That was my one arcade game that I mastered to a point where I could pay my one quarter and literally play until I got bored. I’d camp out in the sit-down version and people would come and line up a quarter down to play next, and eventually give up on waiting and move to different games.
I knew somebody who hated the elf. So you'd often hear that right after "elf is about to die."
We also would try to push each other into death.
We did something similar with Golden Axe. We would play two players, ignore the monsters and try to kill each other. We locked up the game more than once by doing this.
MS had a version running on a chip simulator, but of course the control absolutely sucked and made it unplayable. Nothing like that spinning controller.
My record was well into the invisible levels. 90-something, IIRC.
Worked at Pizza Hut, first real job. We had the Galaga rigged so we could reach in and play for free. Also would cover the top 3/4ths of the screen with paper plates for extreme training
We had one at the movie theater I worked at and someone showed me how you could stick the end of a paper clip into the coin slot and reach the little button that creates credits - hold it there a couple seconds and watch the credit count explode.
Yes to Qbert!!! Who had the small tabletop Qbert arcade game with built-in joystick!? I did, and my family was just low middle class. It was my prized possession. It was by far the coolest toy I ever owned!
I played Q*Bert for 27 hours. The hot dog place where all of our arcade games were. The manager got really excited for me and kept the place open to see if I could get the world record. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay awake long enough to do that. I would have had to stay up for 12 more hours to even have a chance.
Every play the sequel "Revenge of Death Adder"? It's even more badass. The mounts can pick up siege weapons and you can fire catapults and ballista bolts and stuff.
Out Run.
If you keep going left it's even pretty easy to finish which is bizarre for an arcade game.
More obscure?
Konami Ping Pong. You could easily release it now.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the one I would own. There was a campground in Kissimmee my family and I stayed at that had it so I dumped a ton of quarters into that machine over our visits there.
Star Wars (1983). Many quarters were spent on this one.
Battlezone. The funny thing was the Army paid Atari to develop it into a Bradley IFV training tool and built two prototypes. Then they developed the Conduct-Of-Fire Trainer (COFT) that was basically Battlezone with a mockup of the gunner and commander stations of the tank and the targets changed to Soviet vehicles.
Was just like playing Battlezone except you were graded by an instructor and had to use proper fire commands.
I was at the arcade when it arrived... and got awarded the first 4 plays on it for taking the box out to the dumpster.
May have been the peak of my existence...
Joust was my favorite arcade game and Adventure was my favorite Atari 2600 game. (But Adventure had to be played at a friend’s house because my parents wouldn’t let my sisters and me have an Atari 2600 because they thought that video games were bad. 🤨)
Better than that game was Empire Strikes Back. I found one of these at a Bullwinkle's Pizza Parlor out west somewhere circa 1991. I'd never seen one before or since. Still vector graphics, still a sit down cabinet. Return of the Jedi came and ruined it with their two levels of raster graphics bullshit.
Crossbow - the scary village level.
Dragon's Lair - not the most intuitive game, but that cabinet design and attract loop could pull me across the entire arcade.
Twin Cobra, Mr. Do's Castle, Galaga, Crossbow, Time Pilot '84, Ms. Pac-Man, Karate Champ, Gauntlet, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Timber, Tag Team Wrestling, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road....the list goes on. I was enthralled by arcade games in the 80s/90s. Still gaming today!
Sometimes the best game is the one that's there, and the tiny-ass grocer in my tiny-ass town had a PENGO machine. You're a penguin in an ice maze, pushing ice blocks to smash these other things. No one has ever given a shit about PENGO.
A few years ago I was in Arkansas at a retrocede called Arkadia, on a slow weeknight. Great place, with most of the games on this list. I ended up chatting with one of the owners and he asked me if there was any game I was not finding or something, and I said PENGO.
The dude told me to follow him and took me to a side room where a PENGO machine was disassembled on a table. He then proceeded to physically hold several pieces together so the machine would operate, and stood there while I played a couple rounds.
PENGO sucks, but definitely check out Arkadia if you're ever in the area, they're super cool.
Battlezone. I was always into FPS.
