Inspired by the pinball thread; did you have a favorite arcade video game back in the day? I had a few, including Gauntlet and Spy Hunter, but my favorite was Black Tiger. I discovered it in the early 90s and dropped endless quarters into it.
I was never particularly good at any arcade game, but this one somehow clicked with me and I would sometimes draw an audience. I got good enough that I could finish the game not only on one quarter, but without even dying once.
I was god-awful at video games in general, but dropped more than my fair share of quarters into the local Tempest machine. All the cool kids played Defender so I never had to wait.
Whenever I go to the arcade (a few of them like Round1, and Gameworks), I would play Tetris (yes, an arcade version of Tetris exists, but in Japanese), Mr. Driller (the most addictive game ever), Taiko no Tatsujin, and sometimes The House of the Dead 2.
Oh, and Bubble Bobble. Love that game, inspired me to make my own platform games back in the day. My unfinished game Paramodo is very heavily inspired by it.
I haven’t thought of Robotron 2084 in decades! I remember seeing it, but I was so intimidated by the chaos of it. Same for Tempest, too. I had to ration my quarters and both of these would just eat me alive.
I don’t know that there will ever be an arcade game that, for me, outdoes the original Star Wars Trilogy cabinet, but I also have something of a history with Time Crisis and still want to beat it (which I never did despite my best teenage efforts).
Area 51 was also loads of fun.
There’s a bar arcade around here with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles machine, too, which is awesome; and maybe, just maybe, one of the Simpsons cabinets too. Those, along with X-Men, are among the best side scroller beat-em-ups of the era for me.
Agreed! I think Star Wars was the king of the hill for vector games. That yoke controller was so smooth and responsive. I was never particularly good at it, but any day I made it to the Death Star trench was a good day.
My friend used to have this vector graphics Star Wars on his Amiga. That was an unusually powerful machine for its time and I miss how good the games on it looked- some were even better than what the SNES and Genesis offered!
Bringing this around to MST3K, they used an Amiga with a Video Toaster for a lot of their video effects back in the day. They even credit it in one episode.
What was your favorite game?
