Oh, yeah, the original Star Wars, where you sat down in the cabinet…I had forgotten about that one…we would walk around the rest of the weekend parroting the best taglines from the game, “I can’t shake him!” and something along the lines of “I have you now…”
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Yeah! That was the original Star Wars game! I think it came out in '78. I played that yesterday too! I remember when Star Wars was re-released in '79…after my friends and I caught it a few times, we’d go next door to the arcade and play the game! We definitely got our Star Wars fix! 
Then an Empire Strikes Back game came out, but for some reason that was hard to find. I grew up in the Los Angeles area and of all the places I went, only one place had that game, so I didnt get a chance to play it much.
When the Return of the Jedi game came out, that was everywhere! Played that a lot and got pretty good. I’d garner spectators! LOL! I played that yesterday…did alright!
Then to promote the Star Wars trilogy movie re-dos of the late 90s… LucasArts released another sit-down game called “Star Wars Trilogy”. Ya played scenes from all 3 movies in one game! It was AWESOME! Ya even got to do a light-saber duel with Darth Vader…that was tough! All the 100s of times I did that, I only beat him once. Graphics were REALLY great-looking and authentic too! I could play that one for hours! Hope it shows up to the place I was at yesterday, someday!
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The city I grew up in had a bylaw that places were limited to a maximum of 3 machines. so while there were arcades within driving/transit distance, when I was confined to a bike the options were limited to say the least. That said.
The Safeway had a Ms. Pacman machine, The Zellers had Wonder Boy & a SNK multiplay with King of the Monsters. but the highlight was a corner shop that was on my paper route and had a Super Mario cabinet, that had I not played I might have been able to save up for a NES.
After high school i started a graveyard shift limiting the time I could do stuff, but the 7-11 near by rotated thru a few great cabinets at that time, Street Fighter Alpha, NBA Jam, and at the best point a full sit down Daytona USA.
As I got older and started going further out on a regular basis in downtown Vancouver on the Granville Strip, there used to be a half dozen small arcades of good to questionable quality I would go to. Most are gone now, and likely for good reasons but damn if i didn’t have a few good and some not so good memories.
That transitioned into the age of Gameworks and Palladium when even the movie theaters wanted you to get a play card rather than spending the quarter in your pocket. I still spent a good deal on time in those but those were different experiences.
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I had a blast playing the 1998 Sega arcade game Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. It was fun.
It reminds me of other shooters I played in arcades like Starblade.
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What a cruddy bylaw! LOL!
When me and my buddies were 15, we had the crazy idea of riding our ten-speed bikes 8 miles to a huge arcade and mini-golf complex…did it…played games for an hour or more, then rode back home another 8 miles! Ah, to be young, crazy and have lots of energy!
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THANKS FOR POSTING THIS!!! God! I LOVE this game! Miss it! Havent played it in 14 years! I could get thru all levels and be there for 30min, but I’d have to put more $ in to extend the game! 
Wonder why the light-saber colors were off in this… but great post!
I thought about buying this game, but I move too much and its not exactly a very mobile item… Big item too…bit hard to find room for it in an apt. Dont have a house anymore. But I can dream! Hope that place I was at yesterday gets that game. I NEED MY STAR WARS FIX! Other than watching it!
I also remember another sit-down game that came out a couple years after this…it was the Episode I Pod-racer game. That was a wild game! Doing pod-racing!
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My favorite video game of all time…Burgertime from Data East! I’ve played home ports including the Atari 7800 clone Beef Drop but I have played the original arcade game.
In this game, you are Chef Peter Pepper and you have to make hamburgers. Unfortunately, you have Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Egg and Mr. Pickle who want to make hamburger out of YOU!! You have to avoid them; your only defenses are dropping a hamburger ingredient onto them from above, give them a ride on a falling hamburger part or stun them briefly with pepper.
Any Burgertime fans here?
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I think I remember that game!
Intellivision! I remember that system! Had some cool stuff on that! I remember loving golf!
Oh, the irony! I just had BBQ hamburgers for Memorial Day!
This game should be in all fast-food places as a part of subliminal advertising!
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Love the Intellivision Burgertime commercial! “We are closed…NOW!!”
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Hilarious! Is that Ike Eisenman? LOL!
Looks like after they get their food, they’ll drive straight into the ocean!
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Mattel! Remember this?
Almost every boy in my 6th grade class had this! I got good at this one too.
Never punted and never kicked a field goal! 
My parents wouldnt give me the $40 for the thing, so I saved my allowances for weeks and bought it myself! Still have it and it still works! Good ole Mattel! Back when American companies were putting out quality stuff!
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Wasted many a Saturday night playing Burgertime on the Intellivision, with crappy pizza and a liter of RC Cola.
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Not sure what the logic was… but arcade games at Safeway or restaurants took quarters but big arcades you had to turn cash into tokens. I assume it was because monitoring two machines would be different than 50 little cash boxes
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If you had 10 dollars and you swapped them for quarters, you might not use all of them and walk out with change you could go buy a pop from somewhere cheaper.
Buy tokens or a game card with $10 in credit on it, then regardless if you use all of it, use some and come back another time, or use a bit, leave and never step foot in there again, they’re going to get that full 10 bucks from you.
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Yeah, it’s the same reason cell phone games have you trade in your real money for cubes or orbs or whatever-shaped-premium currency. Once you have a bunch, it’s really hard to land at exactly zero, and you don’t want it to go to waste, so you buy a little more and so on and so on.
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I still have mine around here, somewhere…and I can still play it, just a few runs to get the hang of it again !
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Has anyone ever set the high score in their fav game?
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For a few months I had the high score on Joust at my local Safeway… this is the store where my dad would send me with note to buy his cigarettes. Yep, I got to keep the change. Can you imagine a 10 year old buying smokes these days?
But, I never had the high score on Defender!
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That was a good way to get in free, regular practice on a game! 
Maybe not good for your Dad…but good for you!
Spy Hunter (1983)
I ruled this game back in the 80s! Around 1986-87, I held the #1 score record on this game at an arcade in Surfside Beach, SC (south of Myrtle Beach). When I went back there a few times when on vacation with my parents, I still held the record until I went into the Navy in 1988. Went back there a couple years later and the game was gone 
Originally intended to be a James Bond tie-in, developer Midway couldn’t secure the license but Spy Hunter had no qualms about ‘borrowing’ from 007’s best car chase moments anyway. The selection of upgrades to your fictional G-6155 Interceptor was a familiar arsenal of smokescreens, missiles and oil slicks. The best part is that to unlock those abilities you had to ramp your car up into the back of a moving truck, Italian Job style. You’ll want to perfect the technique too because, like every arcade game of the era, Spy Hunter is brutally difficult and designed to relieve you of as much of your spare change as possible before you slink out of the Megabowl.
And while it might be a stretch to describe this as the only driving game with a cinematic plot twist, it’s genuinely a surprise when, half way through the game, you launch your car into a river and it transforms into a speedboat. There’s even a Hollywood soundtrack, although for some reason it’s the Peter Gunn theme, best known from the Blues Brothers.
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