Your party of adventurers descends into a desert canyon. You round a bend and encounter a large cave in the mountainside. As you approach the entrance, a dragon emerges. What do you do? Attack or wait? The Dungeon Master procures a detailed illustration of the beast—a majestic brass dragon. You breathe a sigh of relief. The dragon’s color makes all the difference. Brass dragons are notoriously social. You order your band to sheathe their weapons. You’ll have a better chance of talking your way out of this than fighting.
The action in Dungeons & Dragons takes place in players’ minds. Still, as the 2019 documentary Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons makes clear, art has always played a critical role in the game: “Dungeons & Dragons is a game about imagination, but imagination needs something to work off of,” says artist Jeff Dee. Even the most skilled Dungeon Master can’t compete with pictures when it comes to setting the scene. Illustrations bridge the gap to human imagination in ways that words can’t. As D&D art director Dawn Murin explains, “Great D&D art is narrative. And what that means is it tells a story all within a single frame.”
Pinball functions on the same principle. In pinball, the artwork manifests in many ways: through the backglass illustration, thematic elements on the cabinet and playfield, colored lights, sound, and game design. In 1980, Steve Ritchie used all five elements to create a landmark game that saved the pinball industry: Black Knight by Williams Electronics.
The dark north corner of the Gold Mine arcade at El Con Mall was the lair of the pinball. It was there you would have encountered the Black Knight. Like a brass dragon, the first thing you would notice about the machine is that it talked. Even when nobody was playing, the Black Knight actively sought new opponents. From across the room, you’d hear him summoning you: “I AM THE BLACK KNIGHT. CHALLENGE ME!” Approaching the cabinet, you came face-to-face with the knight, clad in armor, lance in hand, astride a rearing horse. The beautifully illustrated backglass scene deftly sets the tone for this game: Prepare for battle.
Black Knight introduced adversarial gameplay. Unlike the passive pinball games of the past, Black Knight gives players the impression that they are engaged in battle with the machine. It starts with the playfield colors—a mix of aggressive yellow, orange, red, and purple lights. In the center of the playfield is an illuminated sword, your combat weapon. The game employs a bewildering array of sound effects to keep you on edge, including the galloping sound (da-da-dup, da-da-dup, sa-da-dup) of a charging horse and the menacing voice of the Black Knight himself. The knight’s taunts are meant to demoralize: “You cannot defeat the Black Knight,” “Another victim,” and mocking laughter, “Hahaha!”
The showpieces of Ritchie’s game design are the Magna-Save feature and split-level playfield, both pinball firsts. With Magna-Save, players can rescue a ball headed for the outlane by pushing a button at the precise moment. The ball is then redirected into the inlane and back into play—the equivalent of parrying a lethal sword-slash from the Black Knight. The game also featured a second, higher-level playfield, complete with its own set of bumpers and flippers. This is meant to simulate face-to-face combat with the Black Knight, whose image dominates the upper-level playfield. Both elements, significant technological achievements in their own right, contributed to the storytelling element of this iconic game.
Arcade games adopted much of the sensory scaffolding that made pinball machines successful. In place of the backglass, arcade games have a backlit marquee. In place of the artfully designed playfield, arcade games feature side art on the cabinet, bezel, and control panel. Like pinball machines, arcade games generate colorful lights and sounds. A major difference, however, is in the gameplay experience. Unlike pinball machines, arcade games don’t rely on the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps that art and design can’t fill. There is no gap for the imagination to bridge when you’re staring at a cathode-ray tube. The monitor does all the work for you, delivering the story frame by frame.
I didn’t play pinball machines when I was a kid. Arcade games were the shiny new thing that captured all my attention. But over time, my preferences have shifted. At my age, I’ve learned to appreciate the collaborative storytelling element that occurs between the player and machine. With pinball games, the player is an active participant in the storytelling. You don’t just passively observe the story unfolding on a screen; you create it in your mind by melding all the game elements—backglass illustration, colors, sounds, playfield, game design—with the raw power of your imagination.
It is the ultimate irony of the digital age: modern video games have epic scope and high definition graphics, but they do not engage the imagination as effectively as pinball. We’ve traded the collaborative storytelling element of pinball for the visually immersive aspects of digital gameplay. But for those of us who prefer a less passive role, the Black Knight remains. He doesn’t need high-definition graphics to demand respect. His mocking pronouncement—once a challenge to arcade teenagers—now sounds like a judgment on modern gaming itself:
“YOU CANNOT DEFEAT THE BLACK KNIGHT!”