What was your all-time favorite arcade game - and why?

[Aszurom]

http://www.backntime.net/Events/CD2000/tron.jpg

There's #1 and #2 sitting right next to each other

SPY HUNTER - Because... it's SPY HUNTER, man! It took me years to get the Peter Gun theme out of my head. Oh wait... damn, it's back again. Getting to the boat level was my guage of whether I was having a good day or not. Getting PAST the boat was an ego reward beyond compare.

TRON - I played the game before I saw the movie. Heck, I still play GLTron now and then. I'm sorta skeptical about the new Tron 2.0 game and the movie that is supposedly in the works. However, considering that I own the original and 25th anniversary DVDs, I guess you could call me a fan. As for the game, it was one of the first to have four distinctly different sub-games that worked as a whole. As with the Spy Hunter boat level, getting to the Recognizer tank level was my measure of achievement.

[Sparky]

They're both vector games: Warrior (1979), which was a top-down-view swordfighting game -- kind of weird, very hard to find. That and Tempest.

[Mark Asher]

Probably Asteroids. It was just so cool when it first came out.

Donkey Kong was a lot of fun. I also like Donkey Kong Jr. too.

Elevator Action was a nice one too.

I'm sure I spent more money on Asteroids than any other game, though.

[Bub, Andrew]

The Star Wars Arcade game is the favorite... because, when I find it, it still makes me physically dodge the fireballs. I like all the vector games actually. Sea Wolf, Battlezone, Tempest, Red Baron, etc.,

Also, Ms. Pac Man, but that's because I'm madly in love with her.

[wumpus]

I'm all about the Discs of Tron. Not the Tron game referred to above, mind you-- Discs of Tron.

I found myself liking the more obscure games, probably because of their unobtainability. Spiders and Red Alert were two great ones.

[Jason McCullough]

Robocop: it was really hard, and I liked the quotes.

[Kool Moe Dee]

I'll have to go with a broad answer, which is "any side scrolling beat-'em-up" (most notably the endless parade of them produced by Capcom). How can you not love games where pork chops are ejected from people when you beat the stuffing out of them with a baseball bat? :D

[Martinez]

Star Wars arcade game and Beer Tapper.

[Bub, Andrew]

Discs of Tron was a very good game. Hard to find though. Sparky, is that vector Warrior game MAME'd? I've never seen it and I'm very curious now.

Speaking of sword fighting, anyone remember Swashbuckler for the Apple II?[/b]

[wumpus]

I liked Warrior, again, probably because of its obscurity. There was an arcade in Charlottesville, VA that had it when I lived there circa 1980. I always used to play it when I went there. Of course I was just a mini-wumpus at the time.

Warrior is available in MAME, you'll want the background overlay too. Unless you like falling into a pit over and over.

[Anonymous]

The X-Men Beat em Up is the only Arcade game that I can really remember from my childhood, I did also play a lot of Street Fighter II Champ Edition.

I could go on and on about Capcom Arcade games from recent memory tho.

[Anonymous]

It is a toss up between Defender, Galaga and Tempest. Because these games required twitch monkey reflexes in order to navigate through series of challenging levels. Besides, they all looked cool at the time. Oh, and if the arcade had an air hockey table, I'd spend a lot of time there defending my uber puck-handling skillz. :wink:

Raphael

[Sparky]

Warrior is available in MAME, you'll want the background overlay too. Unless you like falling into a pit over and over.

That's part of the beauty of Warrior! :) If anyone's in the SF Bay Area in September, there's usually a Warrior at the California Extreme arcade game show (http://www.caextreme.org). It's basically an awful lot of arcade and pinball machines - quite a few rare ones and all the classics, set up on freeplay. More fun than a basket of weasels.

[DavidCPA]

It is a toss up between Defender, Galaga and Tempest.

Galaga all the way. If I had saved all the quarters I dumped into that game during my summers at the Harding University basketball camp, I would be rich :D

I never could get the hang of Defender or Tempest :( They looked cool, but I just sucked at them.

-DavidCPA

[Doug Erickson]

R-Type. Blah blah blah "thinking man's shooter".

[Supertanker]

All time favorite is Ripoff for introducing me to great co-op play. http://www.klov.com/R/Rip_Off.html

Atari Football, with the giant trackballs, for competitive team play. I will probably get arthritis on the insides of my knuckles from the beating they got playing this game. http://www.klov.com/A/Atari_Football.html

I like shooters, and my favorite is Turkey Shoot. It had the first sniper-style wave (level, for you young'uns) I can remember, where you had to make headshots on turkeys that held hostages in front of themselves. http://www.klov.com/T/Turkey_Shoot.html

I loved the Terminator 2 shooter, but Operation Wolf and Operation Thunderbolt got lots of play, too.

Bank Panic, which became a very competitive issue in college for some reason, even though it was a couple years old. http://www.klov.com/B/Bank_Panic.html

Steel Talons, The last game I dominated in the arcades. http://www.klov.com/S/Steel_Talons.html

I could also just state a couple broad categories: Anything by Cinematronics That Didn't Involve Don Bluth, and Anything by Williams Electronics Released Before 1985.

[Anti-Bunny]

Street Fighter 2. I remember spending an entire weekly allowance on it every friday back in `92... and I still play it today on GBA.

And yet I still can't always do that dragon punch, gah.

[Andy A.]

I'm a Toobin' man myself. Spent a fortune in quarters on it as a kid and later got hold of several PC conversions (none of which managed to capture the charm of original).
I was also heavily enamored with arcade simplicity of Golden Axe...and Pong. Oh, yeah, now that I remember it, it's all about the Pong.

[Chris Nahr]

Robotron 2084. Never actually played it in an arcade (video game machines in shopping malls are rather unusual around here) but you can get the required dual-stick control with MAME and a good gamepad (Sony Dual Shock 2 with USB converter).

[Union Carbide]

Gauntlet/Gauntlet II: Warrior needs food, badly! Shots do not hurt other players. . . yet. And everyone's favorite: Green Elf is about to die!

