I’m talking old school here – late 70s-mid 80s arcade game. What was your favorite?
For me it has to be Lunar Lander. Galaga comes in a close 2nd.
I was always partial to Gyruss, but I think that was because of the Bach. 1942 was a close 2nd.
I probably got the most fun out of Gauntlet.
My brother and I adored Gauntlet, but we also liked Rolling Thunder.
I’m gonna have to go with Defender/Stargate and Missile Command.
Yeah, Defender and Missile Command were two of my favorites. Asteroids was also great.
ETA: I was pretty good at Missile Command, but i was always quite useless at Defender, even though i loved playing it.
I could never really play Missile Command, as I sucked at it.
I never got the appeal of Pac Man.
Ms. Pac Man. I still find that one of the visually most beautiful games.
Oh, just remembered another one. Joust. Another beautiful and simple game.
Moon Patrol was always a favorite, but my quarters would always go into Donkey Kong, Jr. if it was available.
Zaxxon was a favorite of mine. It was one of the first games to simulate a 3-dimensional space.
I didn’t really play the arcade games as a kid; never had much change to spare. But one day my friend and I walked into an arcade and found that someone had left 90+ credits on the Elevator Action game, so that, by default, is my favorite. (Plus, shooting out a light and dropping it on an agent’s head is too awesome.)
Tetris
What was the difference between Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man? To me they looked like pretty much the same game.
Many years ago I was in a bar that had two Pac Man games. On was being used, so I started playing the other. It turns out that I was playing Ms., and a woman was absolutely livid over it! How dare I play “their” game?
That’s back when it took dimes.
Gauntlet was my quarter suck. I loved watching others playing Dragon’s Lair, I just hated the twitch response that I lacked.
The pink bow.
I think Ms. Pac Man also added a little more variety with the fruit bonus, or something trivial like that, but nothing major.
That’s it? Get right out of town!
Of all classic video games, the one I’ve spent far and away the most time playing on emulators in the past 10 years is Elevator Action.
Ms. Pac Man had more than one maze!
The difference was in the behavior of the ghosts. In Pac Man you can follow patterns to get through the levels. My friends and I found some patterns in a magazine in the early 80s and went through way too many quarters trying to master them. Even so, I never could get to the key levels.
On the other hand I think the ghosts have pseudo-random behavior in Ms Pac Man so you have to rely on strategy instead of memorization.
I liked Tempest a lot. The wheel had a nice heft to it, and would continue to spin for a bit if you spun it and let go. It was also the part that would get glitchy, though. I’ve tried Tempest ports, but without the wheel, it’s not the same.