Playing at home doesn't count!
You could be in your 30s. Movie theaters had them as a way to kill time into the 00s sometimes. I believe a chunk of the Dreamcast library were arcade ports! I think? Idk
Heck there's a small arcade in the lobby at my local multiplex.
I've got family in their early 20s that would have an answer to this
I was mostly joking. I know that arcades still exist but I didn't think it was super prevalent.
its definitely not super prevalent anymore, nobody wants to do the maintenance for one thing
Even the ones that are just nostalgia bait for adults are usually kinda trash, "toss a couple machines in the corner of a bar and call it an arcade bar" type deals.
Some decent ones are out there but you have to seek them out usually
Dance Dance Revolution. I spent 5+ hours playing/watching/shadowing with my best friend at the local ice cream parlor for a year-ish. The time I spent made our friendship even stronger, was foundational for my love of exercise, and kept me from doing dumb shit like getting addicted to pills.
Mortal Kombat. Fucking love that game. I used to work at an arcade in a mall, and after close I’d hang out and play for free in the dark all by myself.
One night I was playing, again, by myself in a dark arcade with just a row of games on, in a dark empty mall. I was playing Liu Kang and had just beat the shit out of and fatalitied Kano on the bridge.
I’m expecting to go to the next level, instead this green ninja looking like Scorpion and Sub-Zero that I had never seen before drops into the screen. I had no knowledge of Reptile being hidden in the game, and it scared the ever loving shit out of me. My heart was racing, adrenaline pumping, and my hands were shaking so bad I got my ass handed to me in the next fight.
Hydro Thunder!
Arcade jet-fuel boat racing game with a bunch of crazy environments and shortcuts. All the machines seemed to have really overturned motors (or whatever made the seats shake) and it was awesome.
i play pinball not arcade, and my favorite machine is Red and Ted's Roadshow
Other greats are The Addams Family pinball machine and Theatre of Magic
also I played a Stranger Things pinball machine the other day, it was a new one but was surprisingly fun and actually felt like it was worth a dollar
If only Red and Ted's Roadshow did not have that awfully racist Taxi-busting scene!
Missile Command, classic cold war cope: make a game out of nuclear annihilation! Panic slapping the big ball trying to move the cursor. I don't even want to think about how many germs lived on that ball.
I like that Missile Command's creator stumbled upon the futility of missile defense in the face of ever-growing nuclear stockpiles by simply making the game keep scaling up the difficulty until it becomes impossible to stay alive.
Man I'm used to the Atari version, having a trackball sounds like it'd be so much better than the joystick but at the same time I just know the sensitivity would've been ass
It definitely made it more chaotic but the trackball was a fun novelty. Arcade controls still have a cool appeal to me even with the same games available on home consoles. There's just something cooler about playing street fighter on an arcade cabinet.
it was a very heavy trackball, or at least on the machines i've played. kind of hard to control, but very impactful design choice.
missile command fuckin rips. they don't make games like that any more
House of the Dead, it has a little curtain around it to make it dark and spooky
The Simpsons, because my dad spent ten bucks on it with me at the local bowling alley just to humor me
Killer Instinct, because I’d drive to Carowinds every other weekend as a teenager to play it and ride roller coasters. It had Ultra 64 technology and a slick combo system that actually clicked with me
Time crisis, loved the first game so much in arcades i begged my parents for the ps1 version with the light gun. Never much cared for the sequels but the first games vibes are unmatched
Four player Golden Axe, and then the
foursix player X-Men game that needed 2 screens to display all of the action.Of course they were designed to eat the maximum amount of quarters possible, but it was an amazing bonding experience with the boys after a hard afternoon of competitive roller-rinking. That's all we had back then.
Im too young for the real heyday of arcades, but i guess air hockey was the first gameni really got good enough at to beat my parents
Playing at home doesn't count!
I have nothing to say then. Both in regards to being disqualified from this as well as a protest to your gamer-bigotry.
This is about the arcade experience. If it counts emulation play, then there is no real difference between arcade play and just picking up your N64 controller.
Joust and Virtual-On
I think Williams' games in general really set the stage for the kind of sounds/visuals I like in a game, good crunchy explosions, flashy particle effects, excessive screenshake. Big fuckin' surprise I grew up to be a fan of Vlambeer lmao.
Virtual-On is just super unique and had a cool cabinet and its music fucking whips
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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The Simpsons arcade game. The beat em up. One of the few good memories with my dad is him getting shit loads of quarters so we could play through the game on a rainy day.
