CLIENT:
Brian Coney
PROJECT:
I was commissioned to redraw the Medieval Madness pinball playfield to look more modern, and to match my Alternate Medieval Madness backglass and side blades by Brian Coney for his private collection. He had the playfield printed and mounted into a beautifully restored and modded Williams Medieval Madness machine that won “Best Modern” pinball machine at Pincinnati in 2025.
All of the artwork was drawn by hand by me. No Ai-generated nonsense, or photoshop paint-overs.
This Playfield artwork is not available for resale. However, if you’re interested in the Alternate Medieval Madness Apron, Translite, Backglass, or Side Blades, I have those available for sale in my pinball shop:
ORIGINAL INK DRAWING:
DETAIL SHOTS:
MORE INFO:
Brian Coney’s Medieval Madness Rebuild:
Written by Brian Coney
Medieval Madness was my “Holy Grail” pinball machine and I had always wanted one since I got into the hobby in 2000. I finally started saving money to buy one in 2010 since they were only going up in price. I found one locally that was not for sale, but the person who owned it said I would get first dibs if he ever sold it. He finally contacted me after I had saved up $2200 and said I could buy it for $7200 – you see the problem there….I was short $5000! I asked my future wife if I could burrow $5000 and she did not hesitate to lend it to me. (I paid her back too!!) I bought the machine and the next year at our wedding, my wife was kind enough to allow it to be at the wedding reception for guests to enjoy – only rules were it had to have pink bows on it and I couldn’t just play pinball all night! Done deal! The picture on the banner next to the game was taken at our reception. The topper on the game in the picture was made by my great pinball friends and is still on the game!
Over the next 15 years, I would take the machine to show after show to let people play it – many people thanked me for bringing the game since they had not even seen a Medieval in person let alone play one. They were just too expensive and people didn’t bring them to shows. That made it worth it – seeing the joy people got while playing Medieval Madness!
I was planning on restoring the machine soon after I bought it and I had all the parts I needed including playfield, cabinet art, ramps, etc, etc. The only problem was that the game played so good and the cabinet was so beat up that I didn’t care if it got damaged more while traveling to all the shows – so I didn’t end up restoring it after all. Fast forward to 2021 and I saw Brian’s alternate Translite and I had to have it! That was the beginning of the Anniversary Edition Medieval Madness, I just didn’t know it.
At the 2024 Cleveland Pinball show I had a hair brained idea and I pitched it to Brian about commissioning him to do a one off Medieval playfield art. He was interested and I just needed to convince my wife. To my surprise, she was all in! She asked if we could have our wedding cake in the game and also our two dogs. I asked if she wanted to be a princess and she loved the idea!
I call this Medieval the Anniversary edition for multiple reasons. My wife loaned me the money to buy it. It was at our wedding reception, it has a custom topper with our wedding date on it. It has my wife as the princess on the plastic above the Merlin targets as well as our wedding date in the castle block under her. The serial number of the machine is 62511000001 which is our wedding date and the one is because this is the only one ever made. It seemed fitting to call it the Anniversary edition to celebrate us and everything represented on the game and the fact that without her, I wouldn’t have the machine in the first place!
So what did I change/do to the machine to make it what it it now?
- Cabinet completely restored with new artwork, screen printed back panel and patent call outs and created a custom serial number with our wedding date in it.
- Flush mounted the bolts on the side of the head to make the art more clean
- Custom playfield art by Brian Allen – printed directly on a blank MM wood playfield by Graphic Dimensions
- Custom plastic art – my wife is the princess above the Merlin targets and our dogs are on the catapult plastic along with our wedding cake.
- Custom playfield decals including new ramp decals, troll flap decals, draw bridge decals etc.
- Chrome plated the cabinet side rails, lock bar, and back glass channel as well as used highly polished legs to match the chrome trim. The leg bolts were also polished so they match the legs.
- The wire ramps on the playfield were chrome plated – I never cared for the original gold and most people don’t think to chrome plate them, so I decided to do that to make it different and to match the side rail chrome.
- Color DMD installed
- Brian Allen Acrylic back glass (available at Flylanddesigns.com)
- Brian Allen cabinet side blades (available at Flylanddesigns.com)
- Brian Allen magnetic apron art( available at Flylanddesigns.com)
- Comet 2SD LED’s were used throughout the game and in the back box
- All wiring harnesses cleaned and upgraded as needed
- All circuit boards were cleaned/upgraded as needed such as NVRAM installed on CPU board to eliminate AA batteries
- Custom coil wrappers were made with the Medieval Madness logo on them
- All ball guides and mech assembly’s were cleaned, hand polished and rebuilt
- All bolts and nuts were hand polished
- New ramps were installed with Brian’s art on the decals
- New main castle and right castle assemblies installed – with Brian’s design on the crest of the castle
- New castle towers were installed
- A new castle gate was installed
- Trolls were installed on the top of the castle
- LED’s installed in troll eyes
- Pinsound board was installed and custom sound pack installed including AC/DC Thunderstruck intro after starting a game and the main theme music was Changed to Monty Python’s Holy Grail music
- Pinlights were installed for show display
- Precision flipper halo flipper bats were installed so the flipper bats don’t cover the new artwork
- Custom banner made to describe all the differences in playfield art from the original design.
That’s about it – it was a LOT of work and I think Brian totally NAILED the artwork on everything! I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out and LOVE the fact that I was able to make my vision of having a one of one Medieval Madness come to life! Make sure to come to the Louisville Arcade Expo at the end of March 2026 so you can play it! It will also be at the Cleveland show in September, Chicago Expo in October and Pincinnati again in December. Pictures are one thing, but you need to see this in person to truly appreciate how amazing it is!
