eBay round up – an arcade game special

I’m sure every gamer has dreamed about owning an arcade machine at some point. To the infuriation of girlfriends and significant others across the world, a little known website known as eBay exists. The really worrying thing is that some arcade machines don’t really cost a great deal – we’ve managed to find working machines for around £100 in this month’s eBay round-up.

We’re starting this round-up with the machines that have sold for a lot more than that, though.

Leading the way is Sega’s Star Wars Episode One Racer twin cabinet from 1998 which sold for £2,000. We hope the buyer had access to a lorry of sorts – it was a collection only auction.

Another Star Wars game next: a sit-down Star Wars Trilogy machine which sold for £815 (8 bids). You’ll notice a continuing theme throughout this feature – Sega pretty much made all of the games mentioned.

Not this one, though. A Defender cabinet which sold for £560 (15 bids). We hope buyers read the description carefully – it had been “converted to MAME” while the CRT had been replaced with an LCD. This Pac-Man cabinet hadn’t had its contents gutted and stripped and ended up selling for less – £365 after 7 bids.

Back to Sega – £510 (21 bids) was the price this House of the Dead III machine sold for. Another Sega shooter sold for not a particularly bank-breaking amount too – this colourful Gunblade cabinet went for just £300 (13 bids). Selling for a similar figure was this Area 51 shooter from 1998, which ended at £320 after 5 bids.

A single player only Need for Speed netted £350 (17 bids) but it wasn’t in working order and went only for spares and repairs. This Sega Suzuka 8 twin motorbike racer was up and running though and sold for £250 after just one bid. Our local arcade still has one of these, hidden down the back somewhere.

That £100 system we mentioned at the start of this article? A fully working Tekken 2 machine in a generic cabinet which attracted one bidder. It doesn’t appear to be in the best of condition, but at £100 it would be hard for anybody to complain about that.

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