Pole Position and Pinball were personal favorites growing up.

GD - Pole Position was also a home console game, though I am fairly certain it wasn't the first version. I do remember playing it when I was around 5 years old on an Atari 2600!

As an adult, I'm a big fan of Skee-Ball.

OH YEAH!

A-HA! My memory served me well.

Wikipedia entry for Pole Position

Sounds about right...

I don't know if they're big and popular but they're readily available for most platforms.

My experience is that for the most part the games I loved as a kid are best left there.

Though someday I'll look into tracking down Spider Fighter for the Atari 2600; the only Atari game that held my attention for a long time.

I've never been a fan of driving or sports simulation games but will spend nearly infinite time on any Breakout-type game.

Emulators are a mixed bag. Mostly I've found that while they're great for a quick trip down memory lane, they simply don't react to controls quite the same way as the actual systems used to. The Apple II emulator (AppleWin) has been the best I've found since it was all keyboard control anyway (no such thing as a mouse and no need for a joystick), but even then a modern keyboard doesn't have all the same keys as the old Apple keyboards, plus you're at the mercy of finding disk images that work properly (easier in recent years than in the past, but it's still common to find buggy images).

Forgot one more Apple II game that I adored...Wizardry.

If we are mentioning non-arcade games, I was always a fan of Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle.

Skeeball is my game. Was never a huge arcade fan, maybe because we didn't really have one. There were some machines at the Bowling Alley and I think PacMan at Aardvark pizza but that was about it.

Text adventures were a lot of fun - Leather Goddesses of Phobos anyone?

I always liked the idea of the one with the cartoon knight - Dirk? Watching others was cool. I would put in a quarter, move once or twice and die and that was that. Hated that game.

edit: Dragon's lair was the game.

Dragon's Lair was wicked awesome because it used a LaserDisc.

There's one I remember. :snap: :snap: :snap: