don't know who buys them but libraries and they go up in the stacks and no one goes to libraries anymore so So I decided I wanted people to read my books, so I started doing self-publishing, and then I had full control, and I could make them very beautiful, right? So that's what I started to do. But a few stories first about how I got into pinball. In 1988, I was working for a group called the Bluegrass Electronics Center, and they were a service organization, and we would take devices and toys and electronics and engineer them so disabled kids could play with them. and I would reprogram the video games, make them play slower, give them infinite lives, that type of stuff. But at one point, we had a bunch of kids that were thalidomide kids, which that was a drug that pregnant parents' mothers took in the 60s, and they were born with defects. And the ones that we had, we had two of them amongst us where they had no arms. Their hands were actually on their shoulders.

  • Attack from Mars featured a model with reddish hair from Williams' front office in 1995, dressed in a Marilyn Monroe costume renting from a Chicago costume shop

    high confidence · Watson recounted: 'There was a lovely lady with very long reddish hair who worked in the front office at Williams in 1995...she was gracious enough to say, yeah, I'll model for you. So I took her to a Chicago costume shop'

  • Only one Penthouse pinball machine was made—created for the magazine's office, making it unusually rare

    high confidence · Thomason stated: 'There's only one penthouse, and it was made for the magazine for their office. So that's an unusual'

  • Thomason used AI for only two images in the book: one for a bio and one for a 'Pinball Heaven' page at the end featuring saints playing pinball

    high confidence · Thomason: 'I only used AI for two images. One for his bio...The other page, it's right at the end of the book. I call it pinball heaven'

  • “While we were doing it we didn't have the internet we didn't have computers we didn't have photoshop there was nothing digital all the work I did for pinball in my entire career was by hand.”

    Doug Watson@ 11:26 — Watson's career entirely pre-digital, emphasizing hand-drawn artwork as fundamental to his artistic practice

  • “I wanted you to be able to walk up to a play field, take one look as a non-player, and understand completely how you're going to play it. You don't need to read a card. You don't need to have the dot matrix explained it.”

    Doug Watson@ 24:29 — Core design philosophy: playfield art should communicate rules and shot locations intuitively to new players

  • “The play field should be about helping the player play it. That's the top priority. Looking cool, being colorful, being all the other things you want a play field to be. After that, wonderful.”

    Doug Watson@ 25:31 — Watson's hierarchy of playfield design priorities—functionality first, aesthetics second

  • “I am a reporter I am a historian I'm a college professor I teach classes about history. This is a historical book and it's a research book. I did not design these games. I am just presenting them, so don't shoot the messenger.”

    Michael Thomason@ 26:31 — Thomason's response to criticism about the book focusing on sexualized imagery—framing it as historical documentation rather than exploitation

  • “My wife says it's sacrilegious and I only used AI for two images...the other page, it's right at the end of the book. I call it pinball heaven, and it's got all the saints and everybody playing pinball.”

    Michael Thomason@ 19:32 — Thomason's limited use of AI in book production and creative vision for 'Pinball Heaven' conceptual page

    • Brian Eddie
    person
    James Cameronperson
    Rob Burkeperson
    Pinball Pin-Upsproduct
    Williams Pinballcompany
    Terminator 2 (pinball)game
    Attack from Marsgame
    Pinbotgame
    Black Knight 2000game
    Penthousegame
    Pinball Museum in Krakoworganization
    Pastimes Arcadeorganization
    Pinball Expo 2025event
    Video Modsproduct
    Bluegrass Electronics Centerorganization
    Guiness Book of World Recordsorganization

    high · Thomason: 'I am a reporter I am a historian...This is a historical book and it's a research book...I am just presenting them, so don't shoot the messenger.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Doug Watson reveals he lobbied Steve Ritchie to work on Terminator 2 despite previous collaboration ending badly on Black Knight 2000; used 'tact and political savvy' to convince Ritchie to let him redesign playfield insert layout

    high · Watson: 'I went to Steve's office, and I used all the tact and political savvy I have ever acquired in my life to convince Steve Ritchie...I convinced him to not only let me be his artist'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Williams 1990s pinball design relied on stable, co-located teams of 5-6 people (designer, programmer, engineer, composer, animators, sculptors) working daily in proximity; Watson contrasts this favorably with modern development

    high · Watson: 'pinball games are made by teams of people...usually about five or six...in proximity to each other all day long, which no longer exists. That was the secret sauce'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Doug Watson's entire career was conducted without digital tools; modern pinball designers now use Photoshop/Affinity extensively, representing fundamental shift in artistic production methods over 30+ years

    high · Watson: 'while we were doing it we didn't have the internet we didn't have computers we didn't have photoshop there was nothing digital all the work I did for pinball in my entire career was by hand'

