favorite arcade games...

In My Humble Opinion
21

screech-owl, the laserdisc game you’re thinking of was Cliff Hanger. And there was a game featuring Journey (called Journey), but it was an original adventure in outer space, not an edit of Tron. (I just love all the backstories about video games and all-Journey came out of an idea for a game which would have a camera and capture the face of the player and put it on the high score list, as well as the enemy. During testing, one silly guy pulls down his pants-in public, no less!-and that’s the end of that.)

And for my favorite classic arcade games? Probably Spy Hunter, Robotron 2084, and the ambassador of video games, Pac-Man.

And remember, “Recycle it, don’t trash it” and “winners don’t use drugs”.

22

I definately remember playing this game. The band members looked like bobble-heads.

23

I love all the games mentioned so far, but there was one game, “Great Swordsman,” you hardly ever saw anywhere but I loved it. I must have held the world record. You fought swordfights with fencing partners, and then you fought with Kendo swordsmen, and finally with gladiators. Beautifully made game. It was great.

Let’s also not forget “Kangaroo.”

Or “Star Wars,” the vector graphics one you sat down in. GREAT game.

Or “Pole Position.”

24

I love all the old classics. Spy Hunter and Galaga are fond memories. I can still play Robotron for hours. That two-stick setup is sweet. It was later used again in Smash TV, another great game I can play for hours.

I played all the Street Fighter II and up series, and sometimes still do. I had a mean-ass Vega in SFII Turbo.

One game that I haven’t seen around much that I love to death is the original arcade Stryder. Great graphics for its time and there’s something about the “ka-SHIIING!!” sound of your sword that kicks so much ass. Fortunately this is available under MAME (the multi-arcade machine emulator) so I can play it on my PC!

Another fun, slightly older game that I have fond memories of is “Hard Drivin’”. This was a crude, but again very good for its time, driving game. The best part of it was that you could run over a cow that was grazing by the side of the road in one course, and the game would go “MMMOOOOOO!” I always cracked up (and lost) when I ran over the cow. That damn cow earned that game more quarters than all the programmer’s skills and computer car AI combined.
The arcades have been kinda sucky of late. Ever since they took Time Crisis out, there hasn’t been much that’s fun to play. I wish they’d get Hydro Thunder, that’s a great game.
Seems like about all I can do is play Crazy Taxi.
-Ben

25

I could literally list favorite arcade games all day, but there will always be a special place in my heart for Asteroids. Not because I was particularly good at it or anything, but because it was while playing Asteroids that I realized I could make a living writing video games – which eventually led to computer science, software development, and me writing code to send (real) F-15s against enemy aircraft.

Haven’t been to the arcades regularly these days, but I blame that largely to the sucky state of arcade video gaming these days. The most recent games to grab me have been San Francisco Rush (especially The Rock expansion) and Crazy Taxi. Boo-yeah!

Oh, and needless to say, any true fan of classic arcade gaming will have a copy of MAME (or MacMAME, for us Mac folks out there) on their computer… :smiley:

26

Robotron: 2084

Stargate (Defender was good too, but harder for me)

Zaxxon

That second Tron game, the one where you threw disks at a computer opponent - damn that game was cool.

Star Wars - this is one of the very few arcade games I was really good at, the ones listed above would usually beat me inside of 5 minutes.

Spider Fighter

Gorf

Tempest

27

Best game ever, sensual in its simplicity, was TAILGUNNER. Again…not the climb-in, sit-down version, but the simple joystick and firebutton to control your targeting crosshairs as you flew through a 2D maze backwards while things tried to come up on you from behind and kill you.

I have to admit, though, once in college, I developed a fondness for LIBERATOR, which was kind of MISSILE COMMAND in reverse. You flew from occupied planet to planet and rained down death from above in order to “liberate” the freedom loving peoples of that particular galaxy.

As a lifelong registered Democrat, I freely admit way too great a degree of glee in faux mass destruction.

Confession is so good for the soul.

28

Oh god, there were so many…

IKARI Warriors was mentioned earlier…that was an AWESOME game. Even the sequel was excellent.

How 'bout Elevator Action? Sort of a spy thing where you had to go in these doors and pick up a red briefcase, then get out alive.

Kangaroo was lots of fun, especially when you got hit and your kangaroo fell down with its toungue sticking out.