Elevator Action: I burned a ton of cash on this one. I've got it in MAME, but for some reason I totally suck at it now. I discovered it has a sequel with multiple characters to choose from.

Joust: Quite possibly the finest arcade game released, ever. Someday I want to own a cabinet of this, once I get enough room to set it up.

[DennyA]

Omega Race, Galaga, and Sinistar.

Had Omega Race on cartridge for my VIC-20. But that and the MAME version just aren't as good without the spinner controller on the arcade machine. Sinistar's another one that doesn't hold up well on PCs due to the controller issue. Darnit.

Run, coward! Beware, I live!

[Brian Rucker]

Defender and Spy Hunter. The first I got so good at I could hang out at the arcade with my buds all night for just a buck or two. We didn't have a Spy Hunter at the arcade but there was one at the beach and we'd line up to take turns at it. I think it was the whole design of the cabinet and the great theme and music that had us. Tempest, Robotron and Battlezone all get honorable mentions. We were also nuts about a sit-down Star Wars 'X-Wing' game but I can't remember what it was called.

[Rob de los Reyes]

I put a dent in my finger laying a pencil across it in order to get maximum performance out of Track and Field. Played that one mostly at the corner Stop 'n' Go. There are too many happy memories to list, but I'll also have to give a nod to Galaga and that *pew* *pew* noise of laser fire. I can still summon the tune that played in between levels. Clearly the game made an impression.

Edit: I left one out. Karate Champ, the white uniform/red uniform side-view fighting game. My brother and I played it endlessly.

[Dave Long]

Time Pilot was probably the only game I always HAD to play at the arcades back in the day, but I probably tried everything at least once. Lately, I've been playing a lot of Pac-Man. Look out Billy Mitchell!

--Dave

[Ben Sones]

It's a toss-up between Gauntlet and Joust. I like both for the same reason: they are great games to play with friends. We used to make the long trek down to an arcade in Framingham, MA with about $10 in change each, and play all afternoon. Joust is one of the few games that still holds up today. It's as much fun now as it was twenty years ago.

[asspennies]

Pole Position: The original. Still great. There was something about the feel of it that still compels me.

Datona: the venerable Sega classic, probably the best arcade driving game ever. 8-man battles at Davd & Busters are intense and amazing at the same time.

The Simpsons: Take an established license, the gameplay from TMNT, and four people, and you have arcade gold.

Silent Scope 2: Playing 2-player is an absolute blast. Trying to find the otherguy in the jungle or on the ferris wheel is like playing a movie. Really great stuff.

I know I've mostly taken recent arcade games, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind.

[Bernie_Dy]

Holy cow...what a trip down memory lane.

I remember that Warrior game you guys mentioned...pretty cool. Omega Race is another one I haven't seen in years. Also, Wizard of Wor, Tailgunner, Double Dragon, and Ikari Warriors. Two player co-op Double Dragon was just too funny.

But if I had to buy one for my home, I'd want Cyberball.

[Bub, Andrew]

I'm trying to persuade my wife to let me "invest" in a Star Wars and a Ms. Pac Man cabinet. They can be had at auction for about $600-800 + $200 shipping/packing.... that, the tech downturn, and the space issue here in my small house by the lake should give you an idea why I keep losing this argument. (I don't want a MAME machine - though I admire Sparky greatly for hers - as I want the coin-ops for sentiment more than utility.) Lately I've been collecting Marquees. (The glass or plastic artwork panel at the top.)

During E3 this year I visited Gamespy HQ and was delighted to find:

Sinistar, Joust, Galaga, Ms. Pac Man, Street Fighter 2, (and a few more) coin ops in the lobby. My opinion of Keefer and his crew went up immeasurably. How the hell do they get work done consistently is beyond me.

[Tim]

I'd probably pick Hogan's Alley - a Nintendo gun game. When it got real fast, it could really get me tense, and it felt great to be able to keep my cool and do well at it. There was one in my college's game room and I was able to play for a good hour on one quarter. I never met my worthy nemesis who apparently could do the same on that machine. We were constantly leapfrogging for high scores.

Among others mentioned already, Spy Hunter and Tron were also big favorites.

It is no coincidence that my kids' names both can fit nicely in a 3 character arcade high score. I always felt sorry for the guys who had to pick a vowel to leave out or use initials.

[Tyjenks]

cyberball

2 on 2 futuristic football with robots which you can upgrade when they begin to smoke after so many hits.

I cannot tell you how many classes I skipped so I could play for 3 or 4 hours before my 2:30pm job when I was in college. Some friends of mine bought it off Ebay for 1,000 or $1,500 and we play now and again. Lots of strategies just come right back to me. It is still just as fun and now we can have beer and pizza. YiPPEE!

[GregB]

Whoa! So many favorites, it's hard to narrow it down.

But... I just love Defender (still do). And I must agree with Wumpus. Disc of Tron was just excellent (TRIVIA: DoT was originally going to be one of the mini-games in the first Tron game.)

Beyond those, I played a lot of Super Cobra, Galaga '88, Stun Runner, Joust, Xenophobe, and Mystic Marathon.

Now, I need some help... I remember playing a game back in the 80's that I just loved, but I can't seem to remember the name. You play from a top-down perspective (quasi-isometric) and you were exploring this huge free-scrolling prehistoric island. You had a boomerang as a weapon (I think) and you traveled around the island killing dino, pteradactyls, and cavemen.

I know it's NOT Jungle Hunt, Caveman Ninja, or Mysterious Stones. Anyone have any idea?

[Matthew Gallant]

Too easy!
http://www.klov.com/B/Boomer_Rang'r.html

[Martinez]

I retract Beer Tapper. I forgot about Red Baron. That was the shit.

It's what got me into the arcades (and flight-sims.)

I think I like Star Wars Arcade so much is becuase it reminded me of Red Baron.

