Favorite Arcade Game

[tthurman]

I'm not going to even attempt to poll this, but what is "that" game for you?

If you've been following anything I've been doing, then you know the Star Wars arcade game was "it" for me, but what's your favorite?

Back in the day me and my girl played Star Wars for hours on end.  We had a competition going with some fellow named MAC on the leader board, whom we never met.  Between the three of us however, we always had the top three scores:

MAC (who ended up being a regular daytime player we never had the opportunity of meeting)

TAV (Todd and Vicki)

VAT (Vicki and Todd)

Pretty goofy I know, but we could sit at that machine with a handful of quarters and a pack of smokes for a long night of entertainment on the cheap.  

[PcTeknic]

Only one? Impossible to decide on one, there are so many good games that were part of our childhood. But certainly the longest I've played is PinballFX2. 2000 hours of play between Android and PC, I am currently 12th in the overall standings Steam and hope to finish 8 or 9.

[stigzler]

Man, that is difficult. First to mind would be schmups - 1942 or R-Type, can;'t decide. I was crap at them, mind

They allowed girls into the arcades where you lived, tthurman!? Wasn't like that in Skegness. Mind you, it was the 80s.

 

[RIP-Felix]

I have to choose one? Then for me it's Bubble Bobble (I know...I know).

It was the only arcade they had at a card shop I frequented as a kid. I was always there for the trading cards (Pokemon I'm ashamed to say), so I did not have much money for the arcade. When I could play, I made it count. My friend had it for NES and we together played through it a number of times, but the arcade version has way better graphics. It holds positive memories for me and it's a tame game I would have no problem recommending to all ages. Now that I built an Arcade, and when I have friends over with kids, I always have that running for them to play. I also keep cup full of quarters on the Control Panel so they never run out before their patience does. I think I now I derive more fun from watching others play and have fun than when playing myself. Then again, I was always more of a console fan.

[tthurman]

5 hours ago, stigzler said:

They allowed girls into the arcades where you lived, tthurman!

Why of course, it was the place to meet chicks.  Every arcade back in those days was covered up on the weekends, and jammed full of cars cruising the parking lots.  Here in our immediate suburbs there was four of five enormous arcades, many including billiard tables numbering into the teens.  Between the 1982 World's Fair and the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, this area seemed to be a magnet for arcade games.  The Space Needle in Gatlinburg was really cool, they even had bumper cars and slot car racing.  First place I played the rotating version of Afterburner too, and the R360

 

 

Fun times

 

 

[RedDog]

When I was just a tyke, my real love was RPG games on the PC...especially Wizardry and Bard's Tale. Oh so many hours spent mapping every little corner of the world and killing everything that moved.

In my budding arcade life, I bopped around a lot between games, but I suppose my first go-to game was Galaga. I found I could do a pretty quick double-tap for those key moments when throwing out some rapid shots was important.

But the first game I knew I was good at was Joust. I would usually end up with 8 to 10 people standing behind me watching. If I remember correctly, my high score was around 500,000 around stage 23 (this is without pterodactyl-killing-shenanigans). My reflexes aren't quite the same as back then, but I have been thinking of trying to climb the boards with this one.

Then there was Excitebike. For some reason, I never could pass up playing at least one game when I walked by. This is probably my all time favorite.

Then, Street Fighter II came along. For many years after, it was all about fighting games: Street Fighter, Samurai Showdown, or Soul Edge.

And I can't forget side scroller fighters like Golden Axe, Alien vs Predetor, and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom...

Oh wait, Spy Hunter...love me that sit-down Spy Hunter cab...

...and then there was...  

[stigzler]

3 hours ago, tthurman said:

Why of course, it was the place to meet chicks.  Every arcade back in those days was covered up on the weekends, and jammed full of cars cruising the parking lots.  Here in our immediate suburbs there was four of five enormous arcades, many including billiard tables numbering into the teens.  Between the 1982 World's Fair and the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, this area seemed to be a magnet for arcade games.  The Space Needle in Gatlinburg was really cool, they even had bumper cars and slot car racing.  First place I played the rotating version of Afterburner too, and the R360

Skegness:

[tthurman]

Well stigz, that looks; em, a bit stale!  Any chance we could see a bit more upbeat day going on there?  Even some good fish and chips should draw a better crowd than this

 

 

[Kustom Kid]

This is a great topic. There are way too many "favorites" to list them all. Mat Mania, Strider, Mr. Do, Marvel vs. Capcom, Centipede, Double Dragon, Street Fighter II. The game I have the most fond memories of is Mortal Kombat II. They had it at the laser tag place and I could play for quite a while before someone knocked me off. The guy popping up in the corner saying "toasty" became a war cry of sorts while playing laser tag. If I needed a break from running around I'd hop on the MK II cabinet until someone beat me or I'd get near the top of the ladder and the computer would clobber me. Sometimes it was a 10 minute break, sometimes it was a 2 minute break.

[hansolo77]

You guys suck with your real life full scale arcades.  When I grew up, my family's limited income crippled my gaming capabilities.  My first real exposure to an arcade was the one in a movie theater that had like 4 games in it.  And you know me, I was just standing there moving the joystick around and mashing buttons like I was really playing, but it was just the demo.  That is the extent of my "fond memories".  The first machine I put any money into though was the Star Wars Trilogy game (again at a theater).  Emulation of it still isn't up to par with the machine though sadly.

[tthurman]

47 minutes ago, hansolo77 said:

The first machine I put any money into though was the Star Wars Trilogy game (again at a theater).

Man, I wish I'd known about that one, instead I completely missed it because my focus was off of arcade games at that time in my life. 

