When I say arcade games, I’m not talkin’ 'bout nintendo/sega/playsaation. I mean the stand up, cigarette burns on the buttons, quarter stuck in the panel, broken coin return arcade game from back in the day. I remember standing around Super Sprint and Punch Out for hours (with empty pockets). But my favorite game of all time would have to be Quarterback, with the flip-back stick to throw the pass…man I loved that game. I also spend alot of quarters on Tron as well…any more?
Never spent much money on them myself, but that didn’t stop me from having my favorites.
I always loved Galaxian, better know by many as Galaga. I honestly don’t know if there was a difference between them. That would have to be my favorite.
I also liked Defender quite a bit.
I was a 10-year-old of little money and simple tastes. 
I do seen to recall a difference in the two, but it was generally the same game. I think Galaxian had better graphics.
Gotta be Dig-Dug.
Dig-n-pump dig-n-pump dig-n-pump
Loosen boulders to fall on unsuspecting dragons.
<Oh yeah!>
Many’s the time I dug into the pockets of my 501’s for quarters, and pulled the hair back outta my eyes to play that game.
Nowadays, it’s Hydro Thunder.
You sit in a seat and race boats. The seat has all sorts of bass speakers built into it so it rumbles your body.
Very cool.
My 1st real arcade obsession was with Final Fight. I’d climb mountains back when I was a teenager to play that game–But only Cody, of course.
After that, I spent a lot of time with Samurai Showdown 1, Aliens vs Predator, The X-Men side-scrolling beat’em up, the original vector graphic Star Wars flyer and occasionally Star Trek. Darkstalkers was another great game, if I could get through the crowd of foreign exchange students to play it.
As a kid, I loved Tempest. If I could find an old Tempest game for my basement, I’d be one happy mama! More recently I enjoy Area 51, which now, is pretty old too. But finding a secret room still makes me grin like a kid on her first visit to Disneyland.
Dragon’s Lair. No doubt about it. I’d stand there with my big brown roller skates on, and get killed by that damn lizard king 9 out of 10.
The X-Men game was one of my favourites too, back when I still spent quarters that way. I also have to mention “Strikers 1945”, an incredibly silly shoot-em-up. You got to pick one of six WWII-era planes, which made no sense because everything was armed with lasers and the boss-enemy on each level was a giant robot. Anachronistic, high-explosive fun!
Joust - Knights on flying ostriches, spearing eggs before they hatched into the enemy: that pterodactyl would appear if you took too long.
(Side note - my sister and I found a two person tilt-table pinball game of Joust once (traveling arcade at the New York State Fair), but have never found the game again anywhere.
Gauntlet - D&D characters running around getting treasure, killing stuff and looking for the exit. I really disliked the level that was a narrow corridor surrounded by all exits - one false move and you missed all the treasure and good stuff.
Spy Hunter - You drove a Bond-type car at high-speed through different roads (dry, ice, night), avoiding enemy cars running you off the road and spearing your tires. Every so often the tractor-trailer would appear - you drove into it and ogt some neat gadget like an oil-slick or a surface-to-air missile (useful on the pesky helicopter). Oh, and the theme to “Peter Gunn” playing all the way through.
Another one of the order of Dragon’s Lair (interactive screens, pick the action in a split second) involved a spy in Monte Carlo - when you lost all your lives, there was a short animation showing a body falling through the drophole on a hangman’s scaffold (game over, obviously). Anyone remember the name of this game?
And holdenmagroin mentioned Tron: wasn’t there a version of that using the guys from “Journey”? Choose one of the performers (a picture of their faces stuck onto a Tron-like body), and go through the same types of games as Tron - the spiders, the speeders, the colored cylinder. Or am I completely out of it?
Cabal.
With three lives and unlimited ammo, you must completely destroy a third-world nation. Even when I could beat the game consistently, I still kept coming back to it.
I think what I liked most was that after you had cleared a screen by killing hundreds of soldiers and demolishing about a dozen buildings, your commando did this ridiculous little dance up the screen and over the horizon.
–sublight.
My favourite arcade game is in the “penny arcade” on Disneyland’s Main Street. It has a big dial on it and two handles. You hold onto the handles and an electrical current flows through you, gaining strength the longer you hold on. The object is to withstand the shock until the dial reaches the maximum and the bell rings. I like to play this game over and over again until my biceps twitch.