The original Star Wars game (vector graphics and all) was lots of fun; the new one (Star Wars Trilogy) combat flightsim is really fun too.

How about Operation Wolf? The beginning of the shoot 'em up genre games…very cool. After that were T2:Judgement Day, Area 51, Lethal Enforcers…

Oh, there were others too…P.O.W., Bad Dudes, Spy Hunter, Centipede, Asteroids…damn. Now I’m all nostalgic.

29

I never could finagle enough quarters for me to pump into Zaxxon as a kid. Dig Dug was also a favorite of the classics.

More recently, I put entirely too much money into Area 51 in the game room at the student center at college.

30

Damn, someone beat me to Strider. At the time, it was without question the coolest thing I had ever seen. It’s still way up there. Just the little things, like the way you flip over when you jump, the way you actually stand properly on slopes, the wall climbing, and the Russian parlament turned into giant centipede monsters . . . and it was the first non-Gorf game I saw that actually talked.

Not to mention the kung-fu chicks, who killed me the first time I saw them because I didn’t realize they were bad guys until they cut me in half . . .

Could have lived without the “OOKABOOKA EEKEEBEEKA!!” amazons, though. Something tells me that’s not really Portugese . . . The “Flying Fortress Ballog,” the gravity-switching, and the dinosaur riding was cool as hell, though.

It wasn’t until Vurtual On, almost 9 years later that another game had that same “Oh . . . My . . . God . . .” effect on me. I’ll never forgive Sega for not releasing VO2 in North America. Bastards. I’m glad your console died. Between VO2 and Frame Gride, I was willing to actually buy a Dreamcast . . .

I may be uniqe in north america, but I was always a big fan of most of the SNK fighting games. The original Fatal Fury (the first moment when Geese grabed me OUT OF THE AIR and slamed me into the ground was eched forever in my adolecent mind. BARN KNACKULE!!!) and the later ones, the Art of Fighting games. Everyone liked the Samurai Shodown and the King of Fighters games, though . . .

Actually, SNK did a lot of great games. Cyber L.I.P., which later morphed into Metal Slug always rocked, I remember walking down to The Pub during my free periods in high school and spending the change from my lunch money on it.

Black Tiger, AKA Black Dragon was always a big favorite of mine. Hard to find, though. So was Kicker, which was sort of a super Ye Ar Kung Fu, but platform-style.

When I first started at UMASS, they had two neat games scattered around campus. The Macross top-down scroller, and King of Dragons, which re-used a bunch of sprites from the Dungeons & Dragons side-scroller. And Gladiator was cool, though I never got that glowing forcefield to appear, and Irene always killed me . . .

Back in the 8 bit days, the arcade version of Castlevainia (near or exactly identical to the NES version) and Spy Hunter were always fun. And Ghosts & Goblins, the hardest game in the history of the universe . . . I always liked Crossbow, dispite the fact I was utterly terrible at it.

By the way, does anyone remember that utterly sick “Crossbow” clone where you shoot people in a torture chamber? Everyone thinks it’s something that crawled out of my twisted brain, but I actually saw it, dammit. Not Splatterhouse, (Which was actually pretty cool) this one seemed to use the Crossbow engine . . .

–
“Ah, it is Strider Hiryu! He will never leave Euasia alive!”

31

Wow, I’m seeing a few games I forgot about, like Tapper and Zaxxon. Also, a game called Timber that was similar to tapper, but instead of pouring beer, he was chopping down trees. Also, I was talking to a guy at work and he told me about Lunar Landing but I don’t remember it nor did I understand his explanation of it. Land a lunar? What exactily was the challange?

32

Mrs Sn-man gave me one of my favorite arcade games for Christmans: Crystal Castles. Crystal Castles, Tron, Robotron 2084, QIX and Tempest were tops on my list. Next were: Missile Command, Centipede, Space Invaders II, and then you get down to one to play just to kill time. A video junkie from way back!

