games

This is just outing people that are in their 40s.

Dance Dance Revolution. I spent 5+ hours playing/watching/shadowing with my best friend at the local ice cream parlor for a year-ish. The time I spent made our friendship even stronger, was foundational for my love of exercise, and kept me from doing dumb shit like getting addicted to pills.

Mortal Kombat. Fucking love that game. I used to work at an arcade in a mall, and after close I’d hang out and play for free in the dark all by myself.

One night I was playing, again, by myself in a dark arcade with just a row of games on, in a dark empty mall. I was playing Liu Kang and had just beat the shit out of and fatalitied Kano on the bridge.

I’m expecting to go to the next level, instead this green ninja looking like Scorpion and Sub-Zero that I had never seen before drops into the screen. I had no knowledge of Reptile being hidden in the game, and it scared the ever loving shit out of me. My heart was racing, adrenaline pumping, and my hands were shaking so bad I got my ass handed to me in the next fight.

Hydro Thunder!

Arcade jet-fuel boat racing game with a bunch of crazy environments and shortcuts. All the machines seemed to have really overturned motors (or whatever made the seats shake) and it was awesome.

i play pinball not arcade, and my favorite machine is Red and Ted's Roadshow

Other greats are The Addams Family pinball machine and Theatre of Magic

also I played a Stranger Things pinball machine the other day, it was a new one but was surprisingly fun and actually felt like it was worth a dollar

The Simpsons, because my dad spent ten bucks on it with me at the local bowling alley just to humor me

Killer Instinct, because I’d drive to Carowinds every other weekend as a teenager to play it and ride roller coasters. It had Ultra 64 technology and a slick combo system that actually clicked with me

Two did. The Simpsons, and Turtles in Time.

Time crisis, loved the first game so much in arcades i begged my parents for the ps1 version with the light gun. Never much cared for the sequels but the first games vibes are unmatched

House of the Dead, it has a little curtain around it to make it dark and spooky

Missile Command, classic cold war cope: make a game out of nuclear annihilation! Panic slapping the big ball trying to move the cursor. I don't even want to think about how many germs lived on that ball.

Playing at home doesn't count!

I have nothing to say then. Both in regards to being disqualified from this as well as a protest to your gamer-bigotry.

Joust and Virtual-On

I think Williams' games in general really set the stage for the kind of sounds/visuals I like in a game, good crunchy explosions, flashy particle effects, excessive screenshake. Big fuckin' surprise I grew up to be a fan of Vlambeer lmao.

Virtual-On is just super unique and had a cool cabinet and its music fucking whips

Four player Golden Axe, and then the ~~four~~ six player X-Men game that needed 2 screens to display all of the action.

Of course they were designed to eat the maximum amount of quarters possible, but it was an amazing bonding experience with the boys after a hard afternoon of competitive roller-rinking. That's all we had back then.

Im too young for the real heyday of arcades, but i guess air hockey was the first gameni really got good enough at to beat my parents

Here are some I remember fondly:

• The Simpsons
• TMNT: Turtles in Time
• X-Men (6 player version)
• NBA Jam
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
• Splatterhouse
• Sengoku (very cool and underrated Neo Geo game)
• Samurai Showdown

The Simpsons arcade game. The beat em up. One of the few good memories with my dad is him getting shit loads of quarters so we could play through the game on a rainy day.

Marvel versus Capcom 2

This and Crazy Taxi 2 are the only arcade games I've spent a significant amount of time playing, unfortunately the places I played them at were dead so I only got to play with someone else if I dragged them there myself. I never learned any advanced techniques but I did and still do greatly enjoy rocking around with Roll/BB Hood/ServBot and the fact that they weren't in MvC3 prevented me from enjoying it.

For me it has to be metal slug 1 or strikers 1945 II

I don’t remember what it was, but this game where you played as a dinosaur and ate other dinosaurs to evolve into better dinosaurs in a time attack manner

That or the 4-player gauntlet game I played the last time I got to hang out with my elementary school best friend and his brother before they moved to Belgium

The arcade version of Primal Rage was the first video game I ever played as a kid. I spent a whole evening with another kid I had just met, playing it while our dads were talking about business. That was the first step on the road to damnation. I've never looked back since then.

I have distinct memories of playing and watching the demo mode for Tech Romancer and Primal Rage as a kid lol

Carnevil, hands down my favorite machine.

I mean the answer has to be Street Fighter II.

One time my friend and I randomly found a Time Killers machine at a bowling alley. We'd have been about 12 or 13 I think. We were fascinated by it and spent every spare moment and coin we could find playing that thing. Most other kids were into street fighter and mortal kombat at the time. It was so weird and cool to find this obscure mystery of a machine that combined elements of both. Nobody we knew had a clue what it was. Apparently it isn't very good, but we played the crap out of it until it disappeared out of the lineup.

Daytona USA just looked incredible at the time. It still looks pretty good now.

I'm not sure, but the 6 player X-Men with the 3 screens was dope

Big fan of Centipede and Tron but I'm not all that good at either lol

Didn't really play real arcade games much until I was old enough to go to arcade bars though

I played a lot of DOOM though as a little kid

Cyber Sled, and F-Zero AX.

So many, but the ones that come first to mind are:

• bubble bobble
• badlands
• hard Drivin'/race Drivin'
• DDR

Deep cut:

Space Lords by Atari. Watching two people who were proficient in this game go at it was like some James Bond level shit. Not before nor since have I seen an arcade game with the level of strategic depth this game had.

Also, looked pretty cool for it's time.

Red Elf needs food badly!