Twenty classic arcade games
I’d better say it from the outset: picking 20 all-time arcade game classics is a nightmarish task, not simply because of the almost endless array of titles available to choose from, but because of all the really good ones you have to omit. Space Invader Here then, are the titles that made the cut, either because they have had …
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Re: Ahh, thems were the days
Yup, it was Berzerk. I think the opening phrase was "Get the humanoid, get the intruder!" It would also interject with "Attack it!", "Charge the humanoid! and similar during gameplay. It also featured hurry-up enemy Evil Otto, the most deadly and indestructible smiley face ever (Alan Moore's Comedian can eat his heart out. :-) Look, there he is now, at the top left of the post! Time to go!! :-)
Wot, no Tron?
I spent a lot of pocket money on that and it had the best looking cabinet in the arcade!
Also: How the hell is "Asteroids" not in this list? Space Invaders and Asteroids were the two staples of my arcade experiences.
Happy memories!
A great look back on some classic titles. Outrun will however, always be my favourite.
Re: Happy memories!
Outrun was great. One afternoon once, for the hell of it, I completed the game by every possible route and had all the high scores on the game in the Students' Union :-)
Star Wars' "faithful reproduction of both soundtrack and voice samples"?
"Ooo da war, Ploop!"
Oh happy days!
Space invaders, yes, of course
But where was Galaxians? Space invaders that attacked you from behind - spent far too much money on that one.
And Gorf: "SOME GALACTIC COMMANDER *YOU* MAKE"
Showing my age, I know. I got bored with video games after then, never got into PC/console gaming at all.
Re: Space invaders, yes, of course
Thanks. Was just trying to remember what that was called, and of course it's Gorf. Which, as I recall, had a space invader type level, and then a bunch of others, finishing with the mothership. Then was it back to the beginning (but faster)?
I still like Space Invaders. I still sometimes play it on albinoblacksheep.com.
I'd love to find a way to play Gauntlet again. I was looking for that a while back, but no joy. Hmmm. Looks like a lot of this stuff has turned up on the iPad since I last looked. I wonder how it plays on a touchscreen though? Probably not well.
Re: Space invaders, yes, of course
+1 for Gorf. I didn't stare at a screen so intently or for so long until I my first truly mission-critical database restore.
Re: Space invaders, yes, of course
You can get all of these on an emulator for your PC. Well good. Can't wait till my Picade comes through the door and then it'll be like back in '84
Galaxians, of course
Ah, yes, Galaxians - my personal favorite of the "quarter-eater" generation. Wave 1 - Best hand-eye coordination practice ever. I still play it occasionally. I was shown how to play it at University. The challenge is to never, ever shoot an alien from behind, only when it's coming at you. Complete Wave 1 without losing a ship. If you can do it, you've won! If you can't, do it again ... and again .. and again... and again ...
Can anyone remember...
the title of a MotoGp or World Superbike-styled racer? I used to waste my lunchtimes from Unisys at the Crown in St. Nicks market Bristol, supping on a Newky Brown and shovelling coins into the game.
Re: Can anyone remember...
I played this so much that I still hum the theme tune to this day!
Re: Can anyone remember...
Thanks <spez> that was it. Have a beer old chap.
Inspired choices. Each and every one of those screenshots transported me back to the sights and smells (mainly the smells actually) of the arcades where I played each on.
A pretty good list there. Defender ranks as #1 for me personally and yes, where's Galaxian or even Scramble, though let's face it, too many to mention and to nail into a top 10 easily.
I threw far too many coins into Xevious myself.
Also worth noting, Bradford's National Media Museum has a room with some cabinets and sit-downs in for retro-gaming goodness, and still at the original 10p per game too. They have Defender too... I'll always try to find time to have a blast on that when I'm there.
Xevious
A game I loved, becasue if you knew where all the bonus life Flags were and the towers etc, you could (like I once did) play for 1 1/2 hours on one 10p :-)
Gorf
Why no Gorf? The first time I'd heard speech synthesis in a game, and each level totally different and unique (if something of a rip-off of other games?!).
Overall though a great trot down memory lane, even if I don't know so many of the later ones...
Re: Come on ...
First time I ever used a track ball was playing Missile Command...
Golden age of racing games
Its all very well putting in chase HQ, but surely the golden age of racing games was the 90's when you could finally race your mates on two player with a bit of force feedback in the steering wheel. Sega rally for my money.
And how about bit of puzzle bobble in the students union anyone?
Re: Golden age of racing games
Yes, but no!! I learned to drive playing Hard/Race Drivin' - realistic speed, force feedback, multiple turns lock to lock, ignition key, real gearbox and CLUTCH PEDAL!!! not to mention a loop-de-loop!!
and a huge soft spot for ridge racer full scale...........
So many that could\should be on the list.
Where is Gorf? "alert alert enemy invaders..."
Why isn't out run mentioned? Or pole position for that matter.
Sad to see no ghost and goblins.
And what of Tron?
Ahh so much wasted youth, oh the folly
I spent ages playing Tempest...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(video_game)
with the yellow 'claw' that you rotated around the lip of te tunnel, to stop the 'aliens' crawling out.
Quite abstract, but I spent valuable drinking tokens in college on this one!
happy days :-)
Re: I spent ages playing Tempest...
Another vote for Tempest here. A fantastic game.
For abstract- how about I-Robot, also by Atari.
Mainly a good list, but...
... missing MARBLE MADNESS and JOUST.
Re: I spent ages playing Tempest...
For reference, the "claw" in Tempest is called a C-Shooter.
Dave Theurer's finest hour, that game, and it didn't get any worse when Jeff Minter remade it as Tempest 2000.
