Hello fellow collectors: Looking for Atari Star Wars Cockpit Game

fonz2144

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Hello fellow collectors: Looking for Atari Star Wars Cockpit Game

I am in the process of finishing my basement and want to put a few arcade games in. Looking for advice on how to acquire a Star Wars Atari Cockpit Arcade Game. I imagine the price is pretty steep. How much should I expect to pay? How easy is it to maintain? If I find one what questions should I ask the seller? Anybody have one to sell? Thanks for your time.
 
Welcome! From what I have seen, a SW Cockpit in really nice shape is one of the most expensive arcade games one could buy. Everything on it is expensive, the artwork, the 25" vector monitor, the yoke, everything...
big $$$ here but others will offer more concrete numbers. Good luck!
 
Thanks for your response. It figures I would want one of the most expensive. What do you consider expensive?
 
It's not my grail, so I couldnt give you an exact price, but you could probably expect to see asking prices between $2500-$4000 for a decent condition cockpit. If it has the Ampliphone everyone talks about (and I have no knowledge about), expect to pay toward the higher end of the scale. But, if you have a seller who needs to sell, and there is no demand in his area, you could pay a bit less. I dont know if it's a good or bad thing, but what may be in your favor is that its a cockpit and that turns off a lot of people because they have to transport it, the bad thing in your favor is that it's also a cockpit, which everyone dreams of.
 
Check feeBay for recently ended auctions. A recent cockpit sold for more than 8 grand.

Expect to pay at minimum $3K for a working unit in good shape.
 
expect to need to ship it also... that's going to kill you unless you have some sort of discount. Carefull how it's shipped also... it might bring tears to you if it's not setup on a pallet correctly.
 
Thanks for the answers. I've seen a lot of post about the Ampliphone. Pardon my ignorance as I am new to the hobby. But that's the monitor. Right? What makes that so special. I am not really worried about originality. What other monitors can be used and is the game play affected?
 
Yes. That is the monitor.

Wells Gardner was also a supplier of Vector monitors for Atari. However most of those were problematic in the HV section and would blow the deflection transistors frequently.
 
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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110854417645

This one has a 19 inch Wells Gardner instead of the proper 25 inch Amplifone. Aside from being smaller, the WG has a picture tube with phosphor dots that are more coarse so it's not as high a resolution picture. Also the geometry is different so the circular Death Star will be more of an oval since SW was designed for the Amp. There's also a difference in the slew rate of the monitor (the WG cannot draw as many vectors in the same amount of time as the Amp) enough that for the game Major Havoc the timing was slowed when hooked to a WG.

Opinions vary on which is 'better' but either monitor, with proper care/upgrades, can be made to run reliably. You can play SW on either, and you may never notice a difference even if you had them side-by-side to compare. There is no 25 inch version of the WG, so religious debates aside that's the one to get for the cockpit if you can.

The auction above lacks sound, which is on its own board in the 3-board SW set. Could be a problem with the power supply board, or even be a loose wire... the point being probably easy to fix.

Same for the yoke... since the PCB and monitor were tested and they work, the yoke and sound are probably physical/electromechanical faults which are usually easier to troubleshoot than logic faults.

Good luck!
 
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