I bought the Galaga from the son of the former VP of Namco-America. As I understand it, when Namco bought a large percentage of Atari Games in the 80s, Namco-America then became integrated with Atari and the president of Namco-America told him to keep a few games! So it probably only went to trade shows, been in Namco's lobby, and home-owned. The instructions and back door sheet are in Japanese, but the start buttons are in English like Zorg's buttons, and the coin-mech is US 25 cents.
There's still some damage to the cabinet (and I think a soft drink exploded near it
) but the protective coating is still on the side art. It came with a Japanese-language manual for the Namco cocktail. A few caps needed to be replaced on the monitor, and the joystick was a bit loose. Other than that, I didn't want to touch it a bit.
I bought this and a prototype Libble Rabble cocktail that I assume was used to test the game in the U.S. (it was never released here) from him. This particular version is partially translated into English, and the instruction cards are hand-cut with some erased pencil notes and some hand-coloring. Unfortunately, the original 18" Toei monitor must have gone out at some point and was replaced with a 19" Wells-Gardner
Thankfully they did a clean job replacing it, and if I can find a 18" tube/yoke, I can more-or-less bring it back to its original state.
