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This is a pretty nice Atari RETURN OF THE JEDI video arcade game. It is fully working, running on all original hardware (although I guess I did replace the original "Disco" monitor with a Wells Gardner k7000, which is a much better monitor). The Wells 7000 monitor has been rebuilt (by me) and has a perfect picture in every way. The sound is stereo and phenomenal. The controller works great and the game is really fun to play.
This game is the sequel to Star Wars and Empire Strikes back, although timing wise i think it may have been released before ESB... not sure. I'm sure you have heard of Star Wars - it is a fairly popular movie franchise from the late 70s and early 80s. It is a science fiction genre movie series with the classic good versus evil theme. Return of the Jedi was the third in the series, and kind of wrapped up the original trilogy and tied up a bunch of loose ends. This game just basically allows you to play through several of the action scenes in that third movie. I'm guessing that if someone had never seen the movie, they might walk away from this game saying to themselves, "what the h@#$ was that game about? I'm flying on a stick around a bunch of teddy bears who are trying to knock me off my stick? And why am I flying through this tight tunnel? And what is this giant ape doing trying to avoid logs in a strange robotic leg contraption? " and other thoughts.
But if you've seen the movie, it all makes sense and is really challenging and fun. And the stereo music and voices from the movie are so well done and awesome. The soundtrack for the original trilogy was composed by John Williams, and it is such a great composition that I actually own all of the complete soundtracks and listen to them from time to time.
One other thing that is nice about this game is that if you get on the high score table, it plays the famous (or infamous) song "Lug Nut" from the original Return of the Jedi soundtrack. Disney, in their infinite (lack of) wisdom decided to remove this song from the movie after buying the Star Wars rights from George Lucas. Apparently "Lug Nut" just isn't good enough for Disney. Or maybe it conveys some message that they don't find to be inclusive or diverse enough. I don't know because I don't speak Ewok and so I'm not sure what the words really mean. My guess is that it is expressing some racist sentiment against those not of the Ewok race, and Disney decided to censor it. Well, that song is still present on this arcade game, although only the music with no words, so even if it is offensive in Ewok, the words are not present.
I also want to mention just how cool this cabinet is. Atari was just so amazing in their prime. They spared no expense in designing and building completely unique game cabinets for almost every game they made during this period. This cabinet is one of a kind, although it is somewhat similar to Major Havoc, Firefox, and I, Robot
This cabinet is in very good condition. No water damage, no serious structural damage. There is one small chunk of wood broken along the back edge on one side, and that could be fixed with some wood filler and black paint. The marquee and monitor bezels are in excellent condition. The control panel is very nice. The coin doors are in good condition also and have quarter coin mechs installed, as well as an original coin box. Both rear access doors are present, which is somewhat unusual - these little doors are often missing when I find games like this in an operator's warehouse.
I know that in the pictures above, the monitor looks like it isn't displaying correctly. However, that is only because the shutter speed is too fast on my phone camera. So it captures the picture while the monitor is drawing the screen and looks like half the screen is missing. Watch the video included above and you will see that the monitor has a great picture.
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