Couple stand out to me:
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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.
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Seeing Mortal Kombat 2 on a big screen CRT cabinet and thinking I was going to go to hell because of the violence (lol).
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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.
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Pumping endless quarters into Aliens vs Predator (one of my favorite arcade games).
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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.
Cruisin U.S.A. is where it's at
Also Crazy Taxi if you can find it
Also... arcades are having a major comeback, along with pinball machines. See if there's an arcade in your area, you'll be surprised!