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What did you waste hours playing? PacMan and Galaxian were two I remember, both in pubs.
Star Wars
Defender.
The sound of a Space Invaders machine immediately transports me back to the cafeteria in Wishaw Baths in the early 80's. I rarely played it but would stand and spectate others whilst eating Monster Munch and drinking tomato soup which tasted a bit funny due to the overwhelming haze of chlorine.
Also a massive fan of Super Sprint with the four steering wheels.
Ghosts 'N' Goblins
Space Harrier
Am I allowed Outrun?
Star Wars
Bubble Bobble
Rolling Thunder
Sega Rally
Time Crisis
Happy memories of holidays and the arcade in the centre of nottingham in the late 80s early 90s.
There was one in the Uni cafe that if you got good enough at you could play indefinitely for 10p. Can't remember the name of it now but it involved a hammer/axe man, jumping and end of level dragons, looked a bit like Ghosts n' Goblins but wasn't.
Golden Axe?
Golden Axe, I spent a fortune on it.
Tempest - lordy I was so good on that!...
I was a boss at this...no coins required
Street fighter.
Tempest was class.
Loved Steeplejack/Crazy Climber, fantastic 8 bit games. I have Mame and Retropie but you can't really recreate the twin joystick set up, without significant expense.
Gorf. It spoke!
Star Wars. Spend my train fare on that one.
Road Blasters.
Jackal. 1st game I remember with power ups.
Super off road for me.
Star wars, what a great game that was
Put a small fortune into Gauntlet with 4 people playing. As long as you kept putting it money, you kept going
Had a 2 player Tetris in a bar where I worked, that was always good.
Golden Axe?
Not that, 4 way scroll platform, smaller figure, bloke looked a bit like Conan, dragons were end of level bosses, though my memory of something I played 30 years ago is misty. It's going to bug me now!
BattleZone
Scramble
Outrun on the Townsend Thoresen Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry in the summer holidays.
Ooh and Space Harrier on the moving seat
If I could ever get near it, this was the object of my interest. Saints Roller Rink, Winnipeg Canada. 1981-ish.
Double Dragon - I was rubbish at it.
Outrun - I was fairly rubbish at it
Defender - I was utterly rubbish at it.
There's a theme here.
Asteroids!
Then Defender.
Spy Hunter
Paperboy
Yie Ar Kung Fu
Hunchback
Pole Position - A kid in my class, Carrots, famously spewed all over this machine whilst playing it on the Ardrossan to Brodick ferry on my P7 school trip. Turns out that playing videogames whilst seasick isn't the smart thing to do.
Defender
Scramble
Battlezone
Happy memories...
@perchypanther my Astrowars is sat next to me as I work from home. Only issue with it it's sooo loud when on a Teams conference call 🙂
Not that, 4 way scroll platform, smaller figure, bloke looked a bit like Conan, dragons were end of level bosses, though my memory of something I played 30 years ago is misty. It’s going to bug me now!
Found it, Rastan Saga;
Double Dragon
Forgotten all about that one!
Man - got a horrible feeling I binned Astro Wars one or two house moves ago... 🙁
Sega Rally
Daytona USA
Virtua Cop
Killer Instict
House of the Dead
Soul Edge
Virtua Fighter
Mortal Kombat
Used to love the trips to Blackpool Arcades!
Xevious, Outrun, Hang On, Rampage, final fight, smash tv, ninja turtles 4 player to name a few. Played all over the place but I particularly spent quite a lot of time in the Trocadero at Picadilly Circus in the 90's!!
Paper Boy with the bike handlebars
Afterburner (with the chair that moved around)
Rad Mobile (trivia: this is the first game where sonic made an appearance - albeit as an air freshener hanging off the rear view mirror)
- Outrun
- Top Gun (I think it was called Top Gun) - flying an F-15 in a sit-down aracade machine - Afterburner after seeing retro83's post above!
- Sega Rally
- Something or the other Celica Rally game at Wembley bowl (never saw it anywhere else) - it was like an isometric view rather than from the drivers seat - World Rally, perhaps?
- A bit of Street Fighter
- Time Crisis
- A sit-on & lean motorbike game - Manx TT perhaps?
Space Invaders. Galaxian which was similar but the bombers peeled off and dive bombed your position. Missile Command which used a trackball to position your missiles. And of course Donkey Kong.
Was a bit of a driving game specialist BITD.
Had the arcade record at Ridge Racer, Sega Rally and Sega Rally II.
A big arcade in Glasgow ("Booth's" i think) ran a weekly competition on Ferrari 355 Challenge, fastest lap time every week won £100.
It was £2 quid a pop and I probably spent £60 learning the game and the track to win on the first week. Probably took me a tenner to win it again in the second week and the same to win it on the third.
But just as a glittering career as a semi-professional arcade racer stretched out before me the competition was cancelled (probably because i kept winning it) and my dreams were dashed.
Grew up in Blackpool so spent pretty much every weekend hanging round the arcades!
Ridge Racer was biggest draw for me; me and my mate would compete to top the leaderboard on all the machines we could find round town!
Virtua racing and Daytona were good when there was a gang of us, one of the arcades had a 4 car virtua racing, another had 6 car Daytona.
Virtua cop, time crisis, point blank, Manx TT, sega rally, mortal Kombat, SF2, star wars. Great days!!
Loved rolling thunder as well, but could never get more than a couple of minutes in to it!!
Vulcan Venture (aka Gradius II). Spent a fortune on that in the local computer games shop near college. Also at the same place, the best shoot-em-up no-one's ever heard of, Armed F.
Mortal Kombat. We had a machine where I worked in my Uni days, a mate and I would spend our lunchtimes ripping each other's organs out. It got to a point where we knew each other's gameplay so well that we'd stand there trading blocked punches and kicks until someone made a mistake or the timer ran out.
Nowadays, this is near me:
the best shoot-em-up no-one’s ever heard of, Armed F.
I wasn't any good at it but it stood beside one of my other favourite games:
I could finish it on a single credit. 25 minutes gameplay for 20p was pretty good value!
I was never brilliant at trad shoot-em-ups. Okay but not brilliant, my favourite was Alpha Mission II
Missile command
Centipede
Defender
Scramble
Star Wars
Track & Field
All in the local chippy or leisure centre
My eldest had an afternoon in an arcade place with his mates for his birthday. I had to be there for insurance purposes and to pay for their refreshments
I relived my youth with Galaxians, Missile Command and Mr Do. I had a blister from the joysticks, I've obviously gotten soft.
Metal Slug
Sega Rally and Daytona USA were my faves, you still see them about sometimes but they're usually in rough shape.
@perchypanther my Astrowars is sat next to me as I work from home.
I still have my Astro Wars, along with Scamble and Firefox. Sadly, the former no longer works. As a kid I discovered that upping the voltage on the PSU made the screen brighter, so I made it really bright, then very, very dark...
This thread has got me thinking about a diy arcade cabinet as a lockdown project!
Anyone remember Mach 3 laser disc fighter jet game? I was a bit too young to know it was any good or not but I thought it looked amazing.
yep thought about it loads! Already got a desktop unit (X-Arcade) that you plug into a telly & have retrofitted with Raspberry Pi to run the games. Not a patch on a full-size unit of course with the lights & graphics, etc, the space one would take up is what puts me off though!This thread has got me thinking about a diy arcade cabinet as a lockdown project!
nemesis (gradius in Japan) - get the orbital pods + laser and blast away 🙂
as well as aforementioned....
star wars
asteroids
defender
gauntlet
and still play the latest version of time crisis with my teenage son while on holiday