33

I basically grew up in an arcade. I must say I preferred pinball or bubble hockey/soccer, but some of my favourites include:
[li]Arkanoid - Of course this was by and large considered a girls’ game.[/li][li]Star Wars - We only ever had the standup. 1 quarter = 1/2 hour of fun.[/li][li]ABP - Really cool police game where you need to flash your siren on increasingly evil cars and then beat confessions out of criminals. Had a great cartoony feel.[/li][li]Xenophobe - Cool three player game where you went around killing aliens on a ship. One of the first games I remember that let you change the look of your character.[/li][li]Super Sprint - A cool remake of an earlier game where people race against each other and upgrade their cars.[/li]I’m not sure what it was called - but it was a fighting game like Double Dragon which began with the plot outline “The skinheads have taken Madonna hostage”. A lot of us were skins so we thought that was pretty cool.

34

After reading this thread again, I remembered 2 more favorites from back in the 80’s:

Berzerk, and it’s similar cousin Frenzy. Where you walked through a 2-D maze shooting robots on your way the the other side of the screen. If you took too long a robot voice would say “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” and then a bouncing smilie face would chase you off the screen.

Vanguard where you had a joystick and four fire buttons to fire up down left or right depending on where the enemy was coming from.

I am definately going to seek out an arcade this weekend that has some of these games.

35

Oh, the wonders of growing up in a TV shop…

We repaired arcade games, too (being the only electronics repair shop in the area brought all sorts of odd gadgets through our doors), and I was designated “official tester” at a young age. That meant that I got to play the games with the little door on the front open (so I could manually add credits) until someone came to pick up the machine. That’s right: I got to play for free, sometimes for days at a stretch. Of course, I didn’t get to pick which games came in, so occasionally I was stuck with one that sucked, but overall I came out way ahead.

Battlezone was a particular favorite of mine, even though I had to stand on a tall stool to see through the sight. I was also very fond of Dig-Dug, Joust, Tempest, and Galaga. There was also a game called Leprechaun/Pot of Gold/something like that, in which you had to run around and change the colors of all the trees in a screen without getting caught.

Later on, when Gauntlet II came out, I became a mixed blessing to arcade managers. I was great advertising for the game, but they generally only got a quarter a day out of me, and no one who joined my games stayed in for long–something about fighting dragons regularly intimidated them. One enterprising manager set up a second game next to the one I monopolized and labelled it “Beginner”.

I recently played Gauntlet Legends in the arcade. It’s fun, but it just isn’t as much fun as its predecessor. Gauntlet II still reigns as my all-time favorite. Now, it’s lunchtime here, and “Red wizard needs food badly!”
:smiley:

36

I only got a $0.50 allowance when I was a kid so I never became very good at any game. There were a few games that had easier first levels so I could play a bit longer, though.

Sinistar - Mine the asteroids for raw materials to make bombs to destroy the Sinistar while it is being built Death Star-like by its’ minions. If you took too long to load up on bombs, the Sinistar would be complete and come, literally, roaring after you.

Rampage - Play a giant lizard, gorilla or werewolf and demolish buildings, eat people and cause general mayhem.

Currently the Star Wars Trilogy game is my favorite. I cleared the entire Hoth battle the first time I played.

37

Did NO ONE play Street Fighter 2??? my word!

Anyway…The above mentioned game as well as Soul Calibur.

38

Here’s a page about Lunar Lander:
http://www.klov.com/L/Lunar_Lander.html

As I said earlier in the thread, it’s one of my favorite games. I think it’s cool that it was made so long ago, and is primitive by today’s game standards, yet is still very playable and challenging.

If anyone ever comes across an actual arcade machine of one of these, tell me where!

39

Bean counter I remember Rampage. That game was cool. I got it on my Atari STE too. It was great fun to chase the little people around and eat them too.

There are so many games people have mentioned which i remember. I can’t remember the names of some of the ones we used to love as kids. I remember Double Dragon, Fatal Fury, Ghosts and Goblins and of course, the Street Fighter series (SF vs X-Men and Marvel Superheroes were both great).

I’m sure I will think of more. Ah, those were the days. If only I had the time now (now that I have more money) :slight_smile:

Rick

40

Not sure how no one mentioned DDR, Dance Dance Revolution, yet. It’s by far my favorite arcade game of all time. Try to find it in a local arcade.

Others which were great: Rolling Thunder, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Ferarri F355 (Holy geez is this a hard racing game) and Extreme Bull Wrestler.

If you’ve not played Extreme Bull Wrestler, I recommend getting two friends and playing the hardest setting. Quite unfair, but leads to good stories of falling all over the place at an arcade.

John