What was your favorite Arcade game?
 

Electronic- probably Space Invaders. Otherwise, I was a foosball fan.

Centipede, but the Atari version.

I loved Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Dig Dug, and, I am trying to find 'Crazy Climber'.

It was so much fun. And, the sound effects even moreso.

I enjoy pinball a lot, those old time baseball game ones, too.

Foosball and airhockey RULE!!

If we're talking strictly arcade, as opposed to home console video games, Pole Position and Rampage were my favs. Afterburner was always a good choice too.

Beyond that, I was probably more a fan of skeeball than anything else.

"The Elf is about to die! The Dwarf needs food, badly!"

Need I say more?

Oh. Hell yes. How could I omit that!

Joust

In order of getting older: Commando, Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter II.

Commando is th first arcade game I remember playing regularly. Super Mario Bros. was the contributing cause of the last time I was ever spanked (my ass broke the hairbrush). Street Fighter II occupied approximately 20% of my awake time during my first two years of college.

In a very bizarre coincidence I played Burger Time in an arcade just a month ago.

I loved Crystal Cavern (cave?) . It involved a bear on a unicycle (?) collecting crystals and avoiding some sort of baddies.

Pinball is really my favorite though. Even today I can't pass up a good pinball game if the opportunity presents itself. That and skeeball.

I'm a big fan of the Twilight Zone pinball.

The bear on the unicycle game is Crystal Castles - definitely one of my favorites.

More than video games, though - I love pinball...

I've got nearly 400 recreations on my computer, thanks to Visual Pinball and the wonderful wizards who've done so much work for such fun.

Addams Family was my favorite pinball of all time though Twilight Zone is way up there. The Sopranos actually has a good machine too.

Unfortunately it is really hard to find well maintained pinball machines.

The Simpsons pinball is pretty good (I wasted many quarters on it at the Grand Cal). I also like the Rocky & Bullwinkle one.

If you really like Crystal Castles - here's a nice one on eBay

I wasn't very good so I played centipede or space invaders but I loved to watch my brother play Galaga, Mario and something with a guy and a dragon. I remember it was cool new technology for back then. I usually stuck to pinball, foosball or air hockey.
In Portland they have a cool old fashioned arcade and upstairs was all pinball machines. I was in heaven, games I hadn't seen in years!

BUBBLE BOBBLE!

I loved that game so much. In fact, there was a convienience store down the street from where I used to live (which was kind of like a Mom and Pop General Store type building), and they had the Bubble Bobble arcade game there. I must have gone over to play it every day. I actually challenged a couple of high school kids to a Bubble Bobble duel back when I was nine years old, and well...let's just say that there were some pretty sad looking 16-year-olds walking out of the store that day. :D

Regulation pinball machines of the late 1960's early 70's before all the electronic gizmos. They still had some challenge and also allowed for a little nefarious jiggling.

Pacman was fun, as well.

It's been a long time since I've been a gamer in an arcade

DIG DUG!!!!!!

I spent too many quarters on Marble Madness.

OMG! That's mine! I read the thread title and said "Burgertime of course!" No one ever says Burgertime! You rock! I always played it in arcades (I think Starcade had it for a while.) - good times, good times.

Q*Bert is a close second.

I think I spent my college fund on Marble Madness...

What an aptly named game.

Tempest was the only game I could survive long enough to be worth my quarters. But back in the good ol' days of the Starcade, the air hocky was the best.

Scrambler, Defender, StarCastle, Astro Fighter, Monaco GP, Lunar Lander, Joust, and Missle Command.

October 1981, Chicago, Conrad Hilton, National Video Game and Vending Machine Convention..............

I was a 14 year old pimple faced kid in Heaven

Pole Position and Turbo (I think that was the name..). I am also a fan of pinball games.

Pinball, Skee-ball and Air Hockey to be sure. In the '60s, I shot a fair amount of metal duck targets at carnivals. I also usually can't resist squeezing that handle that tests my sex appeal.

Asteroids, of course, when there wasn't some guy hogging the machine by ignoring the last little rock and repeatedly ambushing the little flying saucer.

