Black Knight 2000
April 4th, 1989
Williams Electronic Games
This machine caught my eye (and ears) pretty quickly when I first walked in, with it’s vibrant yellow and red color scheme and its Sega Genesis-like soundchip.
My first impressions playing it were generally positive. It was kept in fairly good condition so the flick on the flippers was still tight instead of sluggish like on other machines. The dual layer of the board was a little difficult to wrap my head around at first, so I ended up missing chances where I could have used the extra flipper at first. After a while I did get the hang of it, but I still had some difficulty due to the shortened board space since half of the board is taken up by the upper portion.
I never got to light up all of the KNIGHT letters (and if I did I didn’t realize it at the time) so I didn’t get a chance to try out the MAGNA SAVE feature where you press the extra button on the side of the cabinet to save the ball under certain circumstances which sounds like a really cool feature.
My overall experience was positive but I did notice some issues. The aforementioned smaller playfield on the lower board does mean you have a shortened amount of time to react to the ball bouncing off things or when the ball becomes visible again when underneath the top board. There was also an issue with the kickback always hitting the ball in the same spot and subsequently straight down the middle multiple times. However I would try it again when I have more time so that I can try out the MAGNA SAVE feature specifically as I’m curious how that works out and also to just get a better feel for the machine since I didn’t have a huge amount of time to play around with it.
References:
Internet Pinball Machine Database
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=311