By the way, if anyone knows the proper name for this game or knows where I can get plans to build one, I’d sure like to know.
The original BattleZone. Vector graphics. Incredible for its time and very popular.
Mappy, or Micro Police. A side-scroller with multiple levels on a screen and cute, catchy background music. A mouse in a police uniform runs around a house gathering valuables, chased by 1 big cat and 4 kittens. To navigate between levels, jump off the end of a level or at a break in the level, bounce off a trampoline at the bottom, then go to a different level on the way up.
When Microsoft’s arcade collections for the PC came out, I bought them because these games were included.
My vote would be for a little known game called Mappy. It was a game based on a cute mouse cop grabbing up valuables in a house while dodging cats. The music was cute, and the graphics for the time were excellent. I haven’t seen it in any form other than Arcade.
A very close second would be The Real Ghostbusters. Playing a Ghostbuster you had a proton pack to bring the monsters down and suck up the ghost they leave behind. Again, never saw this game in any form other than Arcade.
Amazing timing for this thread. Just a moment ago, I made a deal to buy my favorite game of all time, Tapper/. It’s a very unique game, and somewhat rare. Here’s a link to the game:
http://www.klov.com/T/Tapper.html
Other favorites of mine:
Arkanoid (I may buy one of these too): An updated version of Breakout.
Tetris: Needs no introduction, I’m sure.
Marble Madness: Very unique trackball game.
Lunar Lander: Vector graphics, and VERY challenging.
Galaga: A descendant of Space Invaders.
Here’s a great web site for arcade games:
So who wants to come over and play with my Tapper?
I got my initials all over Tempest and Joust and Spy Hunter machines throughout a three-state area for years.
Later, Marble Madness was awesome.
I’d also like to add Gyruss to this list. I loved that game. Nothing like making it to Uranus. (I was odd even as a kid.)
One I would love to find again is Rabbit Punch, a great scroller I met in a convenience store in PA, but have never seen anywhere else.
Maybe I’ll download an emulator…
I remember all these games. I also had them all on my home computer (48k spectrum :D). I loved the bit in Spy Hunter where the truck dropped off a new car when you died.
I also loved all sorts of side scrolling beat-em-ups. There was one called Knights of the Round which featured Arthurian knights. My brother and I found it for 10p a go once and spent the afternoon completing it.
I also liked a game called Green Beret where it was one guy running around with a knife and another game called Ikari Warriors, a kind of top down shoot-em-up.
Man, this brings back some memories. Summers spent in the arcades when the weather was cracking the flags outside <g>
Guess that could partly account for my pale complection 
Rick
Time Pilot - where you had to progressively fight more modern enemies (starting with WWI bi-planes) as the game progressed.
Jack the Giant Killer - a rare game where you climbed a beanstalk and stole crap from a giant.
Dragon’s Liar - I played this until I defeated the dragon and went broke in the process.
An incomplete list:
Root Beer Tapper: I used to play this at Dirty’s all the time. One of my favorites.
Joust: I used to own the sit down version of this that screech-owl talked about.
Star Wars: The sit down version, not the stand up one. If I could find one I would snap it up in a heartbeat.
And my all time favorite:
Dig Dug: Nothing better. I am in the midst of restoring one that I found in a junk yard. It didn’t have any of the interior stuff, and I have slowly been collecting them over the course of a year. I have the ROM finally!
Quite a bit of difference, actually. Galaxian came first, very shortly after Space Invaders. It was similar to Space Invaders (small ship at the bottom that can only move side to side, shoot at a large group of “aliens” at the top of the screen, aliens shoot back). The big differences were it was in color, slightly more interesting sound, and the aliens would periodically dive toward the bottom of the screen.
Galaga was the next progression from Galaxian. Very similar but a few important differences. Instead of just materializing at the top of the screen the aliens flew in in waves from the sides of the screen, giving you a chance to shoot at them before the “formation” was ever complete. You could allow your ship to be “captured”, and if you managed to free it with your next ship the two ships became linked, giving you double the fire power. And every fifth(?) level was a special “challange” level - a series of aliens would fly around without shooting at you while you did your best to kill every single one of them for a special 10,000 point bonus.
Guess where a lot of my quarters went to? Galaga was the only video game I was ever really good at - I could roll the score over pretty much any time I felt like it.
If you love these old games, be sure to go here. They have LOTS of cool stuff about all the true classics! I was partial to Wizard of Wor and Asteroids.