At a time when Gottlieb were basically still producing basic machines like my Hulk that had 2 pop bumpers, some drop targets and some rollovers, Steve Ritchie designed this machine for Williams that had everything and more.

We are talking about a machine that had the first ever 2 level playfield that also had 3 ramps to shoot for to get the ball back up to the top level, this machine also had 2 or 3 ball Multi-ball modes, timed targets, as well as speech, timed Mystery Score shots, 30 seconds of madness to try and score Specials when you played 2 players or more and Magnasave.

Magnasave was a feature that was introduced on The Black Knight that allowed you to stop the ball draining down the out lanes, if you had dropped a set of targets you could use one of the buttons next to the flipper buttons to activate an electric magnet under the playfield that grabbed the ball and held it above the return lane instead of allowing it to fly down the out lane- you must think quick to use it effectively though.

It is well recognised however that it is quite a difficult game to get really good scores on, what you REALLY need to do is continually  get 3 ball multi-ball mode and keep the 3 balls in play for a while, if you can do that,  then when all 3 balls have drained and you finally have time to look up at your score then you will be amazed how the points rack up in that time because everything you hit is 3 times it's value when the 3 balls are in play.

In around May 2003 and my father in law called me to say he had seen an ad in a local paper that a guy had a Black Knight and a Firepower for sale, " are these machines any good" was his question to me, not realising then, that these machines are highly sought after classic tables these days. So within seconds of getting the number off my father in law I was talking to the seller who happened to be in the area that I was working, so naturally I got very ill all of a sudden and told the boss I had to go home and within an hour I was at the sellers home looking at 2 Black Knights!! ( I actually had a choice ! ) I think he had more BK's too !!!

Here's a few shots of mine when I first purchased it - I chose the better of the two available.

As you can see, both the playfield and the cabinet needed some serious work. For the cabinet  I decided to buy a set of decals ( big stickers) and stick em over this old , originally painted cabinet, now the purists absolutely hate this but I had no issue with it as I just wanted this machine to look fantastic and new again. For the playfield it got stripped and cleaned and I re-made that broken plastic using methods I found on the net here. It was time consuming but worth the effort.

Hopefully you will spot some differences in the next batch of images

A note to the purists who say that using decals over old existing original paintwork de-values the pinball machine, please note that this machine sold in 2005 for $4350.00 Aussie Dollars ( I was told at the time it was an Australian record for this machine but I am unsure how true that is ) ....and to add further proof that the sale was not just a one-off , this machine since re-sold on Ebay in 2007 for $4250.00 , so no ....sorry......decals certainly do not de-value an older machine.

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