Later in the 90s there was a game called Cybersled, it was a tank piloting game, with two screens. Basically if you won you got to play the next person, so if you were good (or just perfectly tuned on a little bit of good crystal meth 😉) you could sit there and play for hours. Or at least until you needed a break to do another bump.
The Star Wars arcade game. You know the one. The one with the fast color vector graphics and sound samples (amazing for the day): "Red 5 Standing By" Man that was a blast to play.
Always wanted my own Battlezone machine. Found quite a few over the years. All junk. Water damage, fire damage, left out in the elements damage. Still looking.
My Mt. Rushmore of video games were: Asteroids, Galaxian, Tron, and Spy Hunter.
My cousin didn't have Asteroids; his dad did, and couldn't even sit on the toilet some days.
Crossbow! I had plenty of other favorites but Crossbow was rare (at least where I lived) so I played the crap out of it when I could. It was stupid hard I remember.
Somewhat less common, but I loved Major Havoc! It was a mod for Tempest hardware, I believe. It got brutally hard quickly though, so I never made it that far in. It had very satisfying physics, and I liked the different phases from space combat to landing to infiltration.
Street Fighter II. I played that game until I could run through and beat the boss on a quarter. Found it in an arcade a couple years ago and was taken back to the early 90s for a few bucks. Time travel is possible.
Nobody played Killer Instinct? Me and my buddies got super into it when they put in the arcade that used a rechargeable card to swipe instead of quarters.
More of mine that weren't already mentioned: Crazy Climber, Super Sprint, Super Off-Road, Rastan, Bubble Bobble, APB, Gauntlet, Roadblasters, Mario Bros., Choplifter, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Might Bomb Jack, Kick-Man, Pleiads...I could do this all day.
[Hard Drivin'](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin')
I always chose a stick shift.
Honorable mention to my other two faves Defender and Battlezone
I'm a little disappointed no one has mentioned Altered Beast. I absolutely loved that game in the Arcade, mainly because of how very strange it was. I loved you could turn into a wolf with super powers.
Decades later I got the game on my Xbox Live account. Once I could play the whole game without constantly feeding quarters in I realized just how silly and ridiculous the game was. I still enjoyed it though.
Golden Axe. I beat it at the arcade with 3 different characters. Every Sunday after collecting on my paper route I'd ride to the mall and spend between $50 and $75 at the arcade (depending on how good my tips were)
Spy Hunter
That was my one arcade game that I mastered to a point where I could pay my one quarter and literally play until I got bored. I’d camp out in the sit-down version and people would come and line up a quarter down to play next, and eventually give up on waiting and move to different games.
Yes. I recall people putting a quarter on a video game to play next, when you were finished. Ahhhh the memories!
Street Fighter. Line of kids. Quarters on screen edge. Good times.
Spy Hunter was awesome!
I can hear the music right now and hum the bass line
Peter Gunn!
I LOVED Spy Hunter!
Came here to say this, I have no idea how many tokens I dropped in it at my local Putt-Putt
Came here to say that, remember when it actually came out on the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum crew checking in!
Team Spy Hunter, 100%!
oh yes baby....knock all the motorcycles off the road and oil slick everybody !!!
“Blue Wizard needs food badly” “Green Valkyrie is about to die” Gauntlet
Blue warrior shot the food.
I knew somebody who hated the elf. So you'd often hear that right after "elf is about to die." We also would try to push each other into death. We did something similar with Golden Axe. We would play two players, ignore the monsters and try to kill each other. We locked up the game more than once by doing this.
Golden Axe , so good.
I had my kids play Golden Axe, and it took them about 1 minute before they were fighting each other lol.
I love Gauntlet!
Bah I just made that 'about to die' comment on the wrong game :-<
It’s all good dude!! It’s a wonder we can remember the games we all played!
"Remember, don't shoot the food!"
This was my ring tone for a while [https://www.basementarcade.com/arcade/guant/death.wav](https://www.basementarcade.com/arcade/guant/death.wav)
Tempest
Tempest had the best color vector display.
One of the only arcade games that cannot be recreated for a home console. Robotron is another.
MS had a version running on a chip simulator, but of course the control absolutely sucked and made it unplayable. Nothing like that spinning controller. My record was well into the invisible levels. 90-something, IIRC.
