Does Atari still make controls similar to the Star Wars Yoke?

[GamingGreg]

At a local bowling alley I came across this game (Vapor TRX).  It had a yoke similar to the Star Wars yoke.  According to KLOV, the game came out in 1998, which means that Atari (or someone else) would have built that control within the last five years.  (It's also a fun game, but it hasn't been "MAMEed" yet.)

That got me thinking if they are still building similar controls like that and if they are selling them?  My guess is that they build them from time to time (as needed for games like this), and then it's "shelved" for a time, but nothing is available to arcade shops or the general public.

Anyone else know anything more about this?  My guess is we are still left with finding an old yoke on eBay, or building one yourself.

[Tiger-Heli]

At a local bowling alley I came across this game (Vapor TRX).  It had a yoke similar to the Star Wars yoke.  According to KLOV, the game came out in 1998, which means that Atari (or someone else) would have built that control within the last five years.  (It's also a fun game, but it hasn't been "MAMEed" yet.)

That got me thinking if they are still building similar controls like that and if they are selling them?  My guess is that they build them from time to time (as needed for games like this), and then it's "shelved" for a time, but nothing is available to arcade shops or the general public.

Anyone else know anything more about this?  My guess is we are still left with finding an old yoke on eBay, or building one yourself.

Looking at the picture, I would guess Vapor TRX might be a Stun Runner conversion, but that' just a possibility.

Atari doesn't make ANYTHING anymore b/c they went out of business maybe six months ago (maybe bought by Midway???)

[shmokes]

Infogrames bought Atari within the last few months.

[pointdablame]

Infogrames now IS atari. They bought the remnants of the company and have changed their name entirely to Atari.

That means anything the "old" Atari made, is almost definitely no longer in production. Sorry.

[JoyMonkey]

I thought that Infogrames became the home software side of Atari, but the arcade development side (called Atari Games, I think) still exsists.

[GamingGreg]

Well, according to this page it appears that "Atari Games" is no longer.  It was sold to Midway in 1996, and was a division of Midway (probably still was at Vapor TRX's release). However Midway Games left the arcade market in 2001.

So it does look like we are left to find after market yokes on eBay or make our own (either from scratch or via hacking parts together).

[rampy]

There's one of these literally 100 yards from where I work.

It is NOT a conversion (not that there aren't conversions out there... but...)

It's definitely dedicated.  The yoke is similiar but of course different than the star wars yokes... I couldn't of course tell you if it was optical or pot based as I can't pop the sucker open of course...

It does function x/y  and have trigger and thumb buttons.  *shrug*

I doubt many of these are being parted out... but yeah, there must be some NOS somewhere, else operaters who bought these woudl be hosed if someone screwed up the yoke... but is that somewhere a forgotten warehouse (hanger 18) in bangledesh?

Rampy