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Which arcade games have you actually seen/played in person

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Spacejack:
"or in poorly-maintained seaside town arcades."

I visited Dorset in 1984 and found the pier arcade there pretty mesmerizing and well-stocked (it was full of slots and various change games too of course).  Your post brought to mind a number of games I only saw there, the most noteworthy of which was Mr. Do's Castle. And I always found it bizarre how the Dragon's Lair cabs I saw in Europe lacked the scoreboard... they were dedicated cabinets thought if I recall correctly.

It also reminded me of how much fun it used to be to hunt down arcades and gamerooms, particularly semi-abandoned ones, while traveling in the 80s.  If you looked hard enough at any hotel or airport you could turn up the most amazingly archaic stuff.  Airports were my primary experience with Atari Football, for instance.  And I relish having actually played Sundance in the forgotten gameroom at one of the hotels in Orlando, where they also had Armor Attack and King & Balloon... I think the newest game in there was Ladybug and this was maybe 1985-86.

The machines from those hotel gamerooms and such are the ones I wonder most about now.  Where they wound up, how they got there.  There was nothing quite like an old gameroom that had never had much traffic in the first place.

cgrisamore:

--- Quote from: Spacejack on May 02, 2009, 04:18:30 pm ---Another Memphis arcader here from the '70's-80's. 
--- End quote ---

Me too!  In addition to the mall based arcades you've listed in your post, I played at lot at Fun City on Winchester in Whitehaven (I grew up in Whitehaven) and I fondly remember an arcade next door to the Highland quartet movie theatre that I visited quite a few times.  Oh and of course Solomon Alfred's at Overton Square...

Barry Barcrest:

--- Quote from: Turnarcades on May 05, 2009, 06:53:28 am ---As I've mentioned elsewhere before, we never really got dedicated cabinets frequently in the UK so it was hard to spot across an arcade what games were in there. Most arcades I ever saw were seedy, dark places with none of the fancy flyer advertising or any money spent to make the centre more appealing; rather they were dumped in the back room of a regular 'fruit machine arcade centre' in the few inner city locations that had them, or in poorly-maintained seaside town arcades.

The largest selection of arcade centres I ever witnessed was in Newquay, Cornwall but few of these contained original machines. This was the first time I played TMNT and thankfully it was in an arcade that had spent money on brand new cabs. Living in-land as I do, during my teens I was limited to playing some bad Neo-Geo conversions, Street Fighter 2 hacks and a few decent JAMMA side-scrollers in some seriously questionable establishments where kids were mugged for their pocket money frequently.

Sad really isn't it?  :'(

--- End quote ---

Damn I don't know where you went on holiday but I remeber cracking Arcades in Weymouth, Margate and Blackpool. Actually pretty much every seaside location i went to as a kid had great dedicated cabs and was probably 80% Arcade Games with only a Few Fruit Machines.

Dedicated Machines I Rember Playing Include.
Star Wars (Cockpit and Stand Up)
Empire Strikes Back (Cockpit and Stand up)
Return Of The Jedi (Cockpit (Converted Star Wars :( ) and Stand up)
Space Invaders (I had to stand on create I was so young)
Gorf
Dragons Lair
Out Run (All of them including the hydraulic sit down)
Outrunners (2 player sit down)
Power Drift (The first game i completed in an arcade)
NX1 (The three screen Pole Position style racer)
Spy Hunter
Tempest
Asteroids
Road Blasters
Super Srpint
Ivan Iron Man Stuarts
Ridge Racer (The life size Mazda MX1 Version, i think it's still in blackpool)
Hard Driving
Chase HQ
WEC Lemans (The sit down that rotates)
Buggy Boy.....

You know what I've played loads of dedicated cabs. I know you live in wolverhampton now, if you did as a kid you could have played a lot of these in one of the two excellent arcades at the lickey hills where i used to frequent. Fletchers Copper Coin was the best now it's just gambling machines only. The other arcade lower down is now flats :( Your alternative arcade would have been back of the clent hills, i am actually going to see if that is still there as i think i saw it's machines on ebay a year or so back.

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