Can you remember your 1st favorite arcade game?

[Inky]

Space Encounters is awesome. I could play that for hours. The cabaret is better than the full size cabinet because of the controls.

 

Even though not preferable, it controls decent with a mouse in MAME

 

Uncovered a lot of interesting stuff about this game when we did it on Pie Factory. The creator was instrumental in getting the Amiga and Lynx off the ground.

[Syzygy1]

Mappy

[Flojomojo]

Its got to be Space Invaders, probably around 1979. 

[Nebulon]

I remember the first vector arcade game I ever played:  Tail Gunner.

 

That changed my life.

[Nebulon]

On 11/16/2018 at 6:51 AM, bigfriendly said:

 

Immediately when you see the missile put your tank into straight reverse. It buys you a little bit of time and distance then you can destroy the missile at point blank range. Once I figured that out my score per game went up considerably.

Yep. Reverse for the win.

[Magmavision2000]

Bosconian on the 5 in 1 namco plug and play

[VectorGamer]

9 hours ago, Magmavision2000 said:

Bosconian on the 5 in 1 namco plug and play

Get outta here with that plug n play garbage. OP asked for arcade game in the arcade forum.

[Magmavision2000]

4 minutes ago, VectorGamer said:

Get outta here with that plug n play garbage. OP asked for arcade game in the arcade forum.

Okay, since I have to one I played at an arcade, I guess Dig Dug

[zzip]

I remember the first few arcade games I've seen were the 70s B&W ones,  like Space Wars, Lunar Lander,  some game where you flew a ship and had to bomb targets on the ground, and Space Invaders.   I was fascinated by them for different reasons,  Not sure I had a favorite among them though.

 

Probably the first game I really fell in love with was Pac-Man, like everybody else

 

 

[Clive]

By far my first exposure was my home pong system. I was just a young kid and loved it although I played it alone as I am an only child and only had lunch hour to play games on the only TV in the house.

 

Then at 11 in 1981 when I set my eyes on my first colour arcade game DEFENDER which became an obsession to beat and at 16 in high school I skipped the afternoon to play DEFENDER at the corner store. I clocked my then high score of 5,000,000 after a five hour marathon. I was grinning from cheek to cheek as I knew I had mastered one of the most challenging of arcade games. You know you are god at a game when you can go on one ship for 278,000 points. That's 27 free ships to and smart bombs as I always save them for the deadly 200th waves and up. And in case I loose the planet

[SoundGammon]

Heads up! 

 

Collector's Call on Me-Tv tonight at 9pm, mountain time, is doing a show on video games!

 

I'm recording it to see how many games this guy has!

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

My favorite would have to be Zaxxxon. They had this and Donkey Kong at a local arcade in my town and around Fall of 1981. They got them in the same week I believe. I loved them both right away but Zaxxon was a game changer for me. The whole experience was amazing. The isometric view,the visuals,the eerie sound of your ship whisking through space,flying over that asteroid city, the buzz of the city below you,the sound of the force shields as you navigated through them and with that cool flight stick....made the whole game stand out next to anything out there. It instantly won me over and to this day its one of my very favorites ever. I remember my brother and i receiving a Colecovision and getting the game with the system,one of the greatest highlites of being a kid. And Zaxxon still has a hold on me,never gets old.

[Clive]

On 8/25/2019 at 2:52 AM, SoundGammon said:

Heads up! 

 

Collector's Call on Me-Tv tonight at 9pm, mountain time, is doing a show on video games!

 

I'm recording it to see how many games this guy has!

I'd be interested in this maybe post it on YouTube or on facebook or...

[Galactus]

Asteroids for sure, then Dig Dug, then Galaga.  The first pinball machine I remember and have fond memories of is 8-Ball Deluxe.  Loved that thing.

[+GoldLeader]

This is the kind of question/topic I could read for hours haha...Even though I just found it.

 

At first I thought I'm old, but not that old, of course I remember!...And I thought of the arcade in the mall and seeing STAR CASTLE...I was blown away!  I also loved Phoenix, Frenzy, Scramble... OK I'm saying too much...But this was also my first bittersweet memory as one day there was no more Star Castle, then no more Rip Off, then no more Armor Attack...The point being it dawned on me that all my favorites were being replaced by newer games!   *Sigh*  I hated that.

 

However backing up, I actually had plenty of Favorites before Star Castle.   I'll still consider it my first because we had it locally for a short but sweet period of time.  Like someone else said I would go there to play it specifically.

 

The other games would be here for the carnival once a year for Cheyenne Frontier Days.  There I Totally remember playing Killer Shark (Thanks NE146 for reminding me of this classic!)...And one of those likely electro mechanical games.  I don't remember the exact name, but it was Graveyard and Haunted House themed and had a big rifle on the cabinet, with spray paint stencil artwork on the side and inside there were metal targets and the whole deal was awash in black light paint and it lit up with Ultra Violet lights and you shot all the ghosts or something...My friend has this game in his garage... needing restored, assuming he still has it, but he is probably asleep right now as it's after midnight so I'm not gonna call him to get the name.