[dwinn]

Kickman or Vanguard; depends on the mood.

Oh, and Jungle King, of course.

[runesword forger]

Defender is #1 in my heart. Have a knuck scar to this day from bleeding on it. When I hit the magical 990,000 to 1 mil turnover phase the first time, I may have gone into video game ecstasy spasms.

Others in no particular order:

Yie Ar Kung Fu (lotsa strategy for an early fighter)

Moon Patrol (can you hum the theme music?)

Crystal Caverns (the bear, the witch, it made no sense)

Paper Boy (early graphics whore experience)

Marble Madness (tough and unique)

Gunfight (caveman video days)

Scramble - Cobra series (addictions I could not shake)

Warrior (just cool and weird)

Q Bert. (that KA-RACK! sound effect from the bottom of the console cannot be emulated)

[Toddy]

Jack the Giant Killer. Yeah, I know. But there was just something so different about it, from Jack's tribute to the Great Pyramid haircut to the way he pranced for side to side. I'll shut up now. Oh, also Time Pilot, Galaga, Ms. Pac Man, Qix, 1942, etc.

BTW, is anyone here playing the old arcade collections for the GB Advance? I've got the Konami, Namco, and Atari ones, plus the Pac Man collection. There's nothing like portable Time Pilot, Ms. Pac Man, and Galaga.

[balut]

Double Dragon, because in 2-player coop, if you both "back-elbowed" a bunch of bad guys at the same time, the framerate would drop to single digits. Plus it had bad guys named "Abobo" which is somehow funny.

Time Crisis 2, because of the cool Namco guns, and 2-player coop.

Gauntlet 2, because it was as fun as Gauntlet, only everyone could pick the same character type. And yelling at friends for shooting the food or the potion you were going for. Or trying to pass off being "It".

Golden Axe 3, because I met 3 of my best friends playing that straight through start to finish Freshman year college.

- Balut

[Jessica M.]

In order:

Red Baron

Oil Baron (? on the name. The game where you had to protect your oil barrels from being stolen by the computer, which would run little tractors in, back up to them and cart them off. The higher the level, the faster the tractors)

Discs of Tron

George of the Jungle (side-scroller/jumper. Swing on a few vines, swim in the river, kill a few crocodiles, rescue Jane)

Space War (You kids probably wouldn't remember that one. I first played it at the Seattle World's Fair Exposition park in the mid or late 60s. Based on the Rick Blomme game at MIT. Probably the inspiration for Asteroids. You can still find it occasionally in large arcades that also carry many pinball machines.)

Ah, the memories!

[Sparky]

Lately I've been collecting Marquees.

How do you display them, might I ask? We have a bunch...I don't want to build individual frames for them (too many sizes, and I'd rather have them lit somehow). I was thinking of running a very narrow shelf just below the the ceiling all the way around the room, and tucking a line of white rope light behind it. The marquees would sit on the shelf in front of the light, creating a glowing border of 70s-80s nostalgia. Tacky, or geek chic? Any other ideas, ye gaming Martha Stewarts?

[Bernie_Dy]

balut, that move in Double Dragon was called an 'elbow-butt', and yes, as geeky teenagers my friends and I got laughs out of that. But even better was whaling on all the bad guys in that game because they were all dressed like Michael Jackson. :lol:

[GregB]

Matthew Gallant, you are my new hero. I can't believe I couldn't remember the name!!

[wumpus]

Don't forget, you can play multiplayer MAME over the internet using this:

http://www.kaillera.com/

And Jessica, I'm fairly sure you're referring to rip-off?

[Jessica M.]

And Jessica, I'm fairly sure you're referring to rip-off?

That does ring a bell, wumpus, thanks!

[Tyjenks]

Has anyone mentioned Journey: The Game, yet?

Shooting things with microphones and jetting around with your guitar, I simply do not see what could be more fun than that.

[Sean Tudor]

Defender and Tempest.

Probably Defender more than anything. When I was a young lad I used to skip work during the day and play it at the arcades. I was a bad boy back then. Which probably says a lot more about the minimum wage job I had when I was 19.

[Aszurom]

Speaking of CYBERBALL...

Did anyone fail to notice the CYBERBALL game going on in the Episode II bar scene? It was right on the main screen behind the bar.

[milo]

Centipede. Because, let's face it: trackballs rule.

Xevious was also very cool - great graphics and sound effects.

[Chris]

Boy, narrowing down my favorites is tough....

Star Castle, me and my dad would walk down to the Quick Stop and play for a couple of hours everyday in the summer.

Pole Position, nothing quite like slamming down the gas and spinning the wheel and grabbing it at the last second to come out of the hairpin turn.

Star Wars, it was Star Wars man!

Galaga, Galaxian, Asteroids, nothing like mindless destruction to pass the days away.

Gyruss, Time Pilot and Dragon's Lair caused many a missed lunch in High School.

[Anonymous]

I liked a lot of them,and I liked a lot of them that not too many would list as favorites,but my list would include Food Fight(the instant replays were a gas,and throwing handfuls of peas is just too much fun),Spy Hunter(incredibly immersive game),Gauntlet II(one summer 2 friends and I played this one about 5 times a week,unloading about $20 each every time-the sound and voices really were addicting),and Mr. Do and Dig Dug.

[balut]

balut, that move in Double Dragon was called an 'elbow-butt', and yes, as geeky teenagers my friends and I got laughs out of that. But even better was whaling on all the bad guys in that game because they were all dressed like Michael Jackson. :lol:

Haha, thanks. I just remember the "elbow-butt" was such a powerful move that also hit through multiple enemies, you could win the entire game just doing that.

- Balut

[balut]

Speaking of CYBERBALL...

Did anyone fail to notice the CYBERBALL game going on in the Episode II bar scene? It was right on the main screen behind the bar.

Oh yeah, good call. I remember seeing that and thinking, "that looks really familiar somehow...." - now I know.

