A few years back, around 2014, I came across a scavenged Williams Black Knight playfield for sale. Many of the mechanical assemblies had been removed, and the wiring harnesses were cut and ruined, but the playfield itself was in okay shape, plus it had most of the hard to find game specific bits like rails, ramps, scoops, and the plastics.
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This Black Knight, destined for the scrap heap, needs help. |
I immediately realized that this was a perfect candidate for not just restoration, but a Pinball Chameleon upgrade, adding advanced sound, enhanced multi-ball, full DMD animations, light shows, an LCD monitor backglass, customize-able game rules, and more. This is the Modern Firepower concept, but now applied to resurrecting a trashed playfield from the junkyard.
Black Knight also presented some new features for me to test and implement in my code. Drop Targets, Magna-Save, a 3-ball Ball Lock, and four flippers. Actually, my code already has partial support for these features, though a few tweaks would be necessary to tie them into the game rules. For example, the Magna-Save would function just like a regular flipper, only the game would now have to disable and enable them as part of normal game-play, plus implement a timed limit on their use.
Parts that I would replace anyway, like the flippers, were already missing from this neglected playfield, so I wasn't paying for parts I wouldn't be able to use. Plus, since I would completely rewire the entire board to connect it to my own electronics, a damaged wiring harness didn't matter one bit.
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Trashed harnesses and missing assemblies... someone tried to murder this Black Knight. | |
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One man's trash is this man's new pinball machine.
I was able to score the playfield for $200.
Another reason I jumped at this Black Knight is that, eons ago when I was first researching how pinball machines work, my buddy Troy scored a nearly worthless Black Knight playfield for about $50. Though it was not salvageable, that playfield revealed many pinball secrets, from simple things like the dimensions of the wood side-rails, and how pop bumpers, flippers and kickers work. Having tangible parts that I could inspect and measure, even if they didn't actually work, was game changing for someone who had never been exposed to pinball machines before.
Eventually I tossed that first Black Knight, but not before salvaging the ramps and plastics.
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The remains of that first Black Knight playfield: some metal ramps and rails, a spinner and siderail piece. |
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Various plastics from that first Black Knight. |
Life then got busy, so this playfield has been kicking around for a few years, just gathering dust and generally being in the way. Now, a mere month away from The Southern Fried Gameroom Expo 2017, I've decided to try the impossible: a playfield restoration and upgrade to the Chameleon Pinball Engine.
Read on to see how I prepped for the project...