    • 2:18
    And not long after that, we got a pinball machine, and, of course, they wanted to play it. So we re-engineered it so they could have a button and hold it up on their shoulders and play. And that's when I kind of really started getting into pinball. I always played it as a kid, but it wasn't until I learned that there were rules and a beginning and ending and middle play that I really got pulled into pinball.
    2:40
    I've been writing. I had a column in the newspaper about games, Resonate. I wrote for Classic Gamer, Mansi, Video Game Collector, Hardcore Gamer, Retro over the last 20-something years. About 15 or so years ago, I started writing for Pinball Magazine, just a few articles. And then I've had regular columns in Game Room Magazine when Kevin Steele ran it for years before it folded. And most recently, I've been bringing pinball into Old School Gamer, which is mostly video games. But I have a pinball column, and I try to do more and more of it. You might know me. I had a TV show on MTV in the 90s for two seasons called Video Mods. the gamers hated it, but the music people loved it. I read the forums, but we would take rock videos and rebuild them in 3D animation using 3D assets from video games. And then I got the Guinness Book of World Records for the most games ever. And I sold that long ago, but I'm letting you know that I'm very deep into the game industry, but I love pinball more, right? And I used to be a programmer. I've published over 100 games for Atari Platforms, Sega, GCE, Intellivision, Coleco. And whenever I play a game, I dissect it as a programmer. And because of that, I kind of have an advantage and I'm pretty good at them. And after 40 years and four decades of playing the same games, I'm bored with them. And pinball I love because every time I play it, it's different, right? And once you think you've mastered the machine, you think you're great at it, and then it humbles you, right? So pinball has my attention. I've always took pictures of pinball machines. I'm a little embarrassed to say that when I looked at my pictures, most of them were of the ones with attractive women on it. And then I was at Past Times Arcade, and I saw an old pinball machine called Pinball Pinup, and I'm like, that's what I want to do. I want to do a book of all the beautiful pinball art. And this one's on the feminine form. And don't think it's too sexist, because a lot of these machines are from the 40s and 50s. and when things were still relatively presentable, right? But I traveled the world. I went to all over South America. I went to Europe. I went to the Pinball Museum in Krakow to take these pictures. Over several years, I took 1,488 photographs.
    5:00
    And if you look at the book, it's not just a picture of the back glass or the play field. I actually made montages for every page of all the elements from the inside and out of the book. And I think it's great. I've got good feedback today. I launched it today at the show. And you can look at it after the show, too. I've got slides running on the screen. But it was 648 hours of research and 324 hours of writing. And I thought I was on track until I went to go do the montages. And I realized, well, my photographs were great. And these pinball halls were fantastic. In the back of the book, I list all the halls around the world that I went to take pictures. But like Burke let me in on days that the museum was closed. He gave me keys where I could pull the back glasses off so I could take good photographs without reflections. But what I learned is a lot of these pinball machines, you know, from the 50s. And so they got those bright bulbs behind the back glass and the paint cracks. So when I went to zoom in, I realized, oh, I have to go into Photoshop and repair all of these. so it became a debacle. But it's done. I'm pleased with it. But the real reason you're probably here is to hear some of these stories that Doug can tell you about.
    6:14
    Surprise. I can go on, but... Stories. Sure, I can tell your board out of your minds. Or maybe they have questions, Doug. I was delighted to be approached by Michael who asked me to write the foreword to this book without ever having seen it because, yes, I studied pin-up art my entire career. I wanted to make sure that the women I portrayed on my games were beautiful, sexy, tasteful, and not sleazy. In other words, I wasn't going to be... I don't want to drop any names here.
    6:51
    There were a couple of artists at Bally in the 1970s that I can refer to just like that who did not exactly the most tasteful portrayals of women in their illustration
    7:06
    I have gone on at this stage of my career, I believe it's still true, to have done more unclothed women on pinball games than any other artist in history. and I like the appeal of the pinup as an icon and representative of female appeal and beauty to my mind the way you define what is and isn't pinup art is entirely about the pose the gesture what is that woman doing and how can I portray her in the most beautiful way possible My technique for literally getting away with how many women I put on pinball games was how I portrayed them. Number one, non-human.
    7:55
    I did a lot of alien women, barracora, quicksilver, things like that with distorted skulls and whatnot. Fish women with barracudas growing out of their skulls. robotic women such as Pinbot. Yeah, the Pinbot play field.
    8:20
    John did an excellent back class on it and on the play field I did some of the sexiest robot women I've ever seen in pinball. But that's my opinion. You have your own.
    8:31
