Big Ben, which was a pinball game we abused in a bowling alley near home. Anyone familiar with this is as old a fart as I am.
Prior to that, my favorite game was banging on rocks with a stick as we watched the mastodons go by.
Yeah, and at the end he’d rate your ability. “You have been an adequate opponent!”
JoeyHemlock- Yes I am. My sister goes out with the son of the owner of Italys.
Anybody ever play Track & Field using the pencil technique? And then have the arcade staff glue button protectors to the console to prevent you from using pencils?
Mojo: Yes, I am quite aware of this! i never understood the big deal either - it didn’t hurt the game! Though I mastered a technique using two fingers of each hand on each button. When i found an ancient copy of the game only a year ago at a bar, I tried playing it, but I couldn’t get the fingers working like I did in my youth… I guess the fingers are the first to go… sigh
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, one week, five days, 14 hours, 32 minutes and 4 seconds.
5384 cigarettes not smoked, saving $673.03.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]
We always used our combs! I was going to ask if anyone else did this when I saw Track and Field mentioned above (Well, was reminded of its existence is more accurate). Nobody ever cared about it or tried to keep us from doing it though.
I always loved sit-down games and would play those versions for 50 cents rather than stand and pay only a quarter.
Like Pole Position or Star Trek or a number of flight sims.
There was a shooting game at the arcade when the computer games were still coming in that featured a big screen television with German WWII fighters and you had a life size .50 caliber maching gun just like Rat Patrol (in Color!) and you had to blast the Nazis out of the sky.
There also was a football game with one to four players that had the players as x’ and o’s and you had these big trak ball controlls that you had to spin madly to make your guy run. Great Game.
I recall an early shoot out game with two cowboys fighting each other with various obsticals between you. (covered wagon and cacti) that was loads of fun.
Of course Star Wars and Galaga but I never could do Defender as well as my friends.
Of course all of these games pale in comparison to bumper cars which the arcade in the big mall in OKC had when it first opened.
I don’t believe how much time I spent playing Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. If I had a dime for every quarter…uh, nevermind.
I have fond memories of Leprechaun Lore (and Tempest, Galaga, Joust, and some weird thing where you ran over fish with a paint roller–sort of a 3d PacMan), but my favorite was Gauntlet. I was the guy (every arcade had one) who would play for hours on one quarter, with other people joining in and dropping out when they saw how quickly they were getting toasted.
For a trip down memory lane, try the Killer List of Video Games which has screen shots etc. It’s good for tracking down the details of those games you only vaguely remember.
Once you’ve got your definitive list o’favs, go get MAME and play 'em on your PC!
Space Wars was one of the first (if not the first) raster games, with two players shooting at each other. You could choose to add interesting effects like black holes and such from the console before you started to play. I think the game you are referring to is Space Duel, which had two ships connected by a line, and geometric objects to shoot at.
Galaga eventually morphed into something called Gaplus where you could capture several ships at once. Anyone remember this? Also I found Galaga '88 on a MAME site, it’s a pretty radical update of Galaga. I’d never seen this at an arcade before…
I was mostly a puzzle-game freak: Tetris, Columns, Plotting, Klax, etc.
Although I could consistently play Arkanoid all the way through to the end.
Oh, and pinball games - Anyone remember Centaur II? IMHO, the best multi-ball game of all time…
I came cuz I heard there was pinball. Real, blinkin’ twinklin mechanical pinball, paddles slapping, bumpers bumping, metal balls cracking and rumbling across the dance floor (needs waxin again)
The Silver Ball.
My sister and I played there for weeks with the launddry quarters, just before she moved away to college on the other side of the world. But first, for a couple of weeks there was Mata Hari, that was our game. Pinball.
Pure silver ball. None of these tweeks and fleeps and honks.
That was the only game I was ever any good at!
When I was a kid, my best friend was a boy and he always wanted to go to the arcade. I hated it until I found a game where all you had to do was wreck stuff. I wish there was a Nintendo or Sega version of Rampage!
Moon Cresta!
From all the way back in 1980. I loved that little Sega/Gremlin/Nichibutsu game so much, I bought an old console version of it in 1993. (It now serves as a table in my living room.)
Woops! By “console” version of Moon Cresta, I really meant the sit-down “tabletop” version. It’s kinda hard to use a stand-up console as a living room table!
Incidentally, the tabletop version I have has the Nichibutsu label on it. There seem to be some SLIGHT differences between it and the Sega/Gremlin version I grew up with – mostly in terms of the text that appeared in the Attract Mode. The music, which was what I loved most about that game, was identical.
andygirl wrote:
I remember that game. It was one great big Budweiser commercial.
By the way, because real beer was seen as inappropriate for young video game players, the makers of Tapper came out with a version called “Root Beer Tapper,” where you served mugs filled with dark brown liquid instead of goldenrod-colored liquid.
You can buy Rampage for the Nintendo 64. It plays about the same, but I found that when you have an unlimited supply of “quarters”, the game just stops being fun after the first 35 levels or so.
I am glad to see so many Galaga fans here. That is the only game that was ever worth playing in the arcade, I think, only because you could play for 15-20 minutes per game.
I now have Galaga for my Nintendo 64 (comes on a Capcom Classics pack with Pac-Man, Pole Position, etc…). It plays identical to the arcade version, complete with the cheesy music. I only play it once every couple of weeks, but one glorious day the stars were aligned so that I managed my top score of 206,000. Now I usually top out around 150,000 and haven’t even come close to 206,000 again.
I don’t remember what level I got to.
I might have to play when I get home.
Zookeeper ruled. Gotta jump them animals.
Also, Galaga, Food Fight, Tron, Zaxon (I think, something with a Z that involved flying under and around force fields and blowing up stuff), Bezerk (I lied, I lied).
Then there was another one that I think started with either a Q or G. It was Tempest-like (you controlled a ship moving around a circle firing towards the center) and asteroids and ships would fly out at you to be destroyed. Can’t remember the name, but many quarters went down that slot.
Gyruss, That was it!
You can buy “Dragon’s Lair” and “Space Ace” for your DVD player.
My personal favorite was “Time Pilot '84.” Sure, I loved the original as well, but '84 could suck quarters out of me at 500 paces. Now I have it on my computer using the MAME emulator. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.
One aside, whoever thinks that the video games of the olden days are better than modern video games is either viewing the past through nostalgia-drunk goggles or is simply buying the wrong games.