It’s spread shot. It’s always been spread shot. At least on the Nintendo version. I was super bored one day and watched a history of speed runners of contra (it’s as exciting as you’d think, mostly meh) and all of them used spread shot.
My college dorm had a SF2 Turbo machine that I played all the time. Was good enough that I could run any character through the game without getting hit at all for the special endings. People would stop and watch me. I’m sure I would have been wrecked in a tournament (the second joystick was wonky so not much Player 2 action) but it was fun at the time to feel like sort of a Big Deal.
Other favorites were Smash TV, Golden Axe, TMNT and, earlier, Congo Bongo and Tapper. Raspberry mention to that Time Traveler fake hologram game that cost 4x the other games and was (like Dragon’s Lair) less “played” and more just trial/error then reflexes. It always looked cool at the time then ended in disappointment and arcade token poverty. [Edit: reading up on it, I learn that both Time Traveler and Dragon’s Lair were created by the same guy, Rick Dyer]
Then you might enjoy this.
I forgot about this one!
I was Fund Raising Chairman for my fraternity for a semester. We would rent arcade games and split the take with the rental company. The two games that made the most money were Karate Champ and a Space Shuttle Pinball machine.
I remember a kid who hung out at our local arcade who would sell you 40 Tempest credits for a dollar. It was a hack left in by developers that if you ended the game with a certain score, it would give you 40 credits.
Yeah Tempest for me, too.
Also this Kirby Krackle classic that starts out as a pleasant song about a geek crush and then takes an unexpected turn:
No love for Crazy Climber yet? Not only a blast to play, you get a little workout with it.
Marble Madness was another underrated and largely forgotten game.
I’m heading to that classic arcade tonight. Does anyone want to live vicariously through me? Any play requests?
That’s pretty expensive, isn’t it? Most games take several minutes to play if you’re halfway decent. Let’s say you play 6 games in 30 minutes. At 25 cents per play that would only be $1.50 worth of play. A single game of Galaga takes me about 20 minutes so that alone would be about 7 bucks. And I would be pissed if I paid $11 and some a-hole just like me is playing Galaga for 20 minutes so I don’t even get to play it.
Ever see Crazy Climber 2?
Also on my “played quite a bit in the day” (besides everybody’s favorite, Tempest): Joust (one of the rules at the arcade I frequented: “No Pterodactyl Hunting”), Gauntlet, and Qix (which was good on its own, before everybody and their mother copied it with the added “feature” that a nude woman appeared in the areas that were cleared).
For you pinball lovers, if you haven’t seen it, Technology Connections has an incredibly detailed video of how old pinball machines work.
I mentioned it upthread, how the final level was so Nintendo Hard that it was only winnable by a large dose of luck.
I haven’t been to an arcade where they charge 25 cents per play since the '90s.
Here in a Chicago suburb, we have an arcade (Galloping Ghost) with over 800 cabinets, apparently the largest in the US, and they charge $25 for the whole day.
Well, it’s the only game in town, and $11 just isn’t a lot of money. I’m not saying I get my money’s worth, but I end up playing five or six random games, plus a pinball game or two.
I went to an arcade a few weeks ago with my BIL’s kids, a chain called “Monster Mini Golf.” There’s an indoor mini golf course and a bunch of arcade games. It was like a miniature Dave and Busters without the bar. You got a “game card” that you tapped on the games instead of using quarters or tokens. Games were all $1 a credit.
Anyways, I was looking forward to showing my nephews some old school games, but there were no traditional old school arcade cabinets, they were all either physical games like Whack-A-Mole, Skee-ball, or that basketball game, or they were multiplayer driving and/or lightgun shooting games. They had something that looked like Centipede but with a giant screen and you used lightguns on it.
It was definitely not the arcade of my youth, but the kids had fun, and we redeemed all the tickets for whoopie cushions for all the kids on the way out (actually I’d earned most of the tickets, but what was I going to with them?). At least I didn’t have to drive home with them. 
I had largely forgotten it, but it was a lot of fun to both play and watch.
I guess I’m spoiled because I can go to Funspot in NH, where they have just about every classic game ever made and they’re still 25 cents per play. There are a few other arcades in the area and they’re still 25 cents too.