Incredibly rare in-house ‘gold’ marquee for the 50,000th cabinet of the iconic Atari video game Asteroids, 23.75 x 8.25, featuring classic celestial artwork of spaceships, planets, and exploding asteroids with bold block text: “ASTEROIDS.” This Plexiglas marquee, unlike its colorful relative, features a gold-tone film to the reverse. In fine condition, with two small areas of irregularity to the far right side, and scattered scuffs and marks to film, which are visible when set against light. A rare opportunity to own a unique piece of arcade history.
From the collection of former Atari employee Wendi Allen, who states: "I worked for Atari coin-op engineering as both a hardware engineer and a software engineer. I was the principal electrical engineer bringing Atari's vector graphics hardware to market, and that included being a part of the team that developed Asteroids. When Asteroids was approaching its 50,000th build, Gene Lipkin asked the art department to create a single gold-colored cabinet to commemorate the milestone. As part of that build, a gold marquee was designed with the Asteroids imagery rendered in gold and silver. If my memory is correct, three were produced. One went into the game. I have another, which I displayed in my home office for many years. I have no knowledge of what happened to the third. The ‘Gold Asteroids’ cabinet was used in some promotional materials, and it resided for a long time in the lobby of the Atari engineering building. According to a recent tweet from Digital Eclipse, it is currently in the break room at Nether Realm Studios."
