One of those things that I hate to admit is that I have never had the pleasure of playing the original Atari Star Wars on the original hardware. Only once did I ever come across one of these at an arcade growing up and when I did the unit wasn’t working (fortunately they had a BattleZone that was in great condition that I played way too much). For those who have played the game mentioned here then you know that one of the cool things about it are the controls. Atari made what was called the “flight yoke controller” which was similar to a controller they had used in previous games like Starship 1. A few games have used similar controls since but it has been quite a while since a yoke controller of any kind in arcades and to be honest I think it’s a shame that we haven’t as it’s one of those things that you don’t get the same feel for at home.
Anyways, this post isn’t about a new game that is going to use a yoke but about the reconstruction of the old Atari yoke used in the Star Wars arcade game. From the looks of it, the makers of this device, RAM Controls put a lot of effort into recreating the yoke perfectly and they are now selling them so you can replace an old worn out yoke on your home Star Wars machine (I guess I should ask – how many operators out there still have one of these on location? Anyone?). You can get a completed yoke controller for $260 or they also offer a number of options to rebuild one for less than that. Hit the link below for more on how this came to be.
Quick update: While looking around the RAM Controls site I noticed that they have parts for rebuilding other hard-to-find Atari controllers, like the hall effect stick on I, Robot or Major Havoc controls. Pretty cool stuff.
[Star Wars Flight Yoke Controller Rebuilt – RAM Controls] [Discuss on the Forums]
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