I believe it's a timing thing really, and trust me when I tell you this, I mashed a bunch of buttons to the "insert coins" screen myself

[Kustom Kid]

14 hours ago, tthurman said:

I mashed a bunch of buttons to the "insert coins" screen myself

Same here. We didn't have a "close" arcade until I was 13, and even then it was 20 miles away. All of the other games I listed earlier were in convenience stores, or party stores as we called them growing up in Michigan. I'd get a quarter from mom once every few weeks to actually play a game. It was glorious. MK II came out when I was in high school, had a job, and had my own money to spend. I only got to go to the arcade once or twice a year until then. As for home consoles we got an Atari second hand in the early 80's. My brother worked for a summer to buy our NES. We got one game a year, for Christmas, for both of us. Everything else we rented, borrowed, or bought with our own money. I'm glad we didn't have a ton of money growing up. It taught is to respect, and to take care of, the things we did have.

[hansolo77]

I here ya.  It also helped you become an elitist god to those games you owned too lol..  We were lucky to some point.  Dad was a big Atari fanboy.  When he was my age, he bought an Atari 2600 (we talked about this just last week so it's still fresh in memory lol).  He had 4 games for it.  Then he got an Atari 800 computer.  It had the cartridge slot so he could play games with that, and it also had a floppy drive.  Because it was a computer, that opened up more capabilities than just being a gaming console.  He had a database program on there he was using to keep track of high scores between him and his buddy he grew up with.  He also had a program that allowed him to use an external 400-baud modem to digitally send in his tax returns, although the state government still required a paper copy for verification and safety sake.  The modem came with it's own terminal software, and he was able to connect to a local underground pirate BBS and download games for free.  See, with the floppy drive he could store about 15 cartridges to 1 disk.  Some games were larger, but that was the average.  We had about a hundred floppies, so just about EVERY game.  Some cartridge games required a special "cart-key" that was a hardware hack that tricked the software into thinking there was a physical card in the slot.  It had an on/off switch and a light to let you know it was running.  Good times back then.  My brother's friend had an NES, and surprisingly it was years ahead of the Atari 800.  So far in fact, that when Dad upgraded to the Atari ST computer, the games on THAT were already available on the NES (games like TMNT, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, etc).  But the ST had a higher resolution monitor than a TV set, so they looked great, and were in stereo.  Of course, Dad did all his underground work with that too so we had a whole bunch of games for that as well.  But it wasn't until we got the Sega Genesis that we finally felt like there was something special to call our own.  The Atari's were Dad's computers.  We weren't allowed to play on them unless he was there babysitting.  The Sega Genesis was OURS.  Shitty thing was, the Sega was meant to be a Christmas present for both of us, but the stores were sold out and we ended up getting it on my brother's birthday instead (January 9th).  So, being a stupid kid, he would always argue that it was HIS Sega, and kept it hooked up in HIS room on HIS TV.  Never let me play on it unless he wasn't home or if we played a 2-player game together.  Mom and Dad didn't like it because games like Sonic the Hedgehog would take hours to play, and we'd hog the TV from the time we got home from school until dinner was ready, and then we had to turn it off so we could watch TV while we eat.  But the whole 1 game a year was true in our house too to a point.  Although it was more like 3 times a year, his birthday, my birthday, and Christmas.  I was older though, so of course I got the better and more Mature games (Mortal Kombat comes to mind).  We loved that thing.  Upgraded to the SegaCD when that came out, the 32X after that, and we had the Sega Channel for a while.  What a joke (by today's standards) that was.  It was basically a flash cart with cable modem, but the speed to download the games was sooooo slooooow.  Seriously it was slower than dialup.  A game like ToeJam & Earl took about 10 minutes to download, even though the filesize was no bigger than a jpeg.  Still, it was cool that the technology existed and we had a new selection of games to play each month that the cable company offered us to download for a small extra fee (like adding Disney Channel or HBO).  Those were great days.  Then the Playstation came out.  I was fed up with not having the ability to play a game when I wanted because my brother was still hogging HIS Sega.  So I bought the PSX, and that changed the game.  Next thing I know, I come home from my first job one day, and find out he SOLD his Sega Genesis, SegaCD, 32X, all 4 controllers (including the Menacer light gun), all 17 games (including MINE that I bought), and used it as a way for him to get 20% off the purchase of a USED Playstation for himself.  I mean, he sold MY games and my controller I bought (had rapid fire and programmable buttons) without asking me, and he still had to pay 80% for his own PSX, just so he could play games in his room.  He never even bought any games, just used mine.  What a jerk.  Fast forward a few months, I get a mod chip and install it, then make binders full of games.  He takes my legit-bought games from Squaresoft (now worth LOTS of money) and loans the disks to his (now ex) fiance's best friend.  They broke up, she's no longer in contact with him, and I have about 10 games worth about $200 each with just the jewel cases and no disks.  He still refuses to replace them.  That's the story of my respect and taking care of things I had.  Spend money on things you want and take care of them, then have your snot-nosed-brat brother sell them for pennies or loan them off to somebody.. all without asking. 

Ok, so that was extremely long winded.  I'm half asleep and I ramble when I'm tired.  lol

[shroud]

Back in the day it was either Dragon's Lair or Shinobi for me.

 

Nowadays I prefer more mellow classics like Burger Time, Flicky, Elevator Action or Pang.

[ClassicGMR]

Mat Mania was the game I spent the most time with simply because it was installed at the laundromat not a half mile away from my house. We spent hours and hundreds of quarters on that machine.

[Draco1962]

Space Invaders was my first game. Asteroids, Joust, Missile Command, Burger Time, and Defender round out the top favorites for me, with Zaxxon, Sinistar, Satan's Hollow, and Vanguard being others that sucked stacks of tokens.

[ClassicGMR]

[tthurman]

Life is funny at times, but man how I wish I had held onto some of those classic tokens back in the day!