    Just delightful. Part of the challenge of working in pinball was that we had a budget that was about that big for professional models. So I exploited employees at Bally. So some of the most famous women I did at Bally were women who I knew who worked in the office, who were willing to pose for me in front of my camera and my lights so I could get the poses right. Same way happened at Williams. I also contacted, in other words, if you remember, I don't know, Attack from Mars. Anybody? that game there's a there's kind of like a classic 50s sci-fi monster with a babe in his arms that was kind of a trope amongst science fiction movie posters in the 1950s and i want to pick up on that and i want to do it in my own style which was aggressive and high impact as much as i can make it so i have seen my attack from mars artwork on hbo on uh lots of different places i've seen it on t-shirts i've seen it been reinterpreted by other artists that's what you get if you live long enough as a pinball artist the homage that other people and other artists wanted to provide to you by saying here's my version of the doug watson yes this or that and the other and oftentimes when they meet me, they're afraid I'll be mad. They'll be pissed off or upset because, wow, I know Doug, you did this originally and I'm doing this version of it. And it's like, please don't beat me up. And I'm like, well, are you kidding me? If you wanted to do your own exploited versions of my artwork I did 40 years ago, knock yourself out. Have fun. This is an industry about people having fun, about the entertainment industry. It's not like I'm out there going, you know, looking through the internet, looking for anybody who's ever had an image based on any of my work that they've used some original purpose for. I don't care. Have fun. All that tells me is I was inspirational to a creative mind who thought that something I did led them to want to create some artwork on their own. I don't know if this audience is aware, but you will find out if you read the book and read the biographies of all the artists who contributed to pinball, who contributed to the artwork that is in Michael's book. He did a lot of research. He talked to all of us. He was as thorough as he could possibly be.
    11:09
    Where was I going? People who want to exploit your work, have fun. if you like the way I draw women great let me know because while we were doing it we didn't have the internet we didn't have computers we didn't have photoshop there was nothing digital all the work I did for pinball in my entire career was by hand so I hand drew everything I did oh I don't know where I was um how in the world did I get the girl in the arms of the martian on Attack from Mars.
    11:47
    There was a lovely lady with very long reddish hair who worked in the front office at Williams in 1995? Yes, 1995. I can't even remember her name. She was gracious enough to say, yeah, I'll model for you. So I took her to a Chicago costume shop and rented for her a Marilyn Monroe dress such as the classic flowing Marilyn Monroe dress from Some Like It Hot where she stands over the grate and it blows up like that. Classic Marilyn. I want her to have my version of the skirt blowing up too without showing anything too much in the arms of a giant, four-armed, intimidating nine-foot-tall Martian who, if you're familiar with the game, are the stupidest, most incompetent planet invaders in the history of anybody who could invade a planet. they're just ridiculous the character of all the martians in the game i was fortunate enough to create by myself so i designed the martians i voiced the martians i wrote a good deal of the script of what the martians did uh brian eddie and i were a terrific creative team on several games that we did together i miss working with them like i miss anything i'm delighted some of You might not know who's in the room with you tonight, but one of the greatest, best, most talented sound people and musical composers to ever work in pinball is sitting right here in the audience, Chris Granner.
    13:24
    I was lucky enough to work in pinball in the era of teams at Williams in the 90s. Today, we don't have that anymore. You may wonder sometimes, why do pinball games look the way they do today? why is it so different for what games look like back in the 90s the reason is you might not know this pinball games are made by teams of people not by individuals the industry is set up to celebrate the designer of the game and to celebrate the designer of the game but the designer of the game does is he makes a white wood and he makes some mechanical things Their contributions after that vary from one person to another in terms of their creative talent. The rest of the team dreams up the theme, dreams up the rules. We've got a programmer, we've got a mechanical engineer, we've got composers like Chris. We have, at that point in time, some of the best dot matrix animators I'd ever seen in the early 90s. Every single game, they got better. I'm talking about guys like Scott Slomiani.
    14:29
