I have recently gotten the hang of MAME and am reliving some childhood memorire, but what I want to know is what are the great arcade games that I never got to play?
Street Fighter 2, Pacman, R-Type, 1942, Golden Axe, Arkanoid, and Qbert were some of my favorites.
For that, I can recommend having a look at the profiles of the regulars of the MAME newsgroup (alt.games.mame), which can be found here , or directly on alt.games.mame, where arcade nostalgia junkies talk about their addictions…
Time Killers is kind of fun. As is Toobin.
God, I can almost smell the inside of the Pizza Hut back in my hometown…
Ranchoth
(It’s now a Starbucks. 
)
Arcade Classics is a prototype from 1992 that was never released. It has Super Centipede which is OK, and Missile Command 2 which is totally killer.
Arlington Horse Racing is great.
Chicken Shift is weird and fun
Crazy Climber 2 was released in Japan only.
Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*Bert is another unreleased prototype.
Hexion is a great Japan-only Tetris variation. It’s worth it for the music alone.
Pac-Man Plus is my favorite Pac-Man variation.
Return Of The Invaders is a good update of Space Invaders.
Tempest Tubes is a hack where someone made their own Tempest configurations.
Wheel Of Fortune by GameTek kicks ass.
World Stadium and Super World Stadium are really good games based on Japanese baseball.
And don’t forget: Battlezone, Berzerk, Defender, Frenzy (Berzerk sequel), Marble Madness, Millipede, Pole Position, Qix, Scramble, Stargate (Defender 2), Tapper, Wizard Of Wor and Xevious.