A rare two-player Computer Space arcade cabinet is being offered at auction by David Perry, the founder of Shiny Entertainment, the studio behind Earthworm Jim and MDK.
“It’s probably the rarest arcade game in existence, found in museums,” posted Perry. He also noted that a more common single-player cabinet had recently sold for $69,000.
For collectors interested in the roots of coin-operated video games, this is an unusually significant machine. Computer Space dates from 1971 and was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who would later establish Atari.
Why Computer Space matters
The game grew out of Spacewar!, the 1962 computer game created by Steve Russell and collaborators. In Computer Space, players pilot a rocket through a battle against a UFO, translating a computer-lab experiment into a dedicated commercial arcade cabinet.
Computer Space was the first commercially distributed arcade video game. Although amusement venues already featured coin-operated entertainment, the cabinet introduced a much more ambitious kind of electronic game to a public audience.
It did not become the breakout success that Pong would later achieve. That limited response helps explain why surviving examples are so scarce, with cabinets more commonly encountered in museums or glimpsed in films such as Soylent Green.
For broader context on collecting and restoring historic cabinets, RETROCADE’s arcade news and industry coverage and arcade machine buying guide offer useful starting points.
A particularly scarce two-player cabinet
The machine in this sale is the two-player version released in 1973. Its sparkling green cabinet is described on the auction page as “practically unobtainable”, and the listing says the game is operational.
Perry is selling the cabinet because he no longer has enough room at home. He says machines of this type are seldom seen outside museum collections, making the auction notable even among rare arcade hardware.
At the time of writing, bidding was around $10,000. The auctioneers expected the final price to exceed $20,000, although the outcome remains dependent on the bidding.
History versus speculation
The sale also arrives as video games become increasingly prominent in high-value collectibles markets. That attention has made some observers cautious about dramatic prices attached to heavily promoted retro games.
Against that backdrop, a historically important cabinet such as this two-player Computer Space invites a different discussion. Its appeal rests not only on scarcity, but on its place at the beginning of commercial arcade video gaming—long before familiar franchises became auction-house staples.
Collectors considering a restoration or preservation project can also explore RETROCADE’s arcade parts and DIY arcade kits resources.
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