what's your favourite old school arcade game?

[lazarus]

Mine would have to be Star Wars, the original with the line graphics. I could play that for hours.

Also on the favourite list is Gauntlet (didn't like the sequel), Super Mario Bros., and Tempest. I wasn't very good at Tempest, but I loved it.

I remember Friday nights at the base I was stationed at in England. We'd all get a roll of quarters each and take over the Guantlet machine at the bowling alley arcade. Wayne was the elf, Cindy was the Valkyrie, I was the Wizard, and Woody was the Warrior. Good times.

[Systematic Chaos]

1. I have so many!

My mother moved us to Vegas back in '82, when the arcade craze was in high gear. Prior to that, I had played many games in the arcades of my previous home town. I remember being addicted to Donkey Kong, Phoenix, Tempest, Scramble, Centipede, Vanguard, Moon Cresta and Pac Man initially.

Then, in the Summer of '82, I got to see the arcade up on the mezzanine at Circus Circus, and it ended up becoming my home (along with a few other great Strip hotel arcades) for a year or two. I played the living shit out of Super Pac Man, Tron, NATO Defense, Thief, Gorf, Anteater, Pepper II, Reactor, Astro Blaster, Solar Fox, Robotron and several others.

It's nearly impossible for me to name any one of those as my ultimate favorite. I just know I was quite good at nearly all of the games I played heavily.

[lazarus]

3. I had forgotten Super Pac Man

that was a fun one. Can't believe it hasn't been ported to one of the consoles yet. Tron was good, but I had real trouble with the MCP.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. It has.

It's been on the PlayStation via the Namco Museum Collection series.

It's also part of the Namco collection for XBox 360.

Lastly, there is one of those self-contained joystick units you can buy in the toy section of Target that has Super Pac Man in it, although the picture with those looks pretty bad because they're RF input only. Still, if you want to play the game it's an option.

As for Tron, I had the quickest trigger finger back when I was 13. I unintentionally broke a million on that game and got so pissed I stopped playing it. What happened was that I wanted to post a score of 999,000 + on the high score board, and I was on the spider screen. I accidentally shot one spider too many and pushed my score back to like 87 points. I tried to recover and make it through the spiders to the level exit before the timer ran down but didn't make it. My final score showed on the screen as 187. I almost cried.

[lazarus]

6. I'll have to look for those

I have one collection for the GameCube with Gauntlet on it. I need Bubble Bobble, too. My dream is to one day own my own Star Wars machine, though.

[eShirl]

2. have to agree about the original Star Wars game. I liked a lot of the vector grafix ones

Star Wars, Tempest, and good ol' Battlezone were especial favorites! Asteroids was good but I never fell in love with it.

My two girlfriends and I would hang out in the local arcade after school, and the owner would often just give us each handfuls of arcade tokens. He seemed to think it was good for business to have teenage girls hang out there, for some reason. :D

[Ohio Joe]

4. In my senior year of high school...

I had a job at Paramus Park Mall as one of those guys that walks around with a broom and dustpan sweeping up garbage.... yeah, it was high school. On Fridays and Saturdays, after work, me and this guy Charlie would cruise up to Nyack NY where I knew a guy that work the close shift of a small arcade. It closed at 9pm but my buddy would let us in, we would all smoke up and he would give us all the tokens we wanted for free. He would lock up and turn out the lights and we would all play till 2-3 in the morning. Tempest, Donkey Kong jr, Defender, ms pac man... ahhh, good times :smoke:

[ZombieHorde]

7. Gauntlet and Joust in the arcade.

Space Quest, King's Quest, and Hero's Quest for computer.

[Forkboy]

8. Wizard of Wor.

[PVnRT]

9. Bezerk, Yar's Revenge

Not arcade, just the Atari, but some of the original 2600 games were awesome.

[semillama]

10. Gauntlet and Tempest for sure

"Elf needs food-badly!"

[sam sarrha]

11. Star Wars.. 1st 3d game i ever saw

[BulletproofLandshark]

12. Strider!

[YOY]

15. "They came from the 3rd Moon with Monsters!"

n/t

[beevul]

13. Not quite old school...

But I love me some mortal kombat 2

[jayfish]

14. Zaxxon, Cliff Hanger & Good Old Asteroids

Well, what can be said about Asteroids. You could play it everywhere. Mom and Dad boring you to death at the grocery store? ...Asteroids. Need to take a break from the roller rink? Asteroids. Dollar burning a hole in your pocket? ...Asteroids. Cliff Hanger was a different beast entirely. It was in the vain of Dragon's Lair but much, much cooler. I guess you could call those type of games the precursor to quick time events in todays games. I mostly enjoyed this type of game because you could advance the story pretty far without totally cleaning out your allowance. The only place in town that had it was the local Putt-Putt Golf & Games. Zaxxon looked super sweet with it's pseudo 3d graphics and there wasn't anything that matched it.

Honorable mention goes to Defender. ...only because I sucked at it.


Zaxxon


Cliff Hanger


Asteroids

Jay

[lazarus]

16. I hated Zaxxon

it and the Defender/Stargate games were the only ones I couldn't get very far on. Well, and the Centipede/Millipede games.

Asteroids was good, but I always lost it when I had to start moving the ship around.

[harun]

17. Ghosts n Goblins