Arcade Favorites

So what are your guys all-time favorite arcade games?

A few of mine:

Lethal Enforcers
This was the forerunner of the "train" shooters. Graphics were pretty sophisticaed for the time, but the animation was rather poor.

Area 51
This was the point where the "train" shooter really matured. Awesome graphics, intense, and very fun. Managed to beat it once or twice, mainly by "poaching" someone else's game that they quitted towards the last area.

Time Crisis
Time Crisis 1. I played this at Cedar Point, which had a big screen version. Incredibly fun, and the big screen almost made if feel a little too close for comfort.

Soul Caliber 2
The only reason I played SC was the Capaign mode, that was pretty fun. I played as Astaroth and named myself "OJ SIMPSON." There were some other odd characters, including a few of the local DDR Players such as "HARVEY", "JEW", and "FUNNELCAKE" and even odder ones such as "HOMOGAY."

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (8th Mix)
The last Japanese arcade mix. Over 180 songs. Needed more stuff from the first few mixes such as Boom Boom Dollar (KOG G3 Mix). Omitting those were unforgiveable.

Beatmania III Core Append 7th Mix
Beatmania III. I drove over 150 miles to play this game. It was so worth it. Standard five-key Beatmania with an effector pedal to boot. Performed a few songs that were crossed over into DDR such as "321 Stars" and "Genom Screams" (the latter being HARD AS @#$#@$.)

Aero Fighters
Wow, this one was awesome! Old-school polygon graphics combat flight sim. Very neat game.

Where's the old school?

For my top three, coming in third is Sprint (gotta love spinning that loose wheel).

Second place goes to Pac-Man.

And a strong first goes to Street Fighter 2. Nothing tops racking up wins against various opponents as a croud gathers.

My favourite "Arcade Games". While not technically "Arcade Games", they are "games" in the "arcade".

Crane Game: What more do I have to say. I love this thing. I seem to be one of the few people capable of actually getting stuff out of it. Nothing beats the rush of adrenaline from asking your friends their opinion on your positioning, as the big LCD timer ticks down. And you hit the joystick button and pow! That stuffed lobster harmonica is yours!

Pay Phone Simulator: This thing is so accurate and realistic! It even works just like a real pay phone! Oh wait.... what's that... it is? Oh...

Change Machine: I don't know about you, but the gamble of putting your money into the change machine is always such a rush to me! Thus far, I have always managed to at least break even. WHO DA MAN?

Air Hockey: Even if you aren't any good, you still have to love it.

Uh.. Crazy Taxi was pretty cool too.

I'll always hate Crazy Taxi for the single reason that, at the arcade, the volume was up freakin' high and it was placed right next to the Extreme machine.

I've seen quite a few arcades with games varying from very old school to just old school. Mrs. Packman seems to be the most common one.

A few other favorites worth mentioning are Konami's relatively new Police 911 series (motion-detecting shooter) and Warzaid. (Oddly named large-scale FPS/Train shooter.)

[edit on 23-10-2005 by Toxic Fox]

Favourite arcade games? Well I guess (to my sudden horror) I fall into the old school category... while I am still a game nut with all the latest stuff when I hear the word arcade I think : Galaxian, Gauntlet, 1942, gyruss and Ghosts and Goblins. But what about the hardest? There's still nothing easy about Scramble and Defender. Damn defender used to drive me nuts.

Favorite game bar none was the time crisis series, then street fighter, then probably cruisin exotica.

I'm extremely old school, I love Asteroids and Galaga, my all time favorites, Galaga 3 was alot of fun as well...

Sure I like the Train shooters like Time Crisis and such, it's fun to have a gun that simulates kickback and such :p but I somewhat feel silly playing these.

I'm old school too. My fav?

Elevator Action

Sadly, it seems that arcades are going away, since more people have home systems now, but there are still some niches and fun things out there.