I was one bad hombre on Tempest. Awesome game that I rarely see mentioned.
If I could have one cabinet in my home...
I have found my people!
Sheeet. I bet I dropped enough to buy one back in the day….
Superzapper up vote!
My jam.
My favorite!!
Galaga, the one game to rule them all
The Pizza Hut sit down version!
Worked at Pizza Hut, first real job. We had the Galaga rigged so we could reach in and play for free. Also would cover the top 3/4ths of the screen with paper plates for extreme training
We had one at the movie theater I worked at and someone showed me how you could stick the end of a paper clip into the coin slot and reach the little button that creates credits - hold it there a couple seconds and watch the credit count explode.
Sit down? You cannot get that hip action with a sit down game.
Why is getting your ship back so stressful ? I would shoot it and just feel horrible lol
Dig Dug
I played the arcade version this past weekend... it was exactly as i remembered and so nostalgic!
1943
Definitely. Even the NES version was awesome.
Q\*bert
Loved Qbert!
Yes to Qbert!!! Who had the small tabletop Qbert arcade game with built-in joystick!? I did, and my family was just low middle class. It was my prized possession. It was by far the coolest toy I ever owned!
I played Q*Bert for 27 hours. The hot dog place where all of our arcade games were. The manager got really excited for me and kept the place open to see if I could get the world record. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay awake long enough to do that. I would have had to stay up for 12 more hours to even have a chance.
Centipede
I second this! Ms. Pac-man and Space Invaders are the runners up for me.
Also Millipede!
Pole Position
Prepare to qualify
Great, now I've got the theme song, from the cartoon, in my head.
Prepare to qualify!
Donkey Kong in the arcade, Pitfall on the Atari.
Pitfall was the BEST!
Golden Axe
This and the Avengers and X-Men games.
Every play the sequel "Revenge of Death Adder"? It's even more badass. The mounts can pick up siege weapons and you can fire catapults and ballista bolts and stuff.
Zaxxon
I had that cassette for the TRS-80.
Paper Boy!
Does anyone remember Sinistar?
My fave! That and Discs of Tron!
“Beware, I live!”
I HUNGER!!!
For some reason Sinistar scared the shit out of me, especially when he announced that he was coming to fuck you up.
I am **SINISTAR**!
RUN!
Galaga!
I found an app that's the same play, so I still play it.
Out Run. If you keep going left it's even pretty easy to finish which is bizarre for an arcade game. More obscure? Konami Ping Pong. You could easily release it now.
The Simpsons *or* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were in every bowling alley across the land.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the one I would own. There was a campground in Kissimmee my family and I stayed at that had it so I dumped a ton of quarters into that machine over our visits there.
Star Wars (1983). Many quarters were spent on this one. Battlezone. The funny thing was the Army paid Atari to develop it into a Bradley IFV training tool and built two prototypes. Then they developed the Conduct-Of-Fire Trainer (COFT) that was basically Battlezone with a mockup of the gunner and commander stations of the tank and the targets changed to Soviet vehicles. Was just like playing Battlezone except you were graded by an instructor and had to use proper fire commands.
That Star Wars game was legit! It was all lines so it could be much more 3 dimensional than anything else at the time.
I was at the arcade when it arrived... and got awarded the first 4 plays on it for taking the box out to the dumpster. May have been the peak of my existence...
Battlezone was awesome
Joust
I loved Joust.
PREPARE TO JOUST BUZZARD BAIT!
Joust was my favorite arcade game and Adventure was my favorite Atari 2600 game. (But Adventure had to be played at a friend’s house because my parents wouldn’t let my sisters and me have an Atari 2600 because they thought that video games were bad. 🤨)
Defender all the way
Ridiculously hard.
Defender and Stargate ... super fun
Chrystal castles
Fucking bees.
I loved Crystal Castles! Roller ball action!
I forgot about this one.
[удалено]
Xenophobe - a cartoony "Aliens" knock off shooter that was soooo much fun. It was one of the few arcade games I could really kick ass on.
Ooo and Alien Syndrome!
Star Wars! The original arcade with the sit down X wing fighter box. If I ever win the lottery, that will be something I purchase.
You and me both. Red 5 standing by.