    Scott was an absolute dot matrix animation genius. Every game he did was better than the one he did before. Just more and more sophisticated. You couldn't even believe that a dot matrix could even do what Scott could make it do. When that works in conjunction with the programmer for how you learned how to play the game, what the rules are, what you need to do now, what the celebrations are, .matrix was absolutely critical in terms of how fun those games were. just as critical as the rest of the art package, just as critical as how well the mechanicals that the engineers put into the games to make our features work, just as critical as the sculptors who made the features on the play field like the little bouncy green Martians on Mars or Rudy from Funhaus. I could go on and on about the wonderful sculptors sometimes we had working outside. So that's what I'm talking about. The games were made in that classic era not by individuals who can claim credit for this or that, by teams. of people, usually about five or six. That's the whole team. And that team pulled together. We worked together. We were in proximity to each other all day long, which no longer exists. That was the secret sauce that made those Williams games in the 90s as good as they were and still are and why they're still so popular today.
    15:47
    How are we doing? I don't know. 10 minutes? Well, you can go on forever, but this isn't about me. This is about Michael and his book here. Well, I'm writing about people like Doug. I'm just a passionate fan, right, with a talent for design and layout. But there were some other challenges with this book. You know, I'm taking elements from the back glass. I'm taking elements from the play field, sometimes from the cabinet art. And I'm pulling pieces and making them in top montage. So I was trying to pay respect to the original creators because sometimes artists don't like it when you mess with their work, right? And I'm taking things and moving them around. And then I had other challenges. For instance, play fields are very busy, and they have to fit a lot of information on there. I can't tell how many times I'm playing a game, and the call-out says, do this or do that. And I'm trying to look on the table and figure out where I'm supposed to make my shot. And so I find this beautiful character that's on the play field. I go to cut her out in Photoshop and put her in the montage, and I realize, oh, she doesn't have a left leg because there's a bumper there, right? And it looks fine when there's a bumper there, but then when you take it out and you put it to make a montage, all of a sudden you've got this limbless creature, which is very odd. So then I had to find something else to cover where the leg would be. In a few instances, I would actually paint the leg in or whatever is missing, depending on what it is. But then I have the moral problem of if I change too much of the artwork, then I'm altering these great artists' work, right? so it was tricky with the layout and design the way I did it but I wanted to take all the elements from the table and fit it in between a core of a page or two pages so that was a real challenge I can't speak for the other artists whose work is in the book but I had a chance to see it today he was concerned about my reaction like he just said I think Michael's talent in Photoshop does full respect to my work that he put into the book. There's quite a bit of my work in there, thank you very much. And I think that the presentation, the layout, the design, and how you compose each page reflects a lot of effort, several passes done, your best judgment going into it and your Photoshop skills to do exactly what you just described, to replace what wasn't there or what didn't photograph well coming off the original artwork. You made it great. Thank you. I've been using Photoshop since 1.0 and using other programs before that. And actually, I finished the book in Affinity. So if any of you are Photoshop users, I got tired of paying the monthly fee. So I jumped to Affinity. So it was started in Photoshop and ended in Affinity. So I had some software learning and challenges too. But does anybody have any questions for me or Doug? Yes, sir.
    18:41
    There's only one penthouse, and it was made for the magazine for their office. So that's an unusual – but there are a lot – I wanted to pick a lot of pinball machines that aren't the norm that everybody knows. And like at past times, they have a whole column of like 80 international machines, the Zacharias and stuff they brought in from Europe. and then of course I went to Krakow in Poland and I went to France and took a lot of places. In the back of my book I have a page. My wife says it's sacrilegious and I only used AI for two images. One for his bio, which he liked, which I was relieved. I thought when he heard it was AI he would cringe like some people do. But the other page, it's right at the end of the book. I call it pinball heaven, and it's got all the saints and everybody playing pinball. But pinball heaven to me is all these pinball halls that I went to around the world. So I list all the halls and places that I went in South America and in Europe and such on the bottom. Well, I think I left out a few, but it's pretty complete. So, yes, sir. Doug, can I dip a toe into the Ritchie Brothers lore? because as we know, you've worked closely with both Mark and Steve Ritchie in your career. And the differences in the style of artwork on the play field is considerable and has a lot to do with the kinds of things that, you know, Mark might have been influenced by Python in one sense or another, and Steve absolutely would never have been, you know, so influenced in such a way. But I just thought it was interesting at the time that having worked on Terminator 2, for instance, a classic Steve game that I got to, I was privileged to work on as well, thank you and as well as then shortly afterwards Indiana Jones which I also got to work on but a very different kind of an approach and a different kind of thing And then the next game of yours that I just now thinking of is Attack from Mars, as you mentioned, very much more so