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.
When I was young, during a family trip we stayed at a hotel with a rec area that had a swimming pool, a hot tub, and a Donpachi cabinet. I was a happy kid that day.
We also regularly went to a Pizza Hut that had a Raiden 2 machine. I'd always beg my parents for change to play, but I never made it past the first level (I was a dumb kid and bad at video games). The first stage theme still takes me back to those days every time I hear it.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: