Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Galaga were all great. However, I enjoyed it seems the most Centipede and Punch-Out.
I loved Tecmo Bowl arcade.....there was another game, Heavy Barrel, I believe that I spent hours playing.
Atari - COMBAT! Arcade - Loved Tron . .and this Transformer type game dunno what it was called Rocket River
Worst part about this game was that there weren't any saves. I still remember how pissed off I was when I got to the princess and pressed an action button. She killed me immediately, and I had to start over.
I voted for Defender. The other two games I spent the most quarters on back in the day were: Galaga & Tempest !
My favorites were Dragons Lair, Tempest and Galaga. I used to waste so many quarters on Dragons lair.
How come no one has mentioned Tetris yet? That has got to be one of the most popular video games of all time. I played it all the time at school. Galaga and Centipede were classics too.
Great thread! Thanks for posting the Karateka, what a blast down memory lane. I remember playing that on the monochrome monitor of my Apple II+. I couldn't get past the boss, but realized that if I just left the "turbo" button on my joystick (a relatively new idea in those days) doing middle kicks, I'd beat him. Looking at it again, those are pretty respectable animations for the time. You guys reminded me of several greats that I loved. Of those on the poll I liked Donkey Kong the best, definitely. But I played a lot of Donkey Kong, Jr. Joust was awesome. Dragon's Lair! Missile Command! Moon Patrol was great too. But I didn't play them as much. Does anyone remember Elevator Action? THAT is the game I played the most. LOVED it.
Wow, thanks for posting that video- you know I actually had the cassette tape with that song when I was a kid? It had songs for all the popular games, I remember there was one for defender. And I always watched the PacMan cartoon series too. I remember when I was really young, having a headache, walking into the arcade, with all it's bips and bleeps and noise, and the headache just went away. That place gave me pure joy.
You youngsters (not that I'm all that old) really missed out on the absolute joy that was going to The Arcade. It was pure heaven walking in there and seeing all the games lining the walls, set up in the middle of the arcade; skee-ball over on one side, that sort of stuff. The 'later' arcade years were really special to me, like the mid-'80s into the early '90s with everyone lined up to whoop ass in Street Fighter II, tear down buildings in Rampage, and climb into the giant moving cockpit of Afterburner for some dogfights. I remember when skating was in its heyday and EVERYONE was lined up to play 720. It was truly an event to go to these places as a kid. I'd have my birthday parties there, and so would my friends. Birthdays were the best: we'd each get about $5.00 in quarters, which seemed like a HUGE amount of money, and play for literally hours on end. My favorites were: SFII (Ryu and I were one) Bad Dudes (The first arcade game I actually beat) Altered Beast (Beat this one, too) Rampage 720 NARC (the first truly violent video game that I can remember) Mortal Kombat (Liu Kang. 'Nuff said) Willow (This one was at the local Stop 'n Go. Played it all the time.) Arkanoid (I fcking LOVED Arkanoid) Robocop (Beat this one as well) Double Dragon (Another one that took a LOT of money from me) For classics, I've got to go with Missile Command and Defender. Those two killed.
http://www.klov.com/TOP100.html Man, so many good games, so much memories. 70-80's (and early 90's) really was the golden era (but they don't have Street Fighter II )
My old favorites were Star Castle Jungle Hunt Battlezone Star Wars Tempest Tron Berzerk Robotron Dig Dug Gorf Phoenix Venture Joust Moon Patrol Missile Command