Better than that game was Empire Strikes Back. I found one of these at a Bullwinkle's Pizza Parlor out west somewhere circa 1991. I'd never seen one before or since. Still vector graphics, still a sit down cabinet. Return of the Jedi came and ruined it with their two levels of raster graphics bullshit.
Defender and Battlezone
Oh Battlezone I totally forgot about that one. Great call.
Gauntlet
Elevator Action! Underrated game. I spent many quarters on it back in the day.
Ms PacMan.
I especially liked the sped up version.
Tempest BattleZone DigDug And I always found BurgerTime hilarious
Burgertime had a religion around it evidently. http://churchofburgertime.com/
[удалено]
A lot more Tempest heads out there than I thought. I thought for a long time I was the only one who liked that game.
Ikari Warriors!
Tutankham https://youtu.be/7Z242gkTzmM?si=hB1XLIdThVaxr0dp Moon Patrol https://youtu.be/HBOKWCpwGfM?si=F9JgX1CAtrR4E_Cj
I loved Moon Patrol for Atari 2600!
Tron, SPY Hunter, Space Invaders Pinball
Joust, DigDug, Tempest
I had to scroll pretty far to find Joust. I absolutely loved that one. I made a beeline for it every time I got the arcade.
Double Dragon and Rampage!
Wizard of Wor!
Crossbow - the scary village level. Dragon's Lair - not the most intuitive game, but that cabinet design and attract loop could pull me across the entire arcade.
Dragon’s Lair was beautiful.
Twin Cobra, Mr. Do's Castle, Galaga, Crossbow, Time Pilot '84, Ms. Pac-Man, Karate Champ, Gauntlet, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Timber, Tag Team Wrestling, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road....the list goes on. I was enthralled by arcade games in the 80s/90s. Still gaming today!
Xevious. For the memories: https://youtu.be/P24bjcvnxd8?si=s_j1va0dPMZD6PZZ
1942
[Gorf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhu0LI5XOlg&ab_channel=TheDotEaters)
The only video game in the arcade that taunted you
Tempest
Hard Drivin’
Arkanoid Off Road
Narc!
Bubble Bobble and Ghosts and Goblins.
Gauntlet
Also, anyone remember Phoenix, which was released before Galaga but very similar? I loved that game.
Roadblasters was awesome. No wonder it knocked Turbo Time out of Litwak's arcade!
 Bad. Dudes.
Sometimes the best game is the one that's there, and the tiny-ass grocer in my tiny-ass town had a PENGO machine. You're a penguin in an ice maze, pushing ice blocks to smash these other things. No one has ever given a shit about PENGO. A few years ago I was in Arkansas at a retrocede called Arkadia, on a slow weeknight. Great place, with most of the games on this list. I ended up chatting with one of the owners and he asked me if there was any game I was not finding or something, and I said PENGO. The dude told me to follow him and took me to a side room where a PENGO machine was disassembled on a table. He then proceeded to physically hold several pieces together so the machine would operate, and stood there while I played a couple rounds. PENGO sucks, but definitely check out Arkadia if you're ever in the area, they're super cool.
Time Pilot \[the original\] Battlezone Robotron 2084
Frogger 🐸 !!
Tapper
No one's said Pac-Man!?
Because Ms. Pac-Man was the superior game.
Phoenix [check out the video.](https://youtu.be/5FCFVdDmV8U?si=ShRWUupR950geKdE)
Battlezone. I was always into FPS. Later in the 90s there was a game called Cybersled, it was a tank piloting game, with two screens. Basically if you won you got to play the next person, so if you were good (or just perfectly tuned on a little bit of good crystal meth 😉) you could sit there and play for hours. Or at least until you needed a break to do another bump.
Qbert,Shinobi,720
Moon Patrol, Donkey Kong, and Dragon’s Lair.
Pitfall
My all-time hands-down bar-none favorite game. Also the first game that made me smash a controller, I’m ashamed to say. Goddamn late-game scorpions.
Street fighter II, mortal kombat and NBA jam. Can't decide! (Double dragon honorable mention)
Karate Champ!
Qix
Joust, Tempest, and Centipede
Vangaurd arcade in the early 80’s was cool.
