The SDMB Arcade

[SSG_Schwartz]

Airman Doors, I will second your Ikari Warriors.

Let me add Tag Team Wresting
Hogan’s Alley and
Out Run the sit down version.

SSG Schwartz

[Zebra]

@BobLibDem

A video game I’d like to nominate but don’t know the name: you flew this spaceship and shot bullets out the front and could throw I think 3 bombs at once, flying over a maze and bombing fuel tanks to refill. Eventually you got to a maze barely bigger than your ship and you had to fly straight up and straight down to complete it before the screen scrolled too far.

zaxxon?

[BobLibDem]

@Zebra

zaxxon?

no, it wasn’t 3D view. I’m thinking late 70s, early 80s.

[Shoeless]

I’ll second Dragon’s Lair, and throw in Q-Bert and a pinball machine called Silverball something-or-other (I know there was another word in the name but we always just called it Silverball.)

[Pithy_Moniker]

Seconding Q-bert

I’ll toss in:
Jungle King
Mortal Kombat II (since we’re not stuck in the 80s)

[Spoons]

@BobLibDem

Atlantis had one of the most difficult sequences to finish to light the special, you had to get the ball up on the chute on the right and then it went down a series of lanes, sometimes you’d get 4 numbers in one shot, sometimes none.

And if the ball went down a certain chute and you didn’t bump it just right, down it went. Gottlieb’s Jacks Open had the same kind of playfield arrangement–thankfully, I had the knack from many, many games on Atlantis.

I’m a big fan of pinball, especially the old “clunker and banger” electromechanical machines. Some favorites I’d like to see in our arcade:

Bally’s Trail Drive: Deceptively simple looking, but maddening to hit a replay score on, unless you could trap consistently and aim correctly.

Gottlieb’s Royal Flush: Forget sequential bonuses; let’s grant a bonus score (or not) depending on the card targets you drop. Royal Flush was the only game I ever encountered where you could drop up to four or five of ten targets and still get zero bonus points. You hadn’t hit the right combination of targets, obviously.

Gottlieb’s Pioneer: The Gottlieb company’s tribute to the US Bicentennial in 1976. Another simple-looking machine, but extremely difficult to get the replay score.

Bally’s Captain Fantastic: An asymmetrical playfield and challenging sequences, but if you made them, your score could get quite large. Completing those sequences, however…

There are many more I’d like to see in our arcade (including Williams machines), but those are the ones that stand out for now. Electromechanical pinballs always had great artwork (was it Steve Christiansen who was the artist who loved big belt buckles for his busty ladies?) and in spite of their simplicity, were very challenging games.

[Slypork]

Zaxxon
Dragon’s Lair
Breakout
Missile Command
Gorf
Burgertime
Moon Patrol
Gyruss
Spy Hunter
Track & Field

I wasted more time and quarters than I care to think of.

Does anyone remember a space arcade game that had cut scenes from Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan (specifically the Project Genesis animation)? You were flying through the canyons of some moon.

Also, there was a sit down fighter jet flight simulator game where the images came from a laser disc. Great footage of flying through canyons and over rivers.

[Spoons]

@Shoeless

I’ll second Dragon’s Lair, and throw in Q-Bert and a pinball machine called Silverball something-or-other (I know there was another word in the name but we always just called it Silverball.)

That would be Silverball Mania. I believe it was manufactured by Bally, but I’m not sure. IIRC, it had that horseshoe loop that–if you could make it and it sure wasn’t easy to do–advanced a letter sequence. Completing the sequence awarded a chance at the special, and carried over from game to game, which meant I poured quarters into that thing one summer’s day, years ago.

Thanks for the memory. Gosh, I love pinballs–still do, but they’re getting harder and harder to find.

[rhythmonly]

Old pinball: El Dorado.

First electronic pinball: Night Rider.

Best electronic pinball: Rocky and Bullwinkle.

[Bearflag70]

I don’t know if I can pick three but my list would start with this:

SHORT LIST
Ms. Pacman
Battlezone
Star Wars
Xevious
Qix
Tempest

LONGER LIST
Q-bert
Zaxxon
Berzerk
Dig Dug
Moon Patrol
Cobra Command
Chopper Command
Missile Command
Space Invaders
Pole Position
Gunsmoke
Breakout
Donkey Kong

[JohnT]

I second Robotron: 2084 and politely invite all of you to a ritualized ass-kicking.

My noms:

Hyperball
Kangaroo (for the kiddies)

[Bearflag70]

@BobLibDem

A video game I’d like to nominate but don’t know the name: you flew this spaceship and shot bullets out the front and could throw I think 3 bombs at once, flying over a maze and bombing fuel tanks to refill. Eventually you got to a maze barely bigger than your ship and you had to fly straight up and straight down to complete it before the screen scrolled too far.

Ah… crap. I know what game you mean. That was fun, but I can’t remember the name.

What I recall:

It was a 2-D horizontal scroller shooter. You were flying in a cave, I think, or over land. The cave ceiling and floor scrolled right to left. You flew a ship that shot a forward gun and also dropped bombs. The cave floor was pretty jagged. On the cave floor were fuel tanks. If the bomb hit a tank, you’d get more fuel. Flying enemies came at you from right to left. The flyers would typically move up and down as they scrolled past.

[Scuba_Ben]

@BobLibDem

A video game I’d like to nominate but don’t know the name: you flew this spaceship and shot bullets out the front and could throw I think 3 bombs at once, flying over a maze and bombing fuel tanks to refill. Eventually you got to a maze barely bigger than your ship and you had to fly straight up and straight down to complete it before the screen scrolled too far.

That sounds very much like Scramble.

I want to keep lifelike violence games out of this arcade, there’s nothing particularly distinctive about any of them.

Along with the air hockey tables, we need a set of Skee-Ball machines.

[shy_guy]

@Pithy Moniker

Seconding Q-bert

I’ll toss in:
Jungle King
Mortal Kombat II (since we’re not stuck in the 80s)

I second Mortal Kombat 2.

[Bearflag70]

SCRAMBLE

EDIT: Scuba_ben beat me to it.

[Labtrash]

@BobLibDem

A video game I’d like to nominate but don’t know the name: you flew this spaceship and shot bullets out the front and could throw I think 3 bombs at once, flying over a maze and bombing fuel tanks to refill. Eventually you got to a maze barely bigger than your ship and you had to fly straight up and straight down to complete it before the screen scrolled too far.

Scramble?
LOVED THAT GAME (And Super Cobra - just like it with a chopper)
Add those 2 games, and
Elevator Action
Spy Hunter (Sit Down)

[HoboStew]

Lots of great games listed here so far, but my list begins and ends with Cyberball 2072. Played it last year and it is just as fun as it was way back when. Also one of those games that never translated well to any home versions.

[Ludovic]

I second Crazy Climber: “GO FOR IT!”

I’ll second S.T.U.N. Runner reluctantly: it’s not a Golden Age game (i.e. it was made after Gauntlet made the whole insert-rolls-of-quarters thing de riguer,) but it’s 3-d racing AND shooting system where you had to know where everything was before it was coming up has never quite been replicated IMO.

My additions for the secondment of Red Baron:
Major Havoc. I loved the breakout game you could do in between missions to the Space Hulks.
Crystal Castles. Artwork, feel, and gameplay have never been replicated within the Pac-man genre.

[Doug_Bowe]

Two from Capcom:

** Ghosts 'N Goblins** and** Black Tiger**.

God, I wasted so many quarters on those two.

[Terrifel]

Wait a second: pinball represents the *Silver Age * of arcades? Does no one else see how messed up that is?