Couple stand out to me:

  • Seeing Virtua Fighter for the first time back in what 1993 or so at an amusement park and being wowed by the graphics, thinking it was photo realistic.

  • Seeing Mortal Kombat 2 on a big screen CRT cabinet and thinking I was going to go to hell because of the violence (lol).

  • Playing X-Men with my dad and his friend and his kid on a 6 player machine that had widescreen, very cool for the time.

  • Pumping endless quarters into Aliens vs Predator (one of my favorite arcade games).

  • Seeing some dude beat Tekken Tag which I could never clear and thinking he was the coolest.

Arcades were great. A dream of mine is to visit a game center in Japan and play some of the classics on an actual machine.

  • DickFuckarelli [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    I really liked Burger Time. I felt like it wasn't mind numbingly hard and it was a good value proposition for a quarter. I similarly feel the same way about DigDug.

    Spy Hunter was a revelation. But really hard.

    Seeing Dragons Lair for the first time was mind boggling. But I sucked at it.

    Street Fighter 2 definitely got me going back to the arcade.

    Edited to add: look into the MiSTer FPGA project. I've had one for 5 or 6 years and it scratches an itch where most emulation falls short.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Street Fighter 2 definitely got me going back to the arcade.

      I remember seeing the intro to Super Street Fighter 2 with Ryu bobbing up and down then doing a hadoken and being wowed by the effects.

      • DickFuckarelli [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        The first unit I saw had a second monitor mounted on top so people could watch the gameplay from afar.