BTW, anyone else besides me really enjoy the hell out of "Mutant League Football" for the Sega Genesis? I know, it's not an arcade game, but Cyberball got me thinking about weird sports games, and I remember that MLF was like EA's version of Games Workshop's "Blood Bowl" game.

- Balut

[wumpus]

Shooting things with microphones and jetting around with your guitar, I simply do not see what could be more fun than that.
Yeah, the Journey game was great fun.. mostly because it was so damn weird. Do you guys remember the other games that had analog music tape loops in them? I remember this game with a car, driving around, picking up money in sort of a pac-man style.. with a bunch of banjo music and cop radio chatter in the background on a tape loop.

Great memories. I was such a Gyruss whore. And I got ridiculously good at Vanguard; one of the few games I could get to "the end" in. The one game that other people always kicked my ass at was Mappy. Doubly painful to be trumped by some guy controlling a goddamn mouse in a cop suit.

Remember Jungle Hunt? I don't know why, but I always mentally lumped this game in with Moon Patrol. Maybe it's the whole rock jumping thing.

[DTG]

Galaga. We got one in the basement of our dorm in my sophmore year...I got to the point where I would put in a quarter and be there on the same game 4 hours later - - the difficuly leveled off after a while. I usually just handed it off to someone else when I finally had to go pee. Pretty sad now that I think about it. I never got the hang of Tempest or Defender, try as I might.

[voltaic]

Space War (You kids probably wouldn't remember that one. I first played it at the Seattle World's Fair Exposition park in the mid or late 60s. Based on the Rick Blomme game at MIT. Probably the inspiration for Asteroids. You can still find it occasionally in large arcades that also carry many pinball machines.)


Spacewar shows up at the California Extreme expo also.

I tell you also that there's no better way to finally beat Smash TV on co-op mode or get higher than the fifth level in Star Wars (the wireframe sit-down version, mind you) or set a speed record for beating Final Fight or break 1 billion points on the Addams Family pinball machine than going to the expo and just playing arcade games all day for free. Did I mention my favorite of all time was Dig Dug? I'm so bitter that the GBA version scrolls vertically...

htp://www.caextreme.org/

[Anonymous]

Remember Jungle Hunt?

http://www.klov.com/J/Jungle_King.html

It was Jungle King before a lawsuit by Edgar Rice Burroughs' estate made them change the name.

Moon Patrol:

http://www.klov.com/M/Moon_Patrol.html

I liked both of these,but they were the sort of games that I would play in the middle of the night at some convenience store,usually-I didn't play them much in the arcades.Jungle King/Jungle Hunt to me is the better game,it's a little like the Super Mario games on the NES,albeit simpler.

[Tyjenks]

Wizard of Wor. That was incredible fun in the little mazes; playing with a friend; shooting everything in sight.

I loved it so much I made up a turn-based version and had several different boards on graph paper. I would play by myself at home. It was pretty cool. Now that I think about it, that homemade version was almost too good. I may have read about how to do it in Dragon magazine or something.

[Dave Long]

The Wizard of Wor record was recently broken I believe. There was a heated competition at this year's Twin Galaxies event in Weirs Beach, NH. I plan to attend the competition next year. I've got family close by the site.

You guys that were a whiz at a particular arcade game should check out the Twin Galaxies high score listings. It's pretty fascinating stuff. New book printed every year I believe.

http://www.twingalaxies.com

They've been keeping score since 1982.

Walter Day is the man. He's the official Referee of G4!

--Dave

[Supertanker]

Oh, so many memories triggered by this thread.

We played a ton of Space Wars at Silverball in Berkeley. We went to church at First Presbyterian, which is a couple of blocks south of Telegraph, so every Sunday we would hit Rasputin's for used albums, various comic shops, and Silverball. It seems my brother and I carried out a different form of worship than our parents.

Something great about Space Wars is how you can select different options at the start of the game. It gives it longer life, and adds a negotiating game. "Blackhole, strong gravity." "I hate that damn black hole, but strong gravity is OK." The ultimate kill was to ram your opponents engines off, then taunt him/her for a while before the kill. Did anyone link it yet? http://www.klov.com/S/Space_Wars.html

Something I will always remember about Star Castle is feeling like a matador when you went in for the final blow. You work over the castle for a while, weakening it bit by bit. Finally, it would come time for the kill. We would back off a bit, wait for the right moment, then accelerate toward the castle while firing to concentrate our shots into a small group. Then, as I end the refrain, thrust home!

The other fun, co-op, little-mentioned Cinematronics game was Armor Attack. http://www.klov.com/A/Armor_Attack.html On the higher levels you really had to work together with one player distracting the tank while the other went for the kill.

Red Baron was a huge favorite (especially since it had ground-pounding, too). I remember first seeing it on a TV news story about Atari. They showed the engineers trying out their work in progress, which was Red Baron, and I instantly knew I had to play it.

I have a weird memory associated with Xevious. It was the first game that my brother and I both played a lot after he had left for college. It was odd to have learned it apart instead of side-by-side.

Joust came out when my parents had gone out of town on a trip. My brother was a senior in high school, so they had left us home alone with car keys and some money. We were at our usual arcade when we saw a sales flyer behind the counter for Joust. We were dying to play, but the owner told us he had just placed the order. However, at the next arcade we went to, they already had one. We immediately slapped down our quarters, and then decided we would skip eating out for the weekend and instead blow all our money on Joust. It was a sound decision. My brother can still do this thing where he rapidly hits a button alternately with his index and middle finger. He can out-flap the Shadow Lords.

My brother lives in Santa Rosa, so I sent him the link about California Extreme, and he said he is going. I wonder if I can get away...

[Bernie_Dy]

Cyberball fans:
If you do an Internet search, you'll probably find info on some big Cyberball reunion tournament they had or are having pretty soon. The guys organizing it scoured old USEnet posts and got names to invite...but 1) I'm not that great at the game, even as much as I love it, and 2) The reunion was out-of-state for me.

