Ok, so there's little to nothing going on in the arcades in comparison to the 80's. So I'm gonna talk about a few of my favorite old arcade games and leave some room for the off chance that the arcade industry recovers! I guess it's kinda like setting a place at dinner for a dead relative, tho...
My favorite arcade games:
Joe's favorite arcade games
Arcade related links
Arcade related links
a silly side view game (I don't think it even
scrolled!) where you were a convict in mine shafts trying to get gold
and take it back to a wheel barrow without getting caught by the cops. The
sound was the best reason to play this game. Hearing the Bagman say
"Oy yoy yoy yoy" was the best!
A top down shooter where you had to come at
mother ships at the right angle to destroy them...wish I could find an
emulator for this one, it was a classic!
For multiplayer play, it was hard to beat this game. There was no
competitive feeling in the world like stealing a wrench from in front of
another player. And once you got the hang of spinning the steering wheel
really hard, you got really good.
I love shooting games, and I got really good at this game and it's
near brother, Crossbow. I didn't like the western theme as much as the
medieval theme of Crossbow, but I played either. I only got to play this
one at Great America whereas Ira's had Crossbow.
Part of the second wave of laser disk games,
the footage from this game was taken from two Lupin anime
movies: Castle of Cagliostro and Mystery of Mamo.
Instead of just having one button like the Dragon's Lair games, you had two
buttons, one for the hand and one for the foot. Whenever Cliff (Lupin)
had to do something, you had to press the button acting for his limb.
I never got by the Ninjas...
Crossbow was the partner shooting game to Cheyenne. Summer days in
grade school and early high school used to consist of riding up to
Ira's Hot Dogs in Northbrook, having a plain jumbo dog, onion rings, and
a large root beer and playing Crossbow for *hours*. Damn, those hot dogs
were good. Screen shot
What I consider the first of the super-violent arcade
games, it kept me feeding quarters for *hours*. It was also a great
two-player game. How come Congress didn't pick up on that one...it had
violence *and* heavy drug references. So what if you were a DEA agent
from a Schwartzenegger movie?
My friend Mike and I reached a sort of Zen-like connection while
playing this game at one point. We were at Just For Fun in Town 'N
Country mall in Arlington Heights and we starting winning matches
two-on-two. Well, the winning team stays on, and we played for over two
hours on our first game's money. It was so bad at one point that we
were up 58-2 at the half of a game. I've never been that good at a game
since.
I swear I learned to drive on
this game. Musical Sound Shower will forever be enscribed in my head as
the best driving song of all time. And now I even have a blonde to sit
next to me...if only I had a Testarossa...
This game owed so much to
Out Run it was sick, but it was such a good game that I was willing to
overlook the rip off. Plus, you could fishtail the car! Buy the PlayStation
version just for the driving music!
a side scrolling spy game where shooting
enemies was *so* satisfying...I felt like James Bond!
In Gurnee, IL, is the current Six Flags Great
America...before Six Flags bought it, Bally owned the park. And they used
to test their games there. I used to bring $25, get there at 9am and be
broke by noon. Most of my money went to play Spy Hunter. I *loved* hearing
the Peter Gunn theme, and you knew that you were rocking when you got to
the funky solo in the song!
I started out as Blanka, switched to E. Honda where I was at my best,
and eventually drifted to Dhalsim because he pissed people off so much.
It's the only fighting game that I was very really into. Summer nights
consisted of two hours training at Galaxy, Taco Bell, and home to sleep
for a few hours before it all started again. My friends and I figured out
that we could have bought a SFII machine for the money we spent in a summer
playing it.
A classic, if for no other reason than the music! I
still remember the blacklight glow of the cabinet! Can you remember all of
the computer languages displayed at the bottom of the screen for each
level of the game?
More multiplayer madness. But coordinating a clearing mission while
occasionally rescuing a friend was a great change from the cutthroat
games that were out. The laser pistol was the best weapon!
A good gallery of old coin-op game images with links to the
main page of images and other classic video game info.
ROM files for many classic arcade games, but unless you're lucky
enough to have the hardware, most of these games are unplayable. It is
a good source for data on the games, though.
Another arcade ROM site, but a site dedicated more to the emulator
crowd.
An on-line museum for arcade games. It's still under construction,
but it's the official site!
A really good guide to emulators for some classic arcade games.
A travelling arcade exhibit that I'm lucky enough to find out is
in Philadelphia from June 20 to Sept. 9. Their site has a listing of many
of the games on display.
Yahoo's links to other arcade sites. I'll go through them and pick out
the best ones as soon as I get my site stable.