Favorite Coin-Sucking Arcade Games

I've been on a MAME binge tonight to fight boredom, since I'm saving for two trips in the coming weeks and can't go out Anyhow, what are some of your favorite arcade games? I mean the ones that just made you keep plunking down quarter after quarter until you were bone dry.

Here's my Top 5:

1. Galaga


2. Ms. Pac-Man


3. Metal Slug


4. Asteroids


5. Street Fighter 2


Honorable mention: Contra, Frogger, Donkey Kong, TMNT, After Burner, Double Dragon, Pac-Man

Anything pinball.

I was a really big fan of all the 4+ player side-scrolling beat 'em ups:

TMNT: The Arcade Game
Spider-Man & Friends
X-Men
TMNT: Turtles in Time
Aliens vs Predator

Time Crisis

Pinball
Especially Bally machines.

A) I have a full sized Asteroids arcade cabinet from the early 80's in my apartment. (Jealous?)

B) Marvel vs Capcom 2.

That damn bubble pop game! I am a sucker for that one! Perhaps it is because that is the only game I can get past level one on.

Oh yeah, and Street Fighter Alpha 3. Quite possibly the best pure 2D fighting game ever made.

I say "pure" because i consider the "vs" games to bea a different beast from non-vs games altogether

Tempest and Centipede (Member is Olde Skool)

Damn, mine would have to be Galaga just because i've been around it my whole life getting my ass kicked by it then in the summer me and my girl were in Disney and stayed in a McDonald's all night with me pumping quarters into this until i beat the game...I think it ended at something like 118 levels or so...But the funny thing is we didn't have time to go get the camera, cause my gayass typed in my name and i wanted a picture of me by the game, we waited until the next morning and little did we know they unplug the games after a certain time...So my name was erased the next morning, hence no picture...

Guitar Freaks 9th Mix did me in. every time i get close to this machine it eats $10 right out of my wallet.

Lethal Enforcers. Now they're so cheap and run down, it's only a quarter per person, so for fitty cents, you can double fist those blue and pink .45s and go to work on some digitized human criminals.

Hell yeah me too.
Plus Super Mario Bros., Mortal Kombat 1-3 and Gauntlet.

Where did you find a girl that was willing to spend all night watching you feed quarters to Galaga? I'm fascinated how you people are able to find these women that will tolerate such loserness

I have a similar story with Metal Slug. It's just such an unbelievably addictive game that you don't wanna stop playing it, plus the graphics are gorgeous, some of the best I've ever seen in an arcade game. I once played it till the end, took me like 6 or 8 hours.

But yeah, I'm not physically able to walk by a Galaga machine and not plunk down a dollar or two. I can be at a restaurant with family or at a train station with the train pulling in, and I just gotta zap a couple of those aliens. I'm thinking of getting MAME for my phone just to play it whenever.

Ironically, I'm not really that much of a gamer. I don't play any real computer or console games, which are more about graphics than game play. A good game of Pac-Man or Asteroids or Donkey Kong entertains me longer than any FPS or RPG.

[Edited on Apr 17, 2004 by AceTracer]

I remember playing Roadblasters as a really little kid at Chuck E Cheese's back when it was Showbiz Pizza, and I was actually pretty good at it too.

Once it gets to a certain stage, around 19 or so I think, it gets just ridiculous though. I could beat the stage before it with my eyes closed, but I'd keep throwing coins at that one damn stage but never even got close to beating it.

I used to like playing the aliens vs preditor game..that was so much fun oh and time crisis..I kick ass at shooting games.

Roadblasters for sure...and Tempest.

I dumped entirely too many quarters into these damn things:

1. House of the Dead (1 preferably, but 2 too)
2. Final Fight
3. Centipede
4. TMNT the Arcade Game
5. A big football throwing contraption whose name escapes me
6. The Empire Strikes Back (big one that you climbed inside)
7. Knights of the Round
8. Area 51 (?)

Incidentally I've talked myself out of buying some of these bastards off ebay many, many times.

[Edited on Apr 18, 2004 by Nocturnus]

oh yeah house of the dead is a kick ass game to play..and the empire strikes back..but its hard!

the summer of killer instinct. most unbalanced fighting game ever. orchid vs orchid and not much else. ultraaa combooo! oh, the days.

my friend and i pumped about a million quarters into "Altered Beast"...we were obsessed!

Oh, how can y'all have passed up the Simpsons arcade game? That thing gladly swallowed dollar after dollar of mine and made me love it for it.