I skipped Newsbytes last week as I was busy running an arcade at a comic convention, and just didn’t have the time to post about anything.
Before we get started, I have updated the Akka Arrh Controversy article with some reshaped thoughts. I have been seeing a lot of vitriol aimed at collectors of super-rare arcade items over this, which isn’t fair to them. If it wasn’t for the “dumpster diving” collectors in many instances, then many of these games will have disappeared into the ether of history, occupying a landfill that no one would ever bother to dig up and all Akka Arrh would be is a footnote on a webpage. We don’t really know how the ROMs ended up online at this point, so all we can do is guess.
Anyways, onto other news items:
Atari Star Wars Yoke Reproduction
If you are a collector and have labored over keeping your Atari Star Wars in working condition, then you have my sympathy. Apart from having a color vector monitor to deal with, the yoke controller is not something that ever became as common as a joystick or steering wheel, so if it breaks, it can be very difficult – and expensive – to source replacement parts.
Fortunately, the owner of a retro arcade along with a pair of avid collectors out of Utah (for full disclosure, I know the collectors and have done business with them many times; I’m buying a Final fight board off of one of them today; but they did not pay nor ask for this coverage on the yoke project) has taken it upon themselves to produce a complete reproduction of the fabled Star Wars yoke controllers. Known as the Alan-1 flight yoke (Alan-1 being a reference to TRON), these have been designed as a drop-in replacement to any

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