[Tyjenks]

I seem to remember the guys I still play with talking about going to Louisiana for a tourney. I am not sure when it is or was though. We all got pretty good. It would be interesting to see how we matched up. I think you can actually download the ROM and play it online now with MAME, but I do not have the time to get that all set up. What with posting on msg. boards and all.

[Jason Cross]

The X-Men Beat em Up is the only Arcade game that I can really remember from my childhood, I did also play a lot of Street Fighter II Champ Edition.


Wow...that was a '92 game. I graduated high school when that was out. It was rather good, if totally derivitave of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4-player beat 'em up (and The Simpsons - they were all the same damn game).

Arcade favorites? I've got a lot:

Elevator Action
Galaga
Bump 'n Jump
Gauntlet II
Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Marble Madness
Golden Axe
Smash T.V.
Paperboy (only the real version with the actual bike pedals!)
Afterburner (the sit-down version was SOOOO amazing at the time!)
Street Fighter II (never liked the original)
R-Type
Rally-X

the list goes on...

[Xaroc]

I seem to remember the guys I still play with talking about going to Louisiana for a tourney. I am not sure when it is or was though. We all got pretty good. It would be interesting to see how we matched up. I think you can actually download the ROM and play it online now with MAME, but I do not have the time to get that all set up. What with posting on msg. boards and all.

I played a ton of MAME Cyberball as recently as a year ago. It is still a lot of fun. Some of my other favorites were:

Donkey Kong
Missle Command
Vanguard
Vs Baseball
10-Yard Fight
Tron
Dragon's Lair
Ikari Warriors
Sprint
Karate Champ
Punch Out
Spy Hunter

These are all games I played a ton of and was pretty good at. There is one game I can't seem to remember the name of, it was a soccer game and it had a foot pedal to shoot as I recall and the little soccer players weren't much bigger than the ball. Anyone remember this one or the name? I would love to MAME it even though the footpedal will be impossible to recreate.

BTW, I hate modern arcades. The prices are outrageous and the games are all, lightgun shooting, racing, or fighting games. Gameplay is seriously lacking. The only 2 modern arcade games I really like are Police 911 (the full body movement make it interesting) and Raiden Fighters (1997) because it is a cool top down scroller with neat effects.

-- Xaroc

[dwinn]

Major Havok! What could be better than a tracball but a trac-cylinder?

[Tyjenks]

BTW, I hate modern arcades. The prices are outrageous and the games are all, lightgun shooting, racing, or fighting games. Gameplay is seriously lacking. The only 2 modern arcade games I really like are Police 911 (the full body movement make it interesting) and Raiden Fighters (1997) because it is a cool top down scroller with neat effects.

-- Xaroc

I do not even go in them anymore. You have to invest so much to get good. I remember a time when you could become skilled at a game and stretch your quarter out for a pretty good length of time. Now they all require constant feedings from your pocket to keep them happy.

Plus, everytime I go by the music from those damn dancing games is blaring in the front of the arcade and a couple of drug-addled teens are stomping around like bugs are crawling all over them.

The consoles have killed arcades as we knew them way back when.

[Ben Sones]

Every time I go to a Gameworks arcade, I spend 90% of my time in the classic game section. They can keep all the silly shooting games and fighting games. Give me Marble Madness or Robotron or Gyruss over that sort of overpriced crap any day of the week.

[Matthew Gallant]

I really liked Xybots (http://www.klov.com/X/Xybots.html).

It combined a lot of cool things into one giant cool thing. The names of the characters, Captian Ace Gunn and Major Rock Hardy aren't two of them.

[Tyjenks]

Every time I go to a Gameworks arcade, I spend 90% of my time in the classic game section.

Oooh, a classics section, that would be heaven. I only know of maybe 2 arcades left in all of Birmingham and surrounding communities. The chances of us ever seeing something as utopiatic (I think I made that up) as that are about the same as Britney Spears still being a virgin and still having her original factory-installed equipment.

[Robert Sharp]

I had a lot of fun with the following:

Tron: Was it just 4 minigames? Seemed like an epic!
Yier Kung Fu: Apparently, you can play this on the GBA now..must get it
Ikari Warriors: great coop
Heavy Barrel: More great coop. A friend and I could win it on one quarter each
Double Dragon: Notice a theme?
Space Ace: campy and cool
Dungeons and Dragons: Couldn't afford to play it much, but liked it
Golden Axe: hmm...a coop game?
Rastan: tough but fun
Rygar: Can't rememer if there was an arcade version or not. I played the NES version mainly, but it was still very arcadey in a lot of ways.

There's one game I can never remember the name of, but it was like D&D and Golden Axe. You got more powerful armor/weapons as you beat bosses. Can't remember the name of it, but was a great game.

[Doug Erickson]

Robert: was it King of Dragons or Knights of the Round?

[Dave Long]

Arcade Rygar certainly does exist and it's what the NES one was based on. Rygar rocks and it's deserving of that sequel in development on PS2.

--Dave

[Ben Sones]

Rygar... was that anything like Rastan? That game had great music. Also background art stolen (I assume that they didn't pay to license it) from the Brothers Hildebrandt, from their Lord of the Rings collection.

[Dave Long]

It's a side-scroller like Rastan. However, it's faster paced and has the unique disk weapon (which has a cool name but I forget it). Here's a good bit of info on the original classic.

http://www.rygar.info/mainmenu.htm

--Dave

[Robert Sharp]

Thanks Doug. It was King of Dragons.

Rygar is being remade as a 3D title, similar to Maximo and Ghosts n Goblins. The original had some RPG elements, in the form of stats. I guess you could say it was a lot like Castlevania, actually. The spinning disk thing (like a glaive on a chain...started with an 's' I think) was similar to the whip.

[Bub, Andrew]

The spinning disk thing (like a glaive on a chain...started with an 's' I think) was similar to the whip.

Fucking Krull... THIS is a glaive: http://members.aol.com/dargolyt/TheForge/glaive.htm

It's a goddam polearm.