a Steve-style play field where the lines and the shots are very clearly delineated and the kinds of things that a player wanted to do would be very clear and that was always steve's style but not so much mark style you're saying no you're saying it was doug watson's style say more about that steve had nothing to do with that what you're talking about i stand correct the entire doug watson's style of playfield art was all about making it coherent the way to achieve that was to lay the inserts out myself. Never let the designer lay the inserts out. They're not artists. So Terminator 2, little story here to keep you entertained. We used to get Hollywood scripts into Williams, thanks to Roger Sharp. I read all of them, about a hundred. So about a hundred films that came out in the 90s, I had actually read the screenplays for before they came out, hunting for a good license to make. Then I came across a screenplay about eight o'clock one night that happened to be written by a guy named James Cameron. And I read that and it was the most awesome script I ever read in my life. Terminator 2, the script is identical to what you see in the movie. The story absolutely kicked ass. It was amazing. It was about midnight. I finished that script and I just knew I have to do this game. I don't care what happens. I have to do it. So I went to Roger the next day And I said, I love this. Can we get a hold of the license for this? He says, well, Steve Ritchie already has it. He's got John Yowsey lined up to be his artist. And I went, no, he doesn't.
    22:45
    And I went to Steve's office, and I used all the tact and political savvy I have ever acquired in my life to convince Steve Ritchie, who we weren't even speaking after the last game we did together, which was Black Knight 2000.
    23:04
    We were like this on Black Knight 2000. When that game wrapped up, he didn't want to work with me again. I didn't want to work with him again. Done. Then here's T2. And I'm like, oh, my God, I've already told Steve I don't want to work with him. And I convinced him to not only let me be his artist, But he was in his office literally with the blueprint of that play field on his desk with the inserts in his hands, laying them out himself. And I said, let me show you something.
    23:40
    Let me take a pass at this. And then I laid out the inserts for T2 how I wanted them to go. and it was the first time I had that privilege and that power, particularly with a designer as powerful and influential as Steve, the king at that time, he let me.
    24:00
    And that became my style. Because here's what my goal was on Terminator 2. Anybody ever walk up to a pinball game and have any idea how not to play it? It's completely confusing oftentimes. When the artwork does not help you understand the rules. It may look pretty. It may be colorful. But it doesn't help you play it, does it? I was sick and tired of that because I couldn't understand how to play pinball in the 70s either when I was in college. I wanted you to be able to walk up to a play field, take one look as a non-player, and understand completely how you're going to play it. You don't need to read a card. You don't need to have the dot matrix explained it. You don't need a speech call to tell you how to play it. You look at a Doug Watson play field in the 90s and you know exactly where to find the extra ball, where to lock a ball, where a multi-ball start is, where the bonus multiplier is, where the special is. You learn where those things are in three seconds by looking at one of my play fields. It wasn't about how much artwork I could cram in there. They were actually quite simple. You look at the play field on T2. It's kind of quiet and elegant. I didn't throw extraneous illustration in there to make it busy or to make it complex. I put in just enough illustration to keep it interesting to the eye of the player. And my entire focus was, here's how you play this game. If you like artwork, check out the back glass. It looks cool. The play field should be about helping the player play it. That's the top priority. Looking cool, being colorful, being all the other things you want a play field to be. After that, wonderful.
    25:43
    Top thing. Help the player play. Hi there, Michael. I have a question for you. Who's talking? I am right here. Hello. I just wanted to see you. That's all right. I'll stand up. I'm chatting away here. How many hours did you do in research for your book?
    25:57
    Two. Too much. Just because you quoted that 648. So out of the 648 hours, I'm just curious about how much of that time was used to look at the research, the exploitation of women as pinups in the hobby. and out of those hours I'm also interested if there was any cause for concern that you basically made a book that's a playboy of pinups for the pin nerd well a lot of this art is from you yes a lot of this art is from the 40s and 50s and very innocent and some of it's not but I will say this I am a reporter I am a historian I'm a college professor I teach classes about history This is a historical book and it's a research book. I did not design these games. I am just presenting them, so don't shoot the messenger.
    26:59
    Have you looked at my book? Well, I'm sad that you feel that way. but I am one small piece in a large cog.
    27:17
    Understood. Any other questions? We don't have time. Oh, sorry. So thank you for showing us this book. Where is it for sale? My booth is in the far back left corner near the bathrooms.
    27:31
    So if you have to go, you can see me on the way there and back. and thank you Doug for joining us