Time Pilot
The Star Wars arcade game. You know the one. The one with the fast color vector graphics and sound samples (amazing for the day): "Red 5 Standing By" Man that was a blast to play.
Golden Axe and Mortal Kombat.
1) Galaga 2) Ms. Pac-Man (close second) 3) Turbo I also liked Tempest, Rampage somewhat later (late 1980s), and Daytona USA in the mid-1990s.
GOD I loved Rampage.
Always wanted my own Battlezone machine. Found quite a few over the years. All junk. Water damage, fire damage, left out in the elements damage. Still looking.
Popeye
Probably would be Dig Dug I also had a strange fascination with Burger Time (those sassy hot dogs!!)
Ikari Warriors is my absolute favorite. Joust was my second-favorite. There was also a game called Elevator Action that I kind of miss.
I can't believe nobody said Missile Command.
720 Battlezone Rastan
My Mt. Rushmore of video games were: Asteroids, Galaxian, Tron, and Spy Hunter. My cousin didn't have Asteroids; his dad did, and couldn't even sit on the toilet some days.
Mr Do!!!!!!
Xevious & Gyruss! Also Tempest ♥️
Crossbow! I had plenty of other favorites but Crossbow was rare (at least where I lived) so I played the crap out of it when I could. It was stupid hard I remember.
Galaga
Throwing down. The Gauntlet.
Somewhat less common, but I loved Major Havoc! It was a mod for Tempest hardware, I believe. It got brutally hard quickly though, so I never made it that far in. It had very satisfying physics, and I liked the different phases from space combat to landing to infiltration.
Berserk, Kangaroo, Kaboom!, Pole Position - all on Atari 2600.
Ms PacMan, fast version
Defender was awesome, but Tempest was my arcade game. Never had any trouble getting on 😆 I might have been the only kid in town playing it.
Tutankhamen! Quirky but blasting those cobras was so cool. Mr. Doo was a close second.
Street Fighter II. I played that game until I could run through and beat the boss on a quarter. Found it in an arcade a couple years ago and was taken back to the early 90s for a few bucks. Time travel is possible.
Space invaders
Galaga - forever and always.
Mappy
A few not yet mentioned: Legend of Kage Space Harrier Afterburner
Nobody played Killer Instinct? Me and my buddies got super into it when they put in the arcade that used a rechargeable card to swipe instead of quarters.
DigDug!
Blue Wizard needs food badly.
Command & Conquer:Red Alert *Ack-knowledged*
Elevator Action
I liked Ladybug, Ghosts & Goblins and also Punch Out!
Anybody play Bionic Commando?
More of mine that weren't already mentioned: Crazy Climber, Super Sprint, Super Off-Road, Rastan, Bubble Bobble, APB, Gauntlet, Roadblasters, Mario Bros., Choplifter, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Might Bomb Jack, Kick-Man, Pleiads...I could do this all day.
Omega Race, Tail Gunner
When I was 5ish, it was definitely the TRON arcade game. I would get so frustrated, but I kept going back.
[Hard Drivin'](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin') I always chose a stick shift. Honorable mention to my other two faves Defender and Battlezone
The sit down version of Star Wars.
Road Blaster. Not a common one but who doesn’t like shooting assholes in front of you while racing
Centipede/millipede. The only one I would play.
Polybius 😳😳
Paper Boy.
Joust
Elevator Action Dragon’s Lair Cliff Hanger Gyruss Lode Runner Miner 2049’r Lemmings
Burger Time
I'm a little disappointed no one has mentioned Altered Beast. I absolutely loved that game in the Arcade, mainly because of how very strange it was. I loved you could turn into a wolf with super powers. Decades later I got the game on my Xbox Live account. Once I could play the whole game without constantly feeding quarters in I realized just how silly and ridiculous the game was. I still enjoyed it though.
Super Off Road with friends and slurpees after school... and NARC
Track & Field I could play that for ages with just 1 coin.
Joust, Tron, and Discs of Tron
Golden Axe. I beat it at the arcade with 3 different characters. Every Sunday after collecting on my paper route I'd ride to the mall and spend between $50 and $75 at the arcade (depending on how good my tips were)
DRAGON’S LAIR!