Arcade memories

I'll be honest arcades nowadays are a cesspit filled with chavs and fruit machines with the real proper arcades hidden away at the back. But I remember a better time when arcades were the king of gaming. With Dragon Lair being released soon I started to remember some of my favourite arcade games of yester year.`

Title Fight

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This one always stuck in my mind as it was strange set-up with you controlling the fists by moving both joysticks together. This usually meant in a frenzied battle with a mate the joysticks just getting waggled all over the place trying to get some big hits landed!

Time Crisis 2

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This is the only arcade game I ever finished. I'd hate to think how much money I piled into this but I was determined to finish it and I did one afternoon. It was truly a great feeling to finish that game and is still one of the best arcade shooters out there.

Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2

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My local sweet shop actually managed to fit an arcade machine in its cramped spac for quite a few years and I used to go in there every day after school. Unfortunately for me the sweet shop owner's son obviously had a lot of time to practice and thoroughly trounced every single one of us every day but we didn't care we had an arcade machine on our doorstep, it was awesome!!

Anyone else have any fond memories of arcades?

i dnt know why but onoe of my faves was the simpsons arcade game. Yes the one that has recently come out through the xbla.

I am also of a fan of the time crisis games and loved playing them on the ps2

Being of a certain age I remember when arcades started to get the video games in instead of just the fruits and pinnys and pushcoins

Living close to seaside towns meant a youth spent playing space invaders and asteroids and defender
I still recall the day someone found out you could count your shots to get the 300 for the ship in space invaders

I never really got into donkey kong but from the second sort of wave of machines, robotron, galaxians, gorf and hunchback took nearly all my spare dosh


In 2006 I got together a bunch of retrogamers from another site and we went on a pilgrammage to Blackpool to see if we could find any of the old machines that we still enjoy through either mame cabs or owning originals

Sadly the fruitys had re taken over all of the floor spaces in most places and the video games left were in a sad state of repair and we ended up playing the reto kit we had all brought with us instead

Whilst I would give a sizeable chunk of everything I own to be 25 years younger, I am actually aware that I was born at almost the perfect time to enjoy the full arcade/video/console/sputer/pinny revolutions and was also in the right place at the right time for them and the punk/new wave movement too. So whilst I want to be young again I only really want it if I could relive those days again

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A mate of mines family used to own a pub and they always had an arcade machine or two in there.It used to be right exciting when he was telling me that they were getting in a new machine.These were some of my favs though.Second machine looks like Mortal Kombat in a Double Dragon case but i enjoyed Double Dragon more.

I used to love the X-Men beat em up, Shadow Dancer, Turtles Arcade, 1942, Final Fight, Double Dragon, Silkworm, House of the dead, virtua cop, sega rally I used to love the arcades when I was younger, its a shame although when I was a kid playing them I never dreamed that I would have a gaming set up like I have now in my front room, especially when I have MAME set up so I can play all the old games from the comfort of my sofa

Tenlo wrote:
My local sweet shop actually managed to fit an arcade machine in its cramped spac for quite a few years and I used to go in there every day after school. Unfortunately for me the sweet shop owner's son obviously had a lot of time to practice and thoroughly trounced every single one of us every day but we didn't care we had an arcade machine on our doorstep, it was awesome!!

Was that the sweet shop along Bournemouth Park Road? I used to play Street Fighter there too!

Growing up in a seaside town, I used to spend many a Saturday at the arcades with my friends. Stand-out favourites were Rampage, APB and Bubble Bobble. I also have fond memories of that football game that you played with a trackball.

When I went to San francisco there is a museum on pier 57 I think with row after row of old gaming machines. I played all day. My new wife was well pissed off.
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Lighthouseman wrote:When I went to San francisco there is a museum on pier 57 I think with row after row of old gaming machines. I played all day. My new wife was well pissed off.
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I'll have to bear that in mind I'm going to san fran later this year

not sure lighty will let you take his wife mate

I have a substitute if not

DoctorMambo wrote:

Tenlo wrote:
My local sweet shop actually managed to fit an arcade machine in its cramped spac for quite a few years and I used to go in there every day after school. Unfortunately for me the sweet shop owner's son obviously had a lot of time to practice and thoroughly trounced every single one of us every day but we didn't care we had an arcade machine on our doorstep, it was awesome!!

