palaralae
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Still a figment of your imagination...
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Post by palaralae on Jul 13, 2019 1:11:45 GMT
What have been your fave arcade games over the years? I was always partial to driving games, especially Spy Hunter. Road Blasters was fun. I found and adored MK 2 and 3 early on, and when I lived in a spot that actually had an arcade with a machine, got amused satisfaction by appearing to be the clueless-looking chick wannabe-player who would snooker the guys out of games after they died very shocked deaths by my fan-blades.  SoulCalibur/SoulEdge was good too, so long as Ivy was unlocked, since I didn't like anyone else. Then in the 00's, dance games became a thing and I was hooked. Loved DDR, In The Groove and still do. The con I most recently went to had a fun thing where some collector volunteered to bring down a bunch of his classic machines for a room of free play, and I had a blast both playing In The Groove again (can't hardly find the machines up here any more  ), and teaching/encouraging some kids who had never seen the game before to play. There was one short-lived dance game sorta-clone where the pads were instead at the corners, and a center pad. Can't remember what the hell that one was called. (Edit: just found it, it was called Pump It Up) |
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Post by Devoid on Jul 13, 2019 21:20:44 GMT
Some of my favorites included:
Street Fighter II [Original, Turbo]: 8-way joystick, six button, individualized attacks, combination move action lead the way of fighting games for years to come.
Ninja Gaiden: Fun ninja-themed game.
Don Bluth's LaserDisc Arcade [Dragon's Lair I/II, Space Ace]: Immersive when compared to the graphics of other video games of the time period. That alone mostly made up for the actual game play that consisted of timed responses and arguing whether the player was supposed to move or press the button.
Neo-Geo Arcade [Magician Lord]: Sound and game play were fun even though main antagonist name (Gal Agiese) and monologue was corny.
Gauntlet [I/II]: Wasted many quarters playing with others. Love/hate relationship with other players that: - Broke from the adventure group and ventured the other side of the screen, locking the screen in place and keeping us from navigating the labyrinth.
- Frequently shot food/magic potions
- Run into door-walls, opening us up to legions of monsters (and Death)
Rampage: Monsters destroying city after city while punching each other and bashing the trolley back and forth was a simple pleasure.
Mortal Kombat: Digitized sprites of actors and finishing moves added to the experience built by Street Fighter.
NBA Jam: Playing bobblehead-sized players with Dick Vitale screaming "Boom shaka-laka!"
Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road: Winning the round using excessive Nitro "Boosts"
Special Mention: The Adam's Family: Arguably one of the best modern pinball games.
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Post by Advocatus Diaboli on Jul 14, 2019 0:19:54 GMT
Space Invaders
Missile Command
Centipede
Joust
Galaga
Xevious
Time Pilot
Zaxxon
Pengo
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palaralae
New Member
Still a figment of your imagination...
Posts: 48
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Post by palaralae on Jul 14, 2019 2:11:30 GMT
Joust and Gauntlet were good ones, too. I also liked Primal Rage. Talon the hyper little velociraptor was totes my dude. |
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Post by Scarbonac on Jul 14, 2019 6:37:58 GMT
Asteroids
Berzerk
Street Fighter
Shinobi
Defender
Gauntlet
Contra
Mortal Kombat
Tempest
Space Invaders
Missile Command
Centipede
Joust
Zaxxon
And some Spy game the name of which escapes me.
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Post by Devoid on Jul 14, 2019 13:56:51 GMT
And some Spy game the name of which escapes me. Could it have been Rolling Thunder or Sly Spy? |
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Post by evileeyore on Jul 14, 2019 14:28:11 GMT
Arcade games? Basically only Gauntlet (1 & 2) and the button-mash fighters, though honestly I've played more of them on consoles than in actual arcades.
Didn't have any easily accessible arcade's* when I was growing up, and the arcade that my roommate and I ran out of our living room when I was 20 had only Street Fighter 1 and 2, Time Killers, Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, Virtua Fighter, and Captain America and the Avengers.
But we only had 4 boxes, so we'd swap out the fighters every week, only Cap & The Avengers stayed in a dedicated box (primarily due to button configuration).
* And I fucking can't stand Galaga or it's clones or the myriad Pac-Mens, which is all the nearby gas stations had.
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Post by Joshuas Randallus on Jul 24, 2019 19:49:38 GMT
Centipede - this was one of the two games on which I always had the high score growing up thanks to our ability to stick a flattened drinking straw in the coin slot to trigger free lives. This was probably the first "in the zone" game I ever played, where after a while you don't even notice the crazy speed of the game, you're just pattern matching and relying on muscle memory.
