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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 also had a MASSIVELY loud bell that would have made Quasimoto proud mounted inside the cabinet that rang for 10 seconds when you scored an Extra Ball, this bell was apparently designed to attract players to the game which I believe it did , but this game would have been the same success without that bell- it is simply an outstanding machine that I believe was way ahead of it's time. 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. So, it was 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 ! ) and the Firepower. Below are some shots of how it all started take a look at my next few Black Knight pages where you can see how I used a set of cabinet decal overlays to make the Black Knight cabinet like new again and also see some images of the playfield as it was and as it ended up.
Some excellent results I achieved when I did this Black Knight playfield Black Knight Playfield Page 1 Black Knight Playfield Page 2
Anyone that doubts that cabinet decals aren't that great - have a look at how this Black Knight turned out. Black Knight Cabinet Decals applied
Some images of this machine fully finished
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