Rygar uses a spinning disk thing like in the movie Krull only Rygar's is on a chain, unlike Krull. I'm not blaming you Robert, just annoyed, I mean an "entire generation of D&D players who saw Krull" do the same thing. They even use the polearm Glaive stats from the Player's Handbook. I was assigned to correct them all by God, so this isn't personal.

As a weapon a "Krull Glaive" is about as stupid as a two sided Axe. Unless you're Rygar, where it's on a chain and you can spin it 360' around your body to kill beasties. Rygar can spin this thing through the ground! - awesome.

[Ben Sones]

It's sort of like a big shuriken, really. Although I can't imagine why you'd want a big, bulky, difficult to throw shuriken in favor of a small, sharp, light and lethal shuriken. It would probably work as a weapon. Just not well.

[Sparky]

Although I can't imagine why you'd want a big, bulky, difficult to throw shuriken in favor of a small, sharp, light and lethal shuriken.

Yeah, like an old soup can lid after you cut some points of it with a pair of tinsnips from your dad's toolbox! You can do a LOT of damage with one of those! Not like I ever did anything like that, of course. If some of the more obnoxious little boys in my neighborhood came down with lockjaw right after "Krull" came out, it was merely a coincidence.

[Alan Au]

You may be thinking of a chakram, which is like an aerobie with an attitude. Kind of like those Discs of Tron...

- Alan

[Ben Sones]

Now I can see where THAT could be pretty lethal, to someone with no armor. You'd be amazed what some people can do with a boomerang, too.

And Sparky--I'm with you on the soup can thing. I also made my own sword out of a big .25" x 1.5" aluminum strip, complete with swashbuckler-like hilt made out of a big cabinet door handle and electrician's tape. All my friends had wooden swords, made out of planks that they swiped from the construction site next door. My sword always won.

[Anonymous]

Five games by designers Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman (aka Game Refuge):

* Pigskin 621AD
* Arch Rivals!
* Xenophobe
* Rampage
* Destruction Derby

Humorous ultraviolence, great gameplay. Those guys are the best.

[Supertanker]

My brother and I made crossbows, using those big industrial rubberbands for power and those green bamboo garden stakes (with nails inserted in the front) for bolts. We refrained from shooting at each other. Most of the time.

[Ben Sones]

Wow. I've never met anyone that's even HEARD of Pigskin before. It was a fantastic game--like an arcade version of Blood Bowl.

The local bar that we used to hang out at in college had Pigskin for a really long time, and during the day they set it so that quarters were five minutes long. So you could get a 2-player, 20-minute game for fifty cents. Wonderful.

[Jason Cross]

Arcade Rygar certainly does exist and it's what the NES one was based on. Rygar rocks and it's deserving of that sequel in development on PS2.


Actually, the NES version was the one version (of several ports - Spectrum, C64...) that was different from the arcade. It had more up/down scrolling in the levels, more of an RPG element like Castlevania, and it has some top-down scrolling levels sort of like Ikari Warriors. It mostly had different enemies from the arcade version, too.

It was definitely the best home version of Rygar, though.

Oh, and I believe the weapon was called the "Diskarmor." It was actually a shield with big spikes sticking out, and Rygar wore it like a normal shield until you flung it out.

[Tyjenks]

Wow. I've never met anyone that's even HEARD of Pigskin before. It was a fantastic game--like an arcade version of Blood Bowl.

The local bar that we used to hang out at in college had Pigskin for a really long time, and during the day they set it so that quarters were five minutes long. So you could get a 2-player, 20-minute game for fifty cents. Wonderful.

Pigskin was great!! :!: What with all the punching and the running and the falling in holes. I was trying to think of that one yesterday. I would definitely rank it up there as one of my faves. It was not like it was just haphazardly running around either. There was actually some skill and strategy involved. We wore a path switching between it and Cyberball.

And once again, there are no games anymore and have not been for a while where you can get more than a couple minutes of play out of them. 20 mins. for fifty cents almost seems like a dream.

[Sparky]

Wow. I've never met anyone that's even HEARD of Pigskin before. It was a fantastic game--like an arcade version of Blood Bowl.

Was it that rare? I've seen them at auctions. And a friend of mine had a Pigskin machine, since he worked on the Sega Genesis version.

But now I am having flashbacks of Microleague's horrifically munged PC Blood Bowl, and I have to go hit myself on the head with an Atari 2600 until they stop. Thanks, Ben! :evil:

[Robert Sharp]

Thanks for the correction, Andrew. Actually, I have always wondered about that. I saw Krull and I have seen the real glaive as well. It confused the hell out of me to hear them both called that. Looks like I chose a stupid (and VERY bad) movie over reality...heh. It reminds me of when a friend of mine argued with me that Bacchus was a vampire because he had seen it on Xena ;).

[Ben Sones]

I don't know that I'd call it "rare," but it was uncommon, and it was released right around the time arcades started to nosedive. I've never met anyone else that's played it, is all.

And yeah, the PC version of Blood Bowl was atrocious. Too bad. Fantasy sports games are an idea ripe for the picking. I'd love to see EA sports do a Quidditch game, and make it just like one of their real-world sports sims (with teams and seasons and such). I'd play that.

[Sparky]

Yup -- I'd love to see a standalone Quidditch game, done deadly serious, not all kid-gamey...I think it would be really popular.

[Dave Long]

I played a bit of Pigskin. It was a lot of fun especially after playing the great Arch Rivals. Those titles were top notch for the time.

Arcades never really died, they just changed. While you don't get as long a play for your coin anymore, and most of the machines are fighting and the like, the appeal is the same. I still love going to the boardwalk at the seashore and playing arcade games all night.

Of course, you're talking about a guy that's owned two separate Neo Geo cartridge systems through the years. I've got a hankering to pick up a unit again too. My wife would kill me.

--Dave

[Bub, Andrew]

Yup -- I'd love to see a standalone Quidditch game, done deadly serious, not all kid-gamey...I think it would be really popular.