Donkey Kong - and this was the other one. Less frenetic than Centipede, but still essentially pattern matching and memorization. I can still remember the first 10 or so levels today!
Star Wars - the one where you sit in the cockpit and fight vector graphic enemies. The THUNDEROUS bass in the cockpit was the main reason to play. You can still find this game in places like Dave & Buster's which I think is a testament to the timelessness of simple, it's-obviously-just-a-game graphics; they don't age as badly as attempts at realistic graphics.
Sinistar - speaking of games with thunderous sounds, the absolutely sphincter tightening sounds of the Sinistar coming to kick your ass is a sound I will never forget. This game ate a *lot* of my quarters, because it always seemed I was just one clever move away from advancing to the next stage.
Space Duel - another vector graphics game, kind of a souped up Asteroids knock off. My friend lived with some rich relatives during his senior year of high school, and they had this in their guest house. So we got really good at it, playing for free as much as we wanted.
fast forwarding many years....
Mace: The Dark Ages - the only fighting game I was ever any good at, thanks to practice on the Nintendo 64 version, and relentless quarter feeding in the arcade. Basically my entire strategy in this game was to play an evasion character and keep switching sides of the screen - because most newer fighting game players are only good at fighting in "their" direction. So I'd jump over / around them and make them fight "backwards" for a while, then when they got used to that I'd switch sides again.
Area 51 - and here's the only light gun game I ever bothered to complete. It was me and some brotastic guy (before we even had the word 'bro' come to think of it) at the local Chuck E. Cheese, just relentlessly feeding tokens. We each took a section of the screen to handle, depending on the level (left/right, top/bottom, corners, it depended on the level) and we'd call for help when necessary. We also tried to feed each other the power ups that we were best at... I was a shotgun master while he was better with the machine gun. Anyway, after several hours of work we beat the game. I'd like to say there was a crowd of fellow bros and/or easily impressed co-eds, but in fact it was just us high-fiving each other to celebrate the victory.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2019 5:12:22 GMT
Tron: I actually owned a tabletop version of this for a time. Picked it up at auction for $25. Needed a $40 logic board repair. Not a bad price for an arcade table with all of the original graphics.
Samurai Showdown & Samurai Showdown II: There are a lot of fighting games but, in the arcade, these two won hands down for me. I probably gave SNK a few hundred dollars in quarters in my teens.
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Post by mistwell on Aug 9, 2019 4:33:58 GMT
Tron: I actually owned a tabletop version of this for a time. Picked it up at auction for $25. Needed a $40 logic board repair. Not a bad price for an arcade table with all of the original graphics. Woo. That was by far my favorite game. I'd pay hundreds for a real version of it on tabletop or stand up. |
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Post by Ovinomancer on Aug 9, 2019 12:06:45 GMT
Raiden II -- gallons of tokens went into this game.
Mortal Kombat II -- actually played, and won, the Easter egg round in match 250.
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Post by Maxperson on Aug 10, 2019 2:32:23 GMT
My favorites were...
Gauntlet I
Discs of Tron
Star Wars
Galaga
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Post by Lanefan on Aug 16, 2019 1:20:32 GMT
Top rank:
Asteroids
Defender
Galaga
Sinistron (I'd forgotten the name - thanks Joshuas Randallus!)
Scramble
Second rank:
Centipede
Frogger (most frustrating game ever!)
Gauntlet
Ms. Pac-Man (but never liked the original Pac-Man)
And there's another one I forget the name of - vector graphics, you're running your shooter around what seems to be the top rim of a pit, up the walls of which come the enemies - which I always thought was excellent, though I never got very good at it.
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Post by Advocatus Diaboli on Aug 16, 2019 3:41:23 GMT
And there's another one I forget the name of - vector graphics, you're running your shooter around what seems to be the top rim of a pit, up the walls of which come the enemies - which I always thought was excellent, though I never got very good at it. Are you thinking of Tempest ? |
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Post by Lanefan on Aug 17, 2019 20:24:09 GMT
And there's another one I forget the name of - vector graphics, you're running your shooter around what seems to be the top rim of a pit, up the walls of which come the enemies - which I always thought was excellent, though I never got very good at it. Are you thinking of Tempest ? Yes, that's it - thanks!  |
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SoulCalibur/SoulEdge was good too, so long as Ivy was unlocked, since I didn't like anyone else.
), and teaching/encouraging some kids who had never seen the game before to play.