Apparently my hand-eye coordination sucks. I was never very good at arcade games. Now, text-based adventures on the other hand...

I loved Asteroids and Centipede.

But my heart always belonged to pinball.

And of course Wack-A-Mole (or however it is spelled) and Whacky Gator. Up until recently, when it just wasn't working any more, I always played a round or two of the Whacky Gator in the Starcade.

A lot of the games mentioned I loved, just not in the arcade form. We had either the little home-arcade dealies (Ms. PacMan, Centipede), Nintendo, or, in the case of Burgertime and DigDug, versions on our Apple II clone.

Speaking of the Apple II, after many years of searching, I rediscovered my absolute most favorite Apple II games in emulator form: Rocky's Boot, Hard Hat Mack, and Bolo (the original 1982 version). I nearly cried from the joy.

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:

I'd just like to say that thanks to compilation games like the Sega Genesis Collection and Atari Collections for PS2, you can virtually play any arcade game you want.

Case in point, I just played Pac-Man not too long ago!

I just found Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory online!

Here it is: http://www.the-commodore-zone.com/java64/java64.htm

I remember sitting in my room playing nintendo for hours.. I used to get lost in Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers.. ( I remember finding the secret worlds in SMB's) that was the deal...

But I remember this pinball game that was at my local bowling alley all the kids used to play it, there were so many kids waiting to play it.. It was called "Earthshaker" it was an earthquake game, and if your ball went into the fault line, the whole game shook. It was so cool..

I remember how devestated we were when they pulled it out and put some dumb pinball game...

"Valkryie is about to die!" My personal favorite. "Do not shoot the food!"
PS2 has a Midway compilation of Paperboy, Gauntlet, Spy Hunter, Toobin' Defender 1 and 2 and Joust. Classic gaming at it's best.


Space Ace and Dragon's Lair. I have them both on separate CD-Rom
Don Bluth is one of my favorite animators.

I still want the Tron Deadly Discs game where you stand inside it.

I always liked Kangaroo.

Ms. Pac Man. My uncle was big into video games in the 80s (having designed and programmed Kaboom! for the Atari 2600) and he had a bunch of arcade cabinets in his garage. One of which was Ms. Pacman, which I still love.

I played the crap out of that game whenever I visited, and I got really good at the arcade version. So much so that nobody wants to play with me since I'll be there for 10 minutes or more on my first life. Once I was playing in Vegas and had a crowd watching me, it was really funny.

Nowadays, I will play it at the car wash near my house, and by the time all my lives are up, my car has been washed :)

The other game though that I loved in the arcade was the original Star Wars game. You know, where it was all monochrome graphics and stick figures. That's still one of my faves... it used to be in the arcade at Disneyland, but now I think it may be in Whitewater Snacks in the Grand Cal.

I always enjoyed the arcade sequels like, Ms. Pac-Man, Ms. Tron, & Ms. Galaga.

The Simpsons Arcade Game (1991). Boy, they wikipedia everything!

Yes, they do.

Holy Canoli! Did you know you can even find The Meaning of Life?

Love both those. Spent many a lunch time winning free games on them.

I concur. I love tempest. Same with AIr Hockey.

I spent a whole summer vacation and all my allowance on this game the year it came out.


As for my picks:

Zork and all of the other Interactive Fiction got me hooked early. I loved them.
Kings Quest series was a revolution and my dad, sister and I would play for hours on his original IBM.

Legend of Zelda on the NES. I would play till I could not see, then go to bed with the song in my head and flashing hearts burned into my eyes.

Spy Hunter- Something about it had me hooked.

Adventure for the Atari 2600

And i could not forget the many nights at the Starcade playing TRON.

If'n me ship ever comes in, that is the game I would love to have as me very own. Whoa! Hey!

And that just makes me think of the old Holy Grail PC game. Truly terrible piece of software, but chock full of excellent absurdest fun.

FYI...


Dragons Lair is now available in a HD Blu-Ray version which is getting decent reviews.


As for the games:

I was a "world record" holder on Asteroids for very short time if at all with a score of 2.4Million

I was also a Tempest god thanks to the 40-free games buffer overflow hack.