Arcade History Sold on eBay

Two of the very earliest videogame cabinets were sold on eBay this week. The cabinets were made in 1971 to play Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space – the first commercially available videogame. Bushnell would go on to form both Atari and cheap eats chain Chuck E. Cheese, and is one of the true legends of videogaming.

The two cabinets are notable for their bodacious SF stylings as much as for the game itself: for all its relevance, Computer Space was little more than a rip off of the game Spacewar!, which was created by MIT students in 1961-2 but never became commercially available.

The rarer yellow cabinet – one of only 1800 made – was sold for $3050. The green cabinet, meanwhile, had some faults and was less of a rarity but nonetheless notched up £1499 for Ohio-based seller mywantlist. It’ll be worth keeping an eye on his eBay page if you’re a retro game enthusiast with some spare cash – he’s also selling off a number of other classic arcade favourites including Death Race and an original Atari Pong.