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What games do you have fond (or not so fond) memories of?
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Singapura:
Let's take a trip down memory lane...

For me the old arcades hold sweet and a bittersweet memories. Strangely enough they are connected to my grandparents. They lived in a place called Veendam, in the North of The Netherlands. Ever since I was a baby I visited them as often as I could and can still remember the place like it was yesterday. My sister lives there now and Veendam doesn't look at all like it used to anymore but anyway... Around 1980 an arcade opened up near my grandparents place and it drew me in like a magnet. I was still twelve so technically not allowed to go in but I did anyway and boy, was I in heaven. During that time my grandmother got really sick and needed almost constant care. My mother is an only child so there wasn't much family. I helped my grandparents in the weekends and holidays which was a tough job for a kid of 12 but at the end of the day there was always the arcade.

The Star Wars machine (a sit down one with all the trimmings) was the best one. I spent most of my pocket money in that thing and it was something that really helped me to relax. When they put in a standup Tron, I diverted my attention (and cashflow), even though I could never get past the light cycle stage.

After my grandmother past away, I still visited my grandfather every week. Tried to get him out of the house but the arcade was too noisy. One thing I remember was the local snackbar down the street. Every evening my grandfather gave me two Guilders to buy "kroketten", a typical Dutch snack. There was a Popeye machine in there and it is the third machine I really, really got into. The snackbar was also the local hangout for the (professional) soccer team and there were always some players to compete against.  Seems like a different life now... :D

When I started high school, I spent more time in the local arcade then in the classroom. Although they were older machines, I mostly played Galaga, Pooyan and Pole Position. The  most impressive machine I remember was the enormous Gauntlet, but they asked two coins for that one so I didn't even play that much.

Soooo, what are the machines that you remember most?
nukedawg:
I have fond memories of many arcade games. My father loved to go to Las Vegas and every year we would fly or drive there from Texas. We took trips in the early to mid 80's and I wasn't old enough to gamble since I was a young teenager. He would give me a 20 and say 'go have fun', and that I did mainly at the arcade at Circus Circus. It was tremendously huge with several of every game imaginable!! I played games during those trips to Vegas that I had never ever seen before. Many of them were brand new, the latest!

The ones that stand out for me during this time were games such as Major Havok, Mad Planets, Tac/Scan, I Robot, Gyruss, Satan's Hollow, Sinistar, Qix, Time Pilot and Time Pilot '84 and Two Tigers. Many of these were hard to locate at local arcades which seem to have more common or 'popular' games.

Later in the 80's games such as Vindicators, Assault, Black Tiger, Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother, Thunder Blade, Silk Worm and others. These also to me were rather uncommon compared to most of what I would find in a local arcade.

So thank goodness I can now play these elusive beasts to revenge the toll they took long ago on my poor poor wallet! (which was really quite alright) hehe
Zobeid:
I think my two all-time favorites back in the day, and the only coin-op games that I was ever particularly good at playing were. . .    Star Castle and Gyruss.  I played a lot of games, but those were the only two that I ever developed any semi-braggable skill with.

The first arcade that I ever went into had a full cockpit-style Tail Gunner machine, which was terribly impressive by the standards of the time.  I loved it.  I would have loved it more if I'd ever gotten a chance to play it more than a couple of times and figure out what I was doing, but it was always occupied.

My favorite HOME game in those days was Cosmic Avenger on my ColecoVision.  I was vaguely aware that it was a port from an arcade game. . .  I only saw an actual Cosmic Avenger machine one time, and to my intense frustration I didn't have an opportunity to play it.  Maybe it's just as well.  It's quite a bit harder than the CV version, and I probably would have found it frustrating.

I have a soft spot for Eagle (a Moon Cresta clone) which was parked in a local convenience store for a long while.  It was a very simple-minded game, and I can't say exactly why it fascinated me so.  Quasar, Phoenix and Astro Blaster were good too.

Omega Race was a funky sort of game.  So was Vanguard.  So was Missile Command.

I could list dozens of old games that I have fond memories of.  If I get started I wouldn't know where to quit.

phishpac:
As a little kid I liked galaga.  When I got a little bit older, I was CRAZY for space harrier.  I don't know why, but I loved that game.  Later on I was a big final fight fan.
RoninEditor:
My parents owned a small grocery store in super small town and I was a video game nut at the time, like eight years old at the time.  The local arcade was a 30 minute car ride so I begged and pleaded for my parents to get some games into the store.  They finally did it.  The vendor wanted to 'test the market' at first so they gave us the lame:

1) Piranha:  http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=P&game_id=9026

It was a Pac-Man ripoff but my God, I didn't care because I had a 'real' arcade game to play on!  I forced myself to fall in love with it and it actually became fairly fun.  When I found it on Mame, it was such a time travel moment, I remembered everything as clear as the first day I played it.

2) Gorf

Finally, we started to get some new games and I also got a fondness for this.  While playing it in Mame, I kinda was like (at first) like, "Huh... not as good as a remember."  Then I forgot that there were multiple levels and then it all came back to me.

3) Galaxian. 

After Gorf did well, we were upgraded to Galaxian... pfssssshhht, pfrssssht... who doesn't remember that shooting sound, as well as the hum of the waves of ships.  I used to play this so much that area around the monitor got 'burn your hand hot', I have no idea how that happened or if I'm remembering that wrong.

4) TRON!!!!

The game that lead me all of you, as I was looking to buy a copy of it for my computer but found it only on 'this new thing' called Mame (new to me at least).  After Galaxian did well in our grocery store, my parents met with the vendor and they decided to open a whole arcade and ice cream shop... there were about 12-16 classics in there, but Tron was the one I fell in love with.  I used to be so darn good at it, cocky about it to the point where I wasted two or three weeks of allowance so I could show off playing it for everyone, I went home and cried for hours after I lost $16, which was a lot for a kid at the time!!

And then I later added (not replaced) Tron with Ms. Pacman and Galaga, as well as Dig Dug, Contra and others.  It's so weird, for our generation, this really was a time when we'd hear the sounds of a game, to this day, and remember those innocent days as children... enough for all of us to recreate that great time by building our own cabinets... and that's what it's all about to me.
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