Author Topic: Favourite arcade games from your younger days  (Read 12736 times)

Bren

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Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« on: 21 May 2018, 21:22:32 »
We all know 99% of 'arcades' today are mutated shells of their former selves. What are some of the greats that you have fond memories of?



The tiny, 2-lane 5-pin bowling alley in my small town had a few arcade games and I have fond memories of Ikari Warriors. Also I have a great memory of psychically willing one to appear in the pool area of a hotel we were staying at on family vacation.

Some gameplay footage here to jog the memory banks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiQmBwwx7_Y

CrossfirePilot

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #1 on: 21 May 2018, 21:41:28 »
Afterburner, Defender, Xenophobia, The original star wars with the 3d line art.

30 years ago I thought it would have been cool to have one of those as part of my gameroom, though I think these days you couldn't give me one.  Would rather have a Game system and large flat screen.
« Last Edit: 21 May 2018, 21:46:08 by CrossfirePilot »

iamfanboy

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #2 on: 21 May 2018, 22:18:50 »
Dance Dance Revolution.

I mean, when I was a kid it was TMNT Turtles Through Time, the X-Men beatemup, the Simpsons beatemup, and the old copies of Centipede and Moon Patrol at the local coin-op laundromat, but frankly my fondest memories come from standing on those dance pads and bouncing all over with myself and my friends.

And hey, I can legitimately claim playing DDR got me laid. How many other arcade games can one claim that about?

Crimson Dynamo

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #3 on: 21 May 2018, 22:20:28 »
The X-Men Arcade Game, Blades of Thunder, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Star Wars arcade game with the wireframe attack on the Death Star, Rampage, Joust.
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Firesprocket

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #4 on: 21 May 2018, 22:23:11 »
Dig Dug, Mr. Do,  Star Wars, Street Fighter II (in pretty much any version), and MK. 

Matti

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #5 on: 21 May 2018, 22:46:32 »
T-Mek (I think it was called) and Metal Slug
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #6 on: 21 May 2018, 23:02:21 »
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows Over Mystara.
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #7 on: 21 May 2018, 23:12:21 »
Spy-Hunter

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garhkal

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #8 on: 22 May 2018, 00:02:24 »
T-Mek (I think it was called) and Metal Slug

I spent so many quarters in Metal slug.
However there's PLENTY i loved playing besides it..
Going through wikipedia's collection of arcade games i see;

Numbered ones
The flight games 1942 and 1943

The A's didn't really have many i loved, but it had a few i liked such as asteroids and aliens vs predator

The B's had quite a few, including the always classic Battlezone, beach head, and one i always laughed at, Burger time (though it was called Hamburger time in the UK).

For the C's we had the Capcom vs SNK 2, Commando, Contra.

In the D's i loved Dig dug, Double dragon, and who hasn't loved playing Donkey kong!!!

For the E's there was only one..  Empire strikes back released in 85.

Under the F's there was only one, Fatal fury.

Under G's there was a few.  Galaxian, Gauntlet (in all incarnations), Golden Axe1 and 2, Ghosts n goblins and The goonies,.

For the H's all i readlly enjoyed were the gun holding "house of the dead" series..

Under the I;s all i loved playing was the Indy and the temple of doom game..

K's had the King of monsters, the King of fighters duo which kept me plenty occupied..

I don't remember any under the L's..

The M's had a #, including Missile command, Marble madness, Marvel vs capcom, marvel vs streetfighter, I even spent a lot of time on Michael Jackson's moonwalker game!!

For the N's Ninja Gaiden occupied my time a lot, but that was it.

Under the O's all the 'shooting gallery ones "Operation wolf/tiger/thunderbolt",

For the P's, who DIDN'T play Paperboy,

Under the Q's i loved both Quartet 1 and 2,

For R' i lovd most ANY of the Raiden series, Rampage (all versions), Robocop and Rolling thunder.

Then for the S's we had the Two Seawolf ones (iirc the first that used the overhead pull down thinggy), along with Silent scope, Both Soulcalibers, Starwars (1983), Starwars 1993, The streetfighter series (though not all)

Under the T's, i liked both Terminator 2, the TMNT ones, Tron, That's about it.

Neither U to W had any.

X had most of the Xmen ones, but that was it.  And neither Y or Z had any..
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #9 on: 22 May 2018, 02:57:07 »
Dragons Lair and Space Ace. The graphics were amazing!  :D

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #10 on: 22 May 2018, 09:35:39 »
The bar I worked at years ago later got in a sit-inside style arcade system that had, among other games, an arcade version of Mechwarrior 4.

I had to work very hard to not go near that thing. But I did happily offer advice to patrons. (Rule #1: Use Vultures. Rule #2: If you ignored Rule #1, you screwed up.)
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #11 on: 22 May 2018, 10:55:30 »
I played the heck out of Streetfighter II and Crackdown.

Kentares

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #12 on: 22 May 2018, 13:17:58 »
No one mentions Out Run?? ???
« Last Edit: 22 May 2018, 13:19:29 by Kentares »
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Matti

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #13 on: 22 May 2018, 13:20:21 »
No one mentions Out Run?? ???
I have played it on Commodore 64 and some arcade variant too. Definitely not my favorite.
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #14 on: 22 May 2018, 13:25:49 »
Tekken Tag Tournament, Alien Vs Predator the Arcade Game, Sunset Riders, The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Captain America and the Avengers... a lot of different games.