Classic Cruzin' USA was pretty cool too, except my mom didn't like it because of:
A. The swimsuit girl waving the flag (oy vey)
B. Watching it made her dizzy

AND NOW FOR A SEGUE!
Oh yeah, and always be careful around Dance Dance Revolution players, they can get pretty odd. (If I recall correctly, it was the only game that a person ever died playing, this one girl in Japan died when doing this jump-kick off the machine, she lost her grip on the safety bar, fell and struck her head, and this girl in Illinois developed heart problems once too.)

[edit on 23-10-2005 by Toxic Fox]

You can download a lot of redux arcade classics for your PC. And I think Playstation has compilations too.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
You can download a lot of redux arcade classics for your PC. And I think Playstation has compilations too.

Ja, it's called MAME - Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation. I messed with that once, some people did serious stuff where they even made cabinets and got seveal-hundred-dollar controllers. Hardcore stuff. Newer systems are hard to emulate, though. Other issue involved people bootlegging machines so now they have security stuff. I know that the Benami machines use CDs and have a security dongle that goes along with the system. Not sure of other systems (some use DVDs for storage now too.) Heh, I remember the really old ones that used Laserdisks like Dragon's Lair.

Odd thing too is that some of these arcade machines run off standard computers instead of custom hardware. A few examples I know of was this once snowmobile machine that ran off Windows 2000, In the Groove used a custom Linux system, and Beatmania IIDX 10th style and later used a Pentium-4 Windows XP box. (Those systems are incredibly state-of-the-art. XP, Pentium 4, and a GeForce 4 video card, and I think that the projection displays are high-definition and BIG, and then there is the large audio systems for the game. Whoo.)

I wouldn't be surprised if arcade machines made in the past four years haven't almost completely switched to being ran by a PC. Plus I've played on systems that use a USB thumbdrive to store information.

[edit on 23-10-2005 by Toxic Fox]

one of the best ive seen is a war simulation (forgot the name) but you slipped a helmet on over your head that you could rotate 360 degrees and you shoot evryone like your in a tank 100%funny, 90% looking stupid heres it below;

Nothing's ever gonna beat Galaga, in my (admittedly not very humble at all) opinion.

Everything a game needs, and nothing it doesn't... the old school had it right.

Yep, Galaga was cool. Space INvaders on steroids. And it was awesome how you could get your ship captured, shoot the capture ship and then get it back - double ships firing at once.

Does anyone remember the game where you were a penguin and you had to push blocks of ice around to crush the critters that were trying to eat you?

[edit on 2005-10-23 by wecomeinpeace]

Good lord, I have so many all time favorites. Some of my favorites were Joust, 1942/42, galaga, spyhunter, zaxxon, and on and on. I wasted most of my quarters on games like Dragons Lair (blew me away when I first saw it), Double Dragon, and Tron. Man, if I could have half of that money back that I blew on these games I would be a rich man.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
Yep, Galaga was cool. Space INvaders on steroids. And it was awesome how you could get your ship captured, shoot the capture ship and then get it back - double ships firing at once.

Does anyone remember the game where you were a penguin and you had to push blocks of ice around to crush the critters that were trying to eat you?

[edit on 2005-10-23 by wecomeinpeace]

Sounds like the game Thin Ice. That's on the Intellivision Lives! compilation available for PC, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox.

Moon Patrol, Time Pilot... not to mention Gyruss... and wasted way too many twenty cent pieces feeding food to Elf in the original Gauntlet... but Dragons Lair was way cool... have searched the net a fair bit to see if you can download a clone but can't find anything. Anybody know where you can get it? Guess I have to think about getting the C64 clone and hunting down the rom...

street fighter 2, pang, shinobi and salomons key, not necesseriliy in that order

I never spent much time in Arcades, only on the occasional visit to seaside resorts like Porthcawll.

But of the few I played a s a young un' I remember being blown away by Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2 and Tekken (the very first one). They were all great, but once on Tekken, I was doing really well, I looked around and there were about 30 people crowded round watching. I promptly died, left, and I believe that was the last Arcade game I played

Street fighter 2, Tekken, Toshinden, Double Dragon, Dragon Ninja, Final Fight, Chelnov the Atomic Runner, Arkanoid ... . I've spent most of my highschool lunch money in the Arcade.