Don't be so sure. Quidditch is a terrible game if you analyze it, which someone did at Salon or Slate or something, I wish I could find that article right now as it was simply dynamite journalism.

Conceptually, the big problem is that whole "if someone grabs that flying thing their team wins automatically" thing - even if it happens right away. There's almost no point to scoring conventionally. Basically the entire team should spend the entire game NOT scoring, but instead harrassing the rival "golden thing finder" or helping their own "golden thing finder" to find the golden thing and get the game over with. Rowling isn't a serious sports fan but I admit, flying brooms would liven up soccer.

Anyway, it was a convincing article.

[Jason Cross]

And yeah, the PC version of Blood Bowl was atrocious. Too bad. Fantasy sports games are an idea ripe for the picking. I'd love to see EA sports do a Quidditch game, and make it just like one of their real-world sports sims (with teams and seasons and such). I'd play that.

Count me in on the Quidditch game. Hopefully they could get together with Rowling to find out the names of some other schools. The four houses of Hogwart's ain't much of a league, but if you could have exibition matches against other schools, that would rule.

Oh! Or even better, you start OFF at Hogwarts, and a season there is just the tutorial! It's pretty easy to win the cup, but then you go on to play PROFESSIONAL Quidditch! And that's the major portion of the game.

As for fantasy sports. Anybody else play Mutant League Football on the Genesis? That was a total riot!

There have been good fantasy spins on regular sports: NFL Blitz, NBA Jam, Soccer Slam, etc. You'd think it's a pretty small leap to doing a completely made-up sports game.

[Jason Cross]

Conceptually, the big problem is that whole "if someone grabs that flying thing their team wins automatically" thing - even if it happens right away. There's almost no point to scoring conventionally. Basically the entire team should spend the entire game NOT scoring, but instead harrassing the rival "golden thing finder" or helping their own "golden thing finder" to find the golden thing and get the game over with. Rowling isn't a serious sports fan but I admit, flying brooms would liven up soccer.

Doesn't sound like a very well-researched article. Catching the Snitch (that's the flying golden thing) ENDS the game immediately, but you don't automatically win. Catching the snitch gives your team 150 points.

There's actually some decent strategy to be had, if they make the snitch appropriately hard to catch (remember that in the books, Harry turns out to be one of the best Seekers - Snitch chasers - in the history of the school). Since the only way to end the game is to catch the Snitch, a team that is behind by more than 150 points does not want to catch it. They want to just keep the other Seeker from doing so while trying to catch up to within 150 points.

The whole question is, how much is 150 points? You get 10 points for each normal goal, so it should be that a team that focuses on scoring will get 150 points as easily as a team that focuses on getting the snitch. The books take liberty for dramatic effect (and because the game doesn't actually exist anywhere else), but in the hands of the right game developers it could be balanced well.

Um... Yeah. I realize I lose like 50 cool points for writing this post. :?

[Bub, Andrew]

Doesn't sound like a very well-researched article.


No, I think you lost your cool points for this single line. :D
Researched?
Like I'm one to talk, I read the article and simply remember it. And I brought it up in the first place. I'll try to find it because it was pretty convincing stuff.

Btw, a Y-Wing can totally defeat an X-Wing.

[Murph]

My wife and I took a trip to a local arcade this weekend, and discovered the joy that is Virtua Tennis. Even I had never played it before, in spite of all the heaping praise bestowed upon it via Shoot Club, and we were both quite smitten. We really had a good time, though, in spite of the fact that everything costs .50 - $1.00 these days, which is just wrong.

My all-time favorite? I don't know. I really enjoyed the TMNT game you guys have all dogged, and I really enjoyed Lethal Enforcers. Elevator Action was awesome, too.

And a few years back my buddy and I threw way too much money into Mace: The Dark Ages. That's seriously cool. (Now have it on N64, just for sentimental value. :) )

[Sparky]

Yeah. I realize I lose like 50 cool points for writing this post.

No way, you *gain* 50 in my book. Of course, you're probably a Gryffindor, and since I'm a Slytherin, this means we'll never take the House Cup now...

[Supertanker]

Five games by designers Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman (aka Game Refuge):
* Pigskin 621AD
* Arch Rivals!
* Xenophobe
* Rampage
* Destruction Derby


Wow, those guys were really masters of that Midway platform - that is a nice variety to extract from one machine. I'm sure there is some name for that set of chips, but I don't know it.

Xenophobe was another co-op favorite. Three players who knew the game & worked together were really hell on the aliens.

I think Wumpus linked the Midway site on the old board, but in case you missed it, go to www.midway.com and click on "play classic games" at the top center of the screen. They have shockwave ports of Defender, Stargate (Defender II), Bubbles, Joust, Rampage, Robotron 2084, Satan's Hollow, Sinistar, Spy Hunter, and Rootbeer Tapper (wussies).

You can also access them through the Shockwave site: http://www.shockwave.com/sw/games/arcade/

[Dave Long]

Sega Soccer Slam is the best fantasy sports game I've played in a long while. It's got all the right ingredients including some great characters.

Mutant League Football and Hockey were both cool. There've been a number of good ones through the years. I loved Super Baseball 2020 on the Neo Geo. In fact, their arcade baseball is still the best, Baseball Stars 2.

The biggest problem is the sports fans don't buy these games and the action fans don't buy them in large enough quantities to make them successful. The reason EA ended the Mutant League games was because of lack of interest. They had planned to do all the major sports.

--Dave

[Ben Sones]

Conceptually, the big problem is that whole "if someone grabs that flying thing their team wins automatically" thing - even if it happens right away. There's almost no point to scoring conventionally.

And in most (not all) of the Quidditch matches we see in the books, that's essentially true. But Harry is supposed to be a superlative Seeker, and based on Rowling's description of the game in the first book, it sounds like most matches aren't like that. She talks about matches that go on for months--certainly more than enough time to rack up enough "basic" points to make the big bonus that you get from capturing the Snitch meaningless.

