Think again. From Pinball Expo:

Scheduled to be released with the next code update so that folks can order and receive them by Xmas. Tim's adding more interactions and effects in the interim (among everything else he's doing.) Price has been spotted as $429.00 - not cheap, but certainly less that I was expecting.

A little longer footage from Pinball Expo:

Gary Stern announced the topper in his opening remarks ahead of the Stern Factory Tour - and pointed to the very first functional one sitting atop a BKSOR Premium in the Stern Arcade area where the most recent/currently in production Stern games are available to play.

The knight's head on the topper can move left, right, up and down along with doing combos of two directions neighboring each other at 90 degrees (i.e., NE, NW, SE, and SW - but not NS and EW naturally!) Tim is working on making the topper have a lot of interactions and syncing the callouts to the mask last I heard.

Gotta have it!!!

The topper was planned from the beginning - it's not like they just started working on it a couple of weeks ago.

And given how great of a topper it is as we all concur, why scrap it? This way people who own a BKSOR can buy the topper to go with their game - and the people who don't own a BKSOR can buy a game to go with their topper.

Word from the Stern factory tour at Pinball Expo is that the team is doing its best to have the topper ready for sale in time for folks to have one delivered by Christmas.

I sure hope not. Where's everybody getting the $750 figure from?
It was originally quoted as ~$429.00 in placeholders to distributors.

Found this at Marco for the Star Wars Topper: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/502-7041-00

For that price R2D2 better do a heck of a lot more than just turn his head, blip and beep. But another distributor lists it like this: https://musiccitypinball.net/product/star-wars-topper/ - a very significant variation in price if they are for the same thing.

Meanwhile, Marco is listing the BKSOR topper thusly: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/502-7095-00

I'm certainly not in at $750. But for it all happening this weekend, it's very odd that neither topper is listed on their website yet as of this post.

I'm still not convinced the BKSOR topper is really going for $750. See:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/502-7041-00 vs https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/502-7095-00

I have a feeling that Stern might take the production of the BKSOR topper in more of a BKSOR vinyl soundtrack direction, i.e., limit the initial run so it sells out quickly and then make more if/when they need to.

My feeling is not based on any inside knowledge or anything other my own conjecture.

But given the very positive initial reactions to the topper since it was unveiled at the start of Stern factory tour during Expo back in October and the buzz/excitement/desire it continues to generate, I still think BKSOR will get at least a brief boost in renewed interest and even sales once the topper is officially released. And I cannot help but think there will even be some folks who buy a game because they want this topper.

I'd rather they take a little more time to get it right instead of rushing it out - but by "a little more time" I mean we can order it on or before the March 26th anniversary date of the BKSOR game announcement.

The Star Wars topper (speaking for myself) was overwhelmingly NOT worth the price or the wait for what it ultimately was. The BKSOR topper was already at least 12 parsecs ahead of the Star Wars topper when we first saw it in October.

And while I realize that I cannot expect reasonably final code in games when I unbox them shortly after they began production, a topper should have "final enough code" upon receipt and installation - with "final enough" = "if it never does anything other than what it does after I installed it, I'd be extremely happy." Any further enhancements would just be even more gravy.

But with so much potential to truly be the best pinball topper of all time, it'd be a shame if this one only did just a little bit more than what we saw at Expo back in October.

All of that said, HURRY UP!!! We're DROOLING for it out here!!!

When I saw the placeholder on Stern's website the price was listed at $399.99 ... did it change?

Quick topper detour:

Just in case anyone who may have missed it in the Honourable Knights Only thread might be interested, check out these BKSOR speaker accents.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/black-knight-swords-of-rage-club-honourable-knights-only/page/46#post-5493516

Now, back to the BKSOR topper:
Has anyone who has already ordered the topper from a distributor but not received it yet been given an ETA for theirs?

I did mine back when I first unboxed it - never even tried installing the factory feather once I saw how small it was. I stayed with the traditional black, but I do like the red/black combo RockfordReplay did. Gotta go for a big feather! (And if you think the Black Knight's feather is big, wait until you see his ... uh ... um ... ahem ... raging sword.)

One other thing I've always really liked about the topper are the shadows it casts on any nearby walls and ceiling. Those shadows enhance the topper by surrounding it with even more evil ambience. Love it!

Better Feather (resized).jpg

I went Premium for many reasons, but two of my bigger ones were:

- the ability to stack Triple Knight’s Challenge and Catapult Multiball to get six-ball multiball during normal gameplay
- I personally liked the cabinet art and the translite/backglass on the Premium far more than the one on the Pro and the LE
- the BK is on the attack and drawing blood from an unseen opponent (the player) on the cabinet
- it’s the only translite/backglass with the BK wielding the Sword of Rage (despite the BK’s flail on the playfield toy, the
game is called Black Knight SWORD of Rage, not Black Knight FLAIL of Rage)