your vote for best arcade machine?

+1 for Star Wars cockpit. Spent most of my 16th year in one of those.

Also this. Every kid had a different stance, or a sign-off joystick slap when they won a level. There used to be a small crowd of kids gathered around watching a roadie called Sparky who usually aced it.

Gti club, Racing Jam, Final fight.

As others have said, it can only be Defender.

I still remember the first time I saw and played it, in Musselburgh, 1980. A big group of noisy kids were clustered round it, and I could see from the glimpses I got that it was something special.

10p went in the slot when it died down, and like most Defender newbies, I lasted seconds as I had no idea what the controls did. Addicted since then, 35 years later it still grips me.

Now, I’ve got a half-built machine lurking in the conservatory, needing some more time to complete, and then the house will ring to those sounds again.

Supersprint

Why has no one mentioned Asteroids yet?

…..here’s a Defender-ship I made from Hama beads……

stavromuller- Asteroids is a great, great game.

Used to live in a pub in the 80s, so got pretty handy at arcade games… one that springs to mind is karate champ:

The best bit was one of the bonus stages where you had to kick a bull in the face.

If you managed to but the hurt on the hulking beast, a huge lump appeared on it’s head.

Salamander was pretty bonkers:

Loved Outrun though… that was a bit later on, after we’d moved out of the pub:

Used to not eat in school, saving all my dinner money for the weekend to go to the arcade.

Could complete Outrun on every stage and used to dominate the Highscores.

What a waste of time and money… fun while it lasted though.

another vote for fubar’s on p1,

also loved Gauntlet (though never got very far) and Gorf, Galaxian and other side-scrollers like R-TYPE.

but the one I proper got into spending time on in my second arcade ‘age’ as a student on was called
X-MULTIPLY,

what was the vector- drawn one with a rotary dial controal that you fired into the centre ? that was cool

what was the vector- drawn one with a rotary dial controal that you fired into the centre ? that was cool

Oh please it’s Street Fighter II

DenDennis is it Tempest you’re thinking about?

Lots of great stuff here,Gauntlet, Double Dragon, Salamander, Art of Fighting II,Mortal Kombat,Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, Mach III, Tron, Choplifter……. I could go on forever, life in a seaside town.

Tempest! I’ve been wondering for years what that was called – amazing game at the time.

Mr Do!

Rolling Thunder and the sit down Star Wars cabinet.

TEMPEST!
nice one- thats it.
“AVOID SPIKES” Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!

bit left field here, but did you ever play the proper arcade machine Frogger? that was superb. proper chunky feel to the game play.

Er why no mention of Paperboy? Used to get bad calluses from the cheesy rock hard blue waffle grips!

A few years later on ‘Time Crisis’, used to call in at the services on the Scottish borders for brekky and Time Crisis on snowboarding weekends.

Was trying to remember a vertical scrolling top-down shooter –

Xevious! Enjoyed it well enough but it was no Galaxians or Gorf. Although it felt at the time more ‘realistic’ with a hint at 3d graphics. Weird seeing/hearing it again after 30 years. It sounds bloody annoying.

Battle Zone class tank action!

Couple more that spring to mind:

Qbert:

Marble Madness, which I was pants at:

Always remember being impressed by Robocop at the time, the noisy bugger:

Did anyone say Gravitar yet? Oh man I loved that game, like asteroids (which i too loved) but 100x better.

The precision physics sold me on it, you could hone piloting skills to the nth degree (and empty yr pockets just the same)

Can I come to your house somafunk? You like d&b as well don’t you?
Favourite arcade games I remember are Street Fighter II, Pit Fighter, Operation Wolf, Aliens.
Does anyone remember a live action western shoot em up? If so what was it called?

I know the one you mean… they used to have it in Aber pier.

Just remembered the catchphrase:

‘nice shooting, try another’

which brought up this:

Mad Dog McCree

The Cheese is strong with this one

I preferred sunset riders! Anyone else remember that?

Also another vote for 1942

You’re all wrong

It’s this:

The first arcade machine I played as a kid in a cafe near to where I lived, it was the only one in our town and after school all the locals used to que to play.

Space invaders

Still remember the initials for the top three scores:

Bob
Nob
Ski

(Edit) never got that no.1 spot lol

( now you know where my username and email came from 😉

Operation wolf
Time crisis

Used to have one of those pub table Galaxian games in my lounge, endless hours of fun though I had to get rid of it in the end as the weekend would turn into big long sessions (in all senses) and I just couldn’t get people to leave my house.

Another Mr Do addict! Couldn’t remember it’s name, but spent many a wet weekend playing it.

+1 on Space harrier.. I remember the horders of kids crowding around the machine. It was the first moving arcade machine I’d seen.

This was a monster and still awesome sega r360

still one of my favourites was

Quartet

Sega Rally 2, obvs. spent a good deal of my uni job earnings on that one summer paying for me and a skint mate to race against. He always beat me, so I’d pay again to beat him. He’d beat me, I’d pay again… Etc

The sit in Top Gun
Twin seat Sega Rally
Time Crisis

And the motorbike one where you had to lean – can’t remember the name of it, and surprised it’s not been mentioned up to now!
Manx TT, perhaps?

Namco Propcycle:

You pilot a winged bicycle and try to earn points by popping the hot-air balloons you see ahead of you. You have to reach the minimum quota of points in order to advance.

It was great fun but bloody hard work, should have had a row of them in the gym instead of the PE teacher.

I thnk we need a STW road trip. Who’s up for this? http://www.arcade-club.com/

+1 For Gauntlet, Saturday mornings activity club at the Windrush Leisure Centre were never the same once that left the building. Red Warrior needs food badly is still frequently said mid ride!. This was replaced by chase HQ (which I had on the speccy so was instantly a driving god!) so it wasn’t all bad…
More recently Star Wars Arcade Trilogy was a good one and Sega Rally 2 with the deluxe cabinet is pretty awesome. In the event of a large lottery win they would all be on my list.
BJ

I thnk we need a STW road trip. Who’s up for this? http://www.arcade-club.com/

The Game On exhibition is touring at the moment.

Next stop is the Life Science Centre in Newcastle. 😀

We have an annual family membership there, so guess where I’ll be spending several weekends 😀

http://www.life.org.uk/whats-on/game-on
http://www.life.org.uk/whats-on/game-on-events
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_On_%28exhibition%29

Cheekymonkey beat me to it but R360 was awesome to an 11yr old.

Oh, and Sega Rally, obvs.

For me it’s;

GTI Club
Ironman Off-road
Bubble Bobble
Pang
Shinobi
Daytona
Time Crisis

If you ever find yourself in San Francisco there’s an arcade machine museum, with everything from the old mechanical fairground machines to Vector-graphics Star Wars 🙂

have to say star wars (the stand up one) racked over 110,000,000 pts in about 4 hrs once (10p well spent 😉 ) in the bristol su.