Was that the sweet shop along Bournemouth Park Road? I used to play Street Fighter there too!

Growing up in a seaside town, I used to spend many a Saturday at the arcades with my friends. Stand-out favourites were Rampage, APB and Bubble Bobble. I also have fond memories of that football game that you played with a trackball.

No it was Kent Elms corner! I'd completly forgotten about Rampage though! To be honest i played that to death!!

It's easy to find Basset . Get on the tram down to the piers and look for the ww2 sub. It's the unit on the key side. If you like history the sub is a good visit , and it's british.

OMG!!!!!! Arcades were where my gaming addiction began......starting with asteroids, moving onto blasteroids (asteroids in colour!!!) Virtua cop/time crisis, sega rally, rampage, shinobi, ROLLING THUNDER! SPY HUNTER!!! Golden axe rocked my house and set up a life long love of RPG's! Metal Slug! A girl I went to college with her mum had a shop stocking D&D, AD&D and other roleplaying stuff and there was a cracked version of street fighter down in the basement (where we would roleplay!) so the likes of Chun Li would not only move forward whilst doing her 1000 kicks move but also fire out Guile's sonic boom, Ryu and Ken would fire 2 ice/fire balls from their palms and lots more moves....There were also a few that I was truly addicted to that I cant remember the names of...one you played an american inside a russian nuclear base, it was a side scroller and had a few levels of platforms (kinda like contra!) and also a bottom to top scroller which you had a car and raced up the screen (kinda like spy hunter, but it was more in a deserty type place, but also if your car was on fire you could leap out and you played this tiny little man who could shoot the bad guys until you could get in another car...

Out run was my first arcade addiction
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Followed by super hang on
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In my teens I was obbssesed with topping the leaderboards on Manx tt. Sometimes playing it till my legs were all wobbly after getting off lol

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Double Dragon and Track and Field were always my favourites, and I can remember one holiday as a kid in Greece was spent solely on Donkey Kong!

Skipping school on the day the arcades at Whitley Bay got Mortal Kombat 3 in. It's still one of my favourite games ever.

I also remember visiting the arcades at Seahouses several times in my younger years. Played a Popeye arcade game which was basically a Donkey Kong clone and having a first go on a Neo-Geo cabinet.....it was a fighter. Think it was World Heroes.

Unfortunately i'm slightly young to remember going to the arcades (also the ages I would have been there I lived rural and probably wouldn't have had access to a great arcade) but I do remember going to Blackpool arcades when I was quite young. I played a lot in Blackpool but the ones that really stick in my memory are The Simpsons arcade game, TMNT arcade, Tower of doom, and most of all a game very similar to Golden Axe with an epic dragon final boss fight... but I can never remember its name .

I have always been a fan of arcade games playing them from home on old consoles or compilation discs that have come out over the years. I adore games such as Smash tv, Time pilot, Volified, asteroids (though for some reason I am terrible compared to how I could play asteroids years ago) and many others.

Bubbles is one of my all time favourites but it seems nobody I ever mention it to has ever heard of it. Anyone on here remember this simple yet incredibly addictive game?

Back when I was in college, living near Bournemouth, I would get my wages, go down to the seafront and spend all day in Sega World and in the pier arcade. Occasionally I would be lucky enough to get to Sega World on it's free-play days, and save a bloody fortune. That also meant I got to complete many coin gobblers.

L.A. Machineguns

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Rail Chase 2

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The Ocean Hunter

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Police 24/7

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Crisis Zone

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Ferrari F355 Challenge

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Tokyo Wars

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I also went to the Trocadero before it turned into a pitiful excuse of an arcade. 3 or more floors of some of the most crazy, extravagant machines ever. Virtua Racing with full sized hydraulic F1 cars to ride in, a bank of Ridge Racer machines with full sized Ferrari's, Dodge Vipers and such to sit in, the classic Sega R360 and this bizarre racing game where if you crashed you went through the windscreen and died, obviously losing.