The way to handle it in the game would be to give your Seeker a Seeking skill, and at normal skill levels there's pretty much no way he'll find the Snitch early in the game.

[Xaroc]

I played a bit of Pigskin. It was a lot of fun especially after playing the great Arch Rivals. Those titles were top notch for the time.


Arch Rivals was a fun game I remember playing that in college.



Arcades never really died, they just changed. While you don't get as long a play for your coin anymore, and most of the machines are fighting and the like, the appeal is the same. I still love going to the boardwalk at the seashore and playing arcade games all night.


One question is what in the hell do you play? It is 90% dreck now. Back in the day you would get a decent amount of play for your quarter and the gameplay changed between games quite a bit. Now it is 3 things, fightings games, racing games, and lightgun rail shooter games. And all of them play roughly the same. Look at Donkey Kong, Missile Command, and Spy Hunter. They are all completely different types of games with gameplay that is nothing like what you see now. All of the games listed in my favorites are all very different types of games. Now it is do I shoot zombies or thugs? Do I race all of these similar looking cars and tracks for short periods of time?

Despite all of this I still go everytime we go to the beach in a bizarre ritual, that my wife has to endure, hoping like hell that maybe I can recapture the magic of my youth. My wife plays the only quarter pinball machine in the place. My son and I wander around aimlessly going from machine to machine never really finding anything we like. Eventually we break down and pop a few quarters into the Raiden fighters machine and play that for a while. Last time I played Police 911 a couple of times for the novelty. Then we leave disapointed ... again. I guess it is the nostalgia that keeps me coming back to that one arcade. I am sure we will make the trek again next time.

-- Xaroc

[Ben Sones]

Back in "the day," you didn't get much more time for your quarter. Sure, we had those freaky arcade prodigies that could play Pac-Man for hours on end. Personally, I expected to get about a minute or two, tops, out of my quarter. There were a few games that I was really good at, and could play for a bit longer, and a very few games that were designed to be played longer (operators typically hated those games, however, because they made less money). And then there were games like Tron, which inevitably ended right after I completed the first stage (which is when the game multiplied the difficulty level by a factor of 100). Remember how we used to line up quarters on that little ledge below the glass, or along the bottom of the marquee? We didn't do that because we expected to get a lot of play time out of one credit.

[Supertanker]

Now it is 3 things, fightings games, racing games, and lightgun rail shooter games.

You forgot dancing games. They need to put one of those in a private booth if they ever expect any money from me, and not out in the very front.

[balut]

Someone mentioned Rastan earlier, which reminded me of the following observation:

Rastan is a big hulking barbarian, but at any contact with water, he dissolves into small orange particles. Therefore, my friends and I decided that Rastan is actually made of Tang.

That's it. Go on with your normal business.

- Balut

[Lee Johnson]

And then there were games like Tron, which inevitably ended right after I completed the first stage (which is when the game multiplied the difficulty level by a factor of 100).
Heh, in most games I was a total loss, but Tron was the one game I could smoke nearly everybody at. I don't want to think about the money I spent getting good at it... :? It was the only arcade game where I had ever had to deliberately crash and burn a session to keep my score from rolling over. By then I was usually ready for a break, anyway. :-)

I loved Robotron: 2084, but I had to be in a special groove to play it well. Even then, I couldn't even come close to the Robotron Masters who blazed through level after level untouched.

The other two games I especially liked were Joust and RoadBlasters.

Defender is the game I sucked at most. Stargate just added insult to injury. A few years back, I bought that Williams arcade collection for the PC and discovered that--surprise! I still suck at them. But Robotron is still cool. :D

[Xaroc]

Back in "the day," you didn't get much more time for your quarter. Sure, we had those freaky arcade prodigies that could play Pac-Man for hours on end. Personally, I expected to get about a minute or two, tops, out of my quarter. There were a few games that I was really good at, and could play for a bit longer, and a very few games that were designed to be played longer (operators typically hated those games, however, because they made less money). And then there were games like Tron, which inevitably ended right after I completed the first stage (which is when the game multiplied the difficulty level by a factor of 100). Remember how we used to line up quarters on that little ledge below the glass, or along the bottom of the marquee? We didn't do that because we expected to get a lot of play time out of one credit.

I don't class myself as an arcade prodigy but I could get a good 15-30 minutes out of most games I was good at. I remember one time I plunked a quarter in a missile command machine while my dad went to check us out of a hotel. I was having the best game of my life and had to ditch it because I took too long to die and dad was getting impatient. I seriously doubt that could ever happen now or even more importantly if I could ever get interested in a modern arcade game enough to make it happen.

-- Xaroc

[Anonymous]

For you guys who responded positively to my Pigskin 621AD post, here's two things for ya:

1) Just for kicks, here's the website of the designers, who are still in the game biz:

http://www.gamerefuge.com

2) For you ethically challenged individuals out there, Pigskin 621AD is available and emulated perfectly (from what I could tell) in MAME, the arcade machine emulator. So, you can getcher fix o' Pigskin still today. Arch Rivals! works like a dream, as well.

[Jason Becker]

A few of my favorites

Rastan
Gyruss
Excitabike(One of the few games I could 'beat')
Dragons Lair(didn't play it as much as remember watching the older kids play for hours)
R-Type


My all time favorite is CYBERBALL. The tournement edition that is. SImple to play but still a blast for any football fan. In the days when spending a $1.50 on a game was considered allot. Great 4 player game.

[Robert Sharp]

They are remaking a lot of these games, actually. Some are better than others, of course. I already mentioned Rygar, but they are also working on Defender and a few others. There is an article in OPM this month about it. As a side note, Sega is working on another Dragon Force game for the PS2.

[Aszurom]

You forgot dancing games. They need to put one of those in a private booth if they ever expect any money from me, and not out in the very front.

http://www.coregamer.com/stuff/ddrr.gif

KO'RO BOUSHKA!