There was this one game I remember playing, wish I could remember the name of it.  It was an angled top-down shooter with up to four players.  Each player controlled a different mercenary with a different default weapon, but you could pick up all sorts of different weapons while playing, which uniquely you did not get limited ammo for, you were just restricted to one gun at a time.  Player one had an assault rifle, Player two had a shotgun, Player three had a machine gun, and Player four had a rocket launcher.  There were also a ton of vehicles you could get into and drive around, typically with turrets that the other players could use.
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Kentares

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #15 on: 22 May 2018, 13:30:34 »
I have played it on Commodore 64 and some arcade variant too. Definitely not my favorite.

I only played the arcade version. For the C64 I had Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge ;D
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #16 on: 22 May 2018, 17:21:19 »
In high school, Gauntlet is the one I remember best.  I tried later incarnations, but they just weren't the same.  In college, Golden Axe and TMNT (the first versions) were popular.  Getting three friends together to put a four player beat down on the bad guys was the main draw for both Gauntlet and TMNT for me.

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #17 on: 22 May 2018, 17:58:16 »
Street fighter 2, brother hated having me tag along and whooping on his friends.
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Kentares

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #18 on: 22 May 2018, 18:52:12 »
In high school, Gauntlet...

WOW...now that you talk about that one... it was one of my favorites but too damn hard from what I can remember. Lots of fun though.
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Ruger

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #19 on: 22 May 2018, 18:59:09 »
The ones I spent the most quarters/tokens on...

the old wire-frame Star Wars
Spy Hunter

And most especially...

Gauntlet and Gauntlet II...

Ruger
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #20 on: 22 May 2018, 20:24:08 »
Gauntlet was so cool, I even got my mom to break a $5 bill for us while we were playing together...

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #21 on: 22 May 2018, 21:03:39 »
Polybius.  ;D

I kid, I kid.  My list is too long.  Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Time Pilot, Air-Sea-Land, Operation Wolf, Street Fighter(yes, I played the original, the local Wal-Mart had a copy), Street Fighter II, Elevator Action, Spy Hunter, MK and MKII(MK3/UMK3 was the last one I played, I refuse to acknowledge the other ones, but only for nostalgia reasons), Afterburner, TMNT, Simpsons, I could go on.  I probably spent enough money in those machines to fund my way through college.

EDIT:  And of course, I can't forget how much I used to like playing this game.
« Last Edit: 22 May 2018, 21:12:17 by ClarkeMarek »
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #22 on: 22 May 2018, 21:28:08 »
i tried playing some video games at Dave and Busters a year and a half ago. 1st you have to use the game cards now, so you really have no idea how much you are pumping into it.  Second, on most games, even if you win you still have to keep adding credits to keep advancing.  Doesn't even seem close to fun anymore when you can lose $20 in a half hour.

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #23 on: 22 May 2018, 22:38:39 »
I went into a Dave and Busters a couple years ago.  Seemed that all they had were rail shooters or prize games.
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #24 on: 23 May 2018, 00:19:40 »
When I was little? That's tough, Galaga was definitely up there but also SpyHunter. The Starwars wireframe game was another. I played a lot of centipede and pac-man. Its hard to just pick one over the others.

 As a teenager, I would say without a doubt my favorite was Virtual-On. They had it at a laser tag place that we used to go to on Fridays. Those were the days, we used to have a group of friends and we would waste anyone in team games of laser tag, then compete in Virtual-On afterwards.

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #25 on: 23 May 2018, 10:44:31 »
Dig Dug and Toobin, were very fun. Afterburner was fun too, especially the full size cockpit version.

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #26 on: 23 May 2018, 15:01:11 »
I went into a Dave and Busters a couple years ago.  Seemed that all they had were rail shooters or prize games.

I've called over a dozen stores over the past few years, to see what arcade games they'd have, and the rail shooters, dancing ones or prize/token ones were all it seemed they had..  Heck the last time i remember going into a proper arcade, was during a TAD from Gulfport up to Little creek for a seabee exercise.  Went out to an arcade up near military circle mall..


Now one game i am trying to remember, was a robot like one, where you had like 8 types of robots to pilot for mass carnage slug/fire fests..  I loved that game when it initially came out, bt for the life of me, no longer remember it's name..
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #27 on: 23 May 2018, 15:27:55 »
Sounds like Virtual O-N.
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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #28 on: 23 May 2018, 15:40:25 »
Me and my friends used to love Virtual On (Wish I could still play it).  Even had out own names for most of the mechs :)  Though we were adults when we played it.

As a kid, I loved Kung Fu fighter, 1942, Double Dragon, Xybots, and Twin Tigers.

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Re: Favourite arcade games from your younger days
« Reply #29 on: 23 May 2018, 18:02:41 »

I remember the sequel.  "WARRIORS!  SHOW SOME GUTS! COME GET ME IF YOU CAN!  AH HA HA HA HAAAA!"

Greatest memory, the challenge of hammering Roadblasters up to level 49...and never quite making it for the secret code for the t-shirt.
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