 

Also I fondly remember SPACE WAR on 2 occasions!  One was Band Camp...True Story, (though fairly boring) This one time at band camp,... ummm,  I missed Camp Choir and nearly got in trouble for it because I was busy playing the one game in the game room on campus (University of WY 1980),  SPACE WAR. 

 

I'm also old enough to remember the MGM Grand Casino in Vegas (before the fire) when they only had One game! And that game was SPACE WAR.

 

 

 

[+DamonicFury]

My earliest arcade memories involved 70's games such as Sea Wolf and Star Fire.  But I was too young to try them more than a couple times each.

 

So my real first "favorite" would be Pac-Man.  For the benefit of the younger folks, this game was a PHENOMENON!  You often had a wait in a line to play it (leaving a quarter on the bezel to reserve your place.)  I was too young (about nine) to be much good at it, and quarters weren't exactly growing on trees, but I did love it.  I thought about it a whole lot more than I played it, doodling the characters, reading books about strategies and patterns, and wondering if there was anything more to the game than what was easily seen (of course, there wasn't much... just the various later fruits and the somewhat hard to achieve third intermission.  It wasn't until many years later that most of us heard about the game-ending split screen.)

 

After that, I was obsessed with Donkey Kong for a while, then the 1983 Star Wars arcade game.  I enjoyed all the other 80's classics as well, but those three games were the ones I recall being long-time favorites. 

[negative1]

I'm sure I'd play pong, space war, and then later breakout and space invaders.

 

Much later it pac-man.

 

later

-1

[Atariboy]

I'm thinking it probably was Pole Position II at an Ames department store, back in the days when department stores and grocery stores would have an arcade game or two.

[Agamon]

It was either Robotron 2084 or Ms. Pac-Man in summer of 82 at the local laundromat back room arcade.

[MaximRecoil]

Karate Champ, when I was 9, in 1984. That was the first arcade game I ever played more than once, and the first one I ever got good at. It didn't stay my favorite for long though, because pretty soon a brand new Punch-Out machine showed up, also in 1984, and that quickly became my favorite. That remained my favorite until Super Punch-Out showed up at Fossa's General Store in 1987.

 

Karate Champ hasn't aged well for me, but Super Punch-Out is still my all-time favorite arcade game, and Punch-Out is my second favorite.

[Asheron]

The arcade was not convieniently walkable, so I learned to love the ones that were accessible and I could play a few times a week at pizza places or convenience stores.  It was a pretty good mix actually.  Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong, Xevious, Frogger, Punch Out, Pengo, and a overhead car racing game where you could upgrade your car.  Bubble Bobble and Xevious were pretty good value for a quarter once you got good at them.  At the arcade I also played Mario Bros, Major Havoc and Karate Champ, plus a few others.  I really liked watching Dragon's Lair and Gauntlet but those were too much of quarter-eaters for me to really enjoy.

Edited December 25, 2019 by Asheron

[ChildOfCv]

On 10/15/2019 at 7:47 PM, MaximRecoil said:

Karate Champ hasn't aged well for me

The Japanese version is kinda funny.  In that one, you show up with a duffel bag at a dojo to challenge the students there.  If you lose, it shows you slinking away in disgrace.

[Loafer]

Another great thread to catch up on. Man that's a difficult question, because I'm old enough to have been in arcades when the boom occurred so there's so many to choose from.  I guess the earliest non-pinball arcade game that made me play so many games over others of its ilk has to be Galaga.  In fact, that's the first time I think where adrenaline kicked in so much during gameplay. I mean Space Invaders is a great shooter but it doesn't cause what became a standard method of playing arcade games (especially shooters) since then.

 

1 - head hunched over towards the monitor with one foot close to the kick plate and one behind me, sort of like a linebacker lining up for a blitz

2 - Analyzing the pattern while simultaneously shooting at where the ship will be rather than where it is

3 - the ever present break in action between levels which always caused me to:

   a) stand up straight

   b) wipe hands on pants to remove possible sweats like it makes a difference

4 - hunch back down and repeat 1 to 3 for each levels.

 

I mean when a game creates a aesthetic "playing style"; what else can be said about it except that is deserves the title of "first game to earn the crown"? 

 

Upon further thinking, I know Asteroids and Defender both came out prior to Galaga so maybe it's a triple thread crown wearing trio, but whatever the case, Galaga earned more quarters for me, even though I think Defender is a better game overall (well, Robotron trumps them all but it wasn't my first fav)

Edited December 26, 2019 by Loafer
adding a bit more clarity

[+sramirez2008]

Asteroids, and it’s still my favorite.

[Kombalar]

Space Invaders. I was like 4 years old back then. That was impressive haha.