Top Ten Most Important Arcade games

[dalton4life]

You're a beat-em-up fan, aren't you?

 

SF II, Mortal Kombat and Tekken all on the same list?

 

I take your point with Tekken, but wouldn't that have been better illustrated with Ridge Racer, which truly marked the coming of arcade machines to home consoles?

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SF II, Mortal Kombat and Tekken should all be replaced by Karate Champ. Wasn't this the game that really started the kung-fu fighting arcade game trend? After this game was popular they started filling arcades with fighting games. What about BattleZone or I Robot, the first use of 3D polygonal environments in games.

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But that's like saying Wolfenstein should be a top game since it was the first FPS when Doom get so much credit for being the 1st hit FPS. I liked Karate Champ but Street Fighter II set the arcade world on fire. Karate Champ didn't even remotely come close to that.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

What I'm getting at is, I don't see why someone can't run a classic arcade that runs existing machines in a traditional arcade setting with food, tokens, loud noises, and other aspects that we used to enjoy. So what if Sky Kid is sitting next to Hydrothunder? The point is to create a common area where people can have fun! No, it won't be exactly like the arcades were back in the day. In fact, such arcades would probably be idealized versions. But they'll still be fun, and that's all that counts.

 

It's been mentioned around here before that a few of these types of arcades have popped up in heavily trafficed areas

 

 

They do have those. Around Des Moines, we've got a chain of them called "Loco Joes". It's actually a nickel arcade/pool hall. In other words, for every one quarter you would've put in that machine back in the day, you now put a nickel. (There's a cover charge) Anyway, it is kinda cool, and feels like the authentic arcades of old, but there are some problems with it:

 

1) The arcade games they use are, of course, used. 2nd hand. And they usually have something wrong with them..sometimes making them unplayable. And Loco Joes either can't afford to, or simply wont have them fixed. So their selection of arcade games is getting slimmer and slimmer and the greatest titles are dissapearing. