Medieval Madness

I’m exited to announce that (weather permitting) Medieval Madness will be in the arcade this week!

Medieval Madness was originally created in 1997 by Williams, making it 4 years newer than Star Trek: The Next Generation. It has amazing call-outs, that classic 90’s Williams feel, and a really balanced game play where making any shot will always advance the story. It’s pretty quick to understand the rules and always a fun machine to play a few games on.

Here’s a really quick overview of some of the rules to help you get started this week:

The Rules

There are 6 named shots, from left to right: Catapult, Joust, Peasant, Castle, Damsel, and Joust again.

The Castle is probably the most exciting. Hit it a couple times and the drawbridge lowers. Another couple hits and the portcullis opens, and finally one more hit dramatically destroys the castle. Your goal is to destroy 5 castles representing the king’s men before you can then attack the king’s castle.

Simultaneously with the castles, the remaining shots each have a series of lights in front of them which light up one at a time when the shot is made. Complete all lights on a shot to collect it. For example, making the left ramp 4 times will earn one peasant revolt, or the right ramp 4 times will rescue one damsel.

I’ll dive further into the rules in the future, but those are the basics.

The Machine

This particular copy of Medieval Madness is slightly unique because even though it was designed in 1997, this machine was manufactured just a few months ago.

At some point after Williams stopped making pinball machines, Planetary Pinball acquired the rights to Medieval Madness. In 2015 Chicago Gaming Company licensed the right from Planetary Pinball to reproduce a limited number of copies of the game. With manufacturing help from Stern, Chicago Gaming Company created brand new machines that were nearly indistinguishable from the original from 1997. Since then, an additional run of remakes was made in 2019, again in 2025, and yet another run is planned for 2026.

Chicago Gaming Company has also made remakes of Monster Bash, Cactus Canyon, and Attack From Mars, and there are rumors of other companies looking to follow in their footsteps. Personally, I’d love to see remakes of some of the early 80’s Stern Electronic machines!