I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and ask about some arcade games I remember enjoying, but can’t remember the names of.
In one of these, you drove a futuristic tank in a top-down view. The controls were two sticks, like in Battlezone, and functioned the same but they could be moved in all directions, which lead to new moves - if you pushed both sticks in the same direction the tank would roll sideways (not the treads, the actual tank was flipping over), and if you pushed the sticks away from each other the tank would do something like a wheelie, and if you fired a shot while pointed upwards it would arc a long distance (depending on how far you tilted up) and hit with a lot of explosive force. In this game you drove around these various alien landscapes destroying a lot of little robots or tanks or something, and there were these launchpads you could drive on that would send you flying through the air. I think this game is from the late '80s, and I was really impressed with it’s graphics and depth at the time.
Another game, from the same general era, I liked but do not remember as well. This too was a top-down action game, and you drove something that was like an armed motorcycle, but I think it may have had more than two wheels. I think there was some kind of fuel or energy meter, but not sure, the one thing I remember well was that your vehicle left tire tracks on most kinds of terrain, which persisted, and this was something that seemed pretty new to video games at the time. I think it also had destroyable terrain or walls, but I’m not sure.