Skip the arcades with your own $38,000 Star Wars Battle Pod

Pretty much everybody who's ever watched Star Wars has fantasized about locking their S-Foils in attack position and diving into the Death Star Trench. And now that the Star Wars Battle Pod is available for sale to the general public, all that stands between you and the most intense interactive realization of Star Wars ship-to-ship combat yet is $38,000 / £24,000 (plus shipping and installation costs).

The pods, which let users grab a joystick and throttle, sit down in a motion-rigged chair, and take in a 180-degree screen semi-spherical screen (complete with air-blaster for the full "broken windshield" effect), started rolling out to arcades in January. Now Bandai Namco is offering them for sale to consumers in the US, Europe, and Japan.

But as long as you're spending that much cash on a giant arcade cabinet instead of a down payment on a house, you might as well go for the $100,000 limited edition, which comes with real leather seats, a specially bound manual, and a plate with your name and a serial number engraved on it, not to mention your name in the credits. And why decide between the Rebel Pilot and Darth Vader themed versions when you could buy both?

Or you could just go play it in an arcade and save that space in your mansion for another candy room.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.