Re: Mainly a good list, but...MARBLE MADNESS?!?!!
Marble Madness ... AAAAAAaaaaaaah!!!
You didn't prefer Outrun?
I did. There wasn't any destruction, unless you crashed. It was simpy drive as hard and fast as you can.
Even better was Hard Drivin'. I spent every lunch hour at the mall in the arcade ignoring the very attractive red-head while using all of my lunch money, and some of my drinking money, to write sentences on the high-score screen. The best part was the ability to run the course backwards...
Oh, and Other than these two....I sucked at video games (and still do).
Memories...
This brings back some fond memories of being a teenage immigrant lad in South Africa in the late 70's as the arcade games era hit us..
I recall Ridge Racer, then Space Invaders being the first two I saw at the local cafe (as the cafe's were the pre-games arcade hangout for "gamers")
Then came Donkey Kong, my next addicition and introduction to the Brothers "Mario"
"Track and Field" was known as "Hyper Olympics" here, exact same game, different name but a great game!
By the early 80's games arcades sprung up all over the place, usually alongside roadhouses or cafes, as the (usually Portuguese or Greek) cafe owners saw the opportunity and opened arcades.
I do recall most of the titles, we didn't get them all here, sadly, but one thing I believe needed a mention is this nostalgic article was "Asteroids"
Thanks for the trip down memory lane to when I was a teenage school/college boy who used to starve all day just to spend his "lunch money" on those great CRT and oversized button equipped coinops..
The one I find odd is Ms. Pacman but not the original
which was a far better game.
I also spent quite a few quarters in Beserk, not that I expect it to make a top 20 list. "Come back and fight like a robot!"
I suppose Donkey Kong get's you the Mario Brothers franchise, but I far preferred the turtle game. Played Kong on a console again recently and had the same issue with icon locating that I found irritating in the first.
And where the heck is Robotron?!?!?! Sure Battlezone gave you pedals and a yoke, but Robotron required the use of both joy sticks, and in a fashion that doesn't exactly come naturally to the human brain.
Still the picks on the early games are good. Can't comment on the new ones. Stopped doing the arcades around 1990, but I do get nostalgic for them.
Total carnage! I love it!
Smash TV is on the list, and it's basically an updated Robotron - same designer, same dual-joystick setup, same basic gameplay.
Influential Graphics
I was never much of an arcade-machine user but Outrun inspired a lot of my GCSE art classes (many drawings of red Ferraris on cute single-point perspective roads) :)
Blimey!
A great list. Many of my all time favourites on there. It takes me back to to days spent on tript to Scarborough or in the 'Harrogate Computer & Video Centre' (I think that was what it was called) down in the basement arcade playing games.
My all time favourite though has got to be Nemesis. I could always complete this on 10p and often stopped to discover a crowd had gathered to watch. These days I don't get to arcades so use emulators to get my fix when I have the time.
Alien in lieu of a space invader icon.
Re: Blimey!
+1 for Nemesis, awesome game that could make 20p last a lunch break, Also honourable mentions for Commando & Kung Fu Master, oh and Rolling Thunder & Green Beret.
Hmmm. It's a good list but missing a few: Missile Command, Galaxian, some of the overhead multi-player racing around the track games (can never remember the name - you get spanners and such to power up your car after races), the afterburner type pseudo-3d high speed shoot em up, and there are no examples of vertically scrolling shooters either, such as "battle for midway" but I'm sure that wasn't the first and possibly not the best.
There was also a ground breakingly different one where you got to drive a tank using two vertically aligned joysticks...
Glad to see Gauntlet ln there, loved that.
Another favourite was Battlezone, may have just been the eyepiece you had to look through, but I always headed straight for it.
Re: Xevious ...
Ah Xevious,
I used to hog the high score table of both the Xevious machines in Dundee back in the early 80's, and the one in the arcade in Glasgow (one of the ones on Argyle Street), several years after I'd stopped playing them regularly, I found myself back in the arcade in Glasgow one drunken Friday night, early 90's, found the Xevious machine still there and that no-one had ever beaten my highscores.
Only one person in Dundee ever beat me, he worked in a bank (I think) on Reform Street.
Xevious and Mad Planets..way too many boozy hours in the Arcades as a student spent on them both..I've tried playing them on MAME, but it ain't the same..
Defender...
WAS (and still is?) the best video game shooter ever.
Wizard needs food, badly
All the usual suspects, can't go too far wrong with that list.
I would stick with Outrun over ChaseHQ, I still play that today. And I would stick Robotron 2084 in not SmashTV.
This is my arcade cabinet, I built it when I ran out of space for a full sized cabinet :)
http://minicade.blogspot.com
BEWARE, I LIVE
Sinistar made the space invaders look as scary as E.T.
Re: BEWARE, I LIVE
I used to play this while working night shift as an underutilised mainframe engineer at the Midland Bank computer centre in Brent, N. London.
Wasn't good for much else after an hour of this... but it did keep me awake.
Komputers schmoputers!
All those newfangled computers! When I was spending my kopecks that was on the real thing, like this - proper analog stuff, with a real periscope! Sinking capitalist-imperialist fleet with my proletarian green-glowing (nukular?) torpedoes!
Playable emulator here: http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/game/ (Press the big red button at the top to play).
Re: Komputers schmoputers!
That reminds me- I didn't see Tetris on that list.
What was that one called...?
What was that game that had live action scenes played. It was a western and you had to shoot things at the right time to move on? If you got it right the next scene played. If not a death scene played. (Something like that - it was a long time ago now.)
I remember seeing it crashed in an arcade in Margate and it was showing the infamous Guru Meditation; sooo chuffed to find out that it was basically an Amiga inside.
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