Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the arcade game, 100%. Always with Raphael. Pressing jump and attack at the same time for all the other Turtles would have them do a flying kick, but Raphael would do a forward roll followed by a double jab with his sais, then roll back. Perfection.
Other, contemporary side-scrolling beat-em-up games were good, too. Simpsons and X-Men in particular.
I’ll also put in another vote for Rampart. Ports to home consoles sucked without the roller ball control.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Ms. Pac-Man. A few years ago I was a guest on an aircraft carrier “Tiger Cruise” where one of the activities was a showdown on the Ms. Pac-Man machine in the mess hall / galley. I practiced all week. I was the last civilian to play, got a better score than any practice run at just over 100,000 points with everyone watching. I lost first overall to a helicopter pilot who got almost 350,000.
I was in college when it first came out, and apparently I was one of very few people to know that there were a considerable number of random “openings” for the ghosts on each level, going by the number of discussions I overheard by people who were “working on their patterns” like the ones Pac-Man had.
I used to play the heck out of it on my Commodore 64 with a joystick. Lemme tell you, the joystick is not the ideal input controller for that game. But it was fun as hell, and impressive (at least my teenaged self thought so) for those isometric graphics. Similarly somewhat frustrating was playing Crystal Castles with a joystick.
I should add the Pump It Up games up to Premiere 3. I should point out that I was too embarrassed to even look at Dance Dance Revolution when the first PIU came out, and I started playing only because there were so many songs that no one else ever picked that I wanted to hear. These were the games that taught me to stop being insecure, stop giving a damn what everyone was undoubtedly thinking, and just get up there and play. So many fantastic memories. After Premiere 3 the difficulty shot into the stratosphere (what else is new) and I gradually lost interest, but for those special few years this was completely my jam.
Infovore - Kinda hard to hit A or B on the arcade machine, don’t you think?
snfaulkner - Nintendo had nothing to do with the arcade machine. But since you brought up speedruns, this might interest you.
hogarth - It didn’t get a lot of hype, most likely because Capcom had so many great beat-'em-ups, but it had some cool ideas and definitely deserves recognition. Glad you remember now!
BobLibDem - It was a nifty concept, but the controls were just a bit too avant-garde for me. I did play Fire Trap (1986) quite a bit, though.
ALCON
Golden Axe
Xain d’Sleena
Mat Mania
Dragon’s Lair
Space Ace
Commando
Street Fighter II
Mortal Kombat
Soul Edge
Gyruss
Afterburner
Choplifter
Double Dragon
Missile Command
Kung Fu Master
Gun Smoke
Time Pilot
Gauntlet
Elevator Action
Mappy
Punch Out
Pengo
Tron
Discs of Tron
Vindicators
Darius 2
1942
Rygar
Probably vastly more LOL I spent a lot of time in the arcades. I don’t think I could pick one.
Another game I loved, yet forgot until about 20 minutes ago, was the quite difficult Tutankham, which had a character which could only shoot right or left:
Er, you were aware that you could shoot at the spikes as you were moving from one level to the next, right?
I wonder who was it that first said, “Yes, Tutankhamun is a nice name, but it won’t fit on the screen”? (Supposedly, that’s why it’s called just Tutankham.)
When I was a teen arcade games were like Night Driver and other rudimentary cabinet games. I was in my twenties before the golden age of arcade games was ushered in.
Wizard of Wor was a game I liked. The only place I ever saw it was at a Red Owl that we would otherwise never grocery shop at.
I also liked Berzerk and Gorf which was like 5 games in one. Both of these transferred well into Atari 2600 cartridges.
I also liked the original Punch Out where Mr Sandman was the champion.
I found a cool site that has most of these games online for free.
A local small amusement park where I grew up (weirdly enough started by Johnson Controls back when they were still Wisconsin-based) had that game. Only place I ever saw it.
And for completely unrelated reasons I’m now thinking about the first game I remember that took two quarters:
Then there was Rally X. A true game of skill. You had to keep your eyes on a map to the right as you drove an RC car around picking up flags while red cars chased you.
The first edition was quite hard and didn’t give enough extra players.
Then they came out with a “New Rally X”. It was identical as the first edition except the first few screens were easier with less red cars chasing you in the beginning. You also got one extra car than the first edition and there was a “lucky” flag that boosted your score. It was a very compelling game.
Kinda hard to hit A or B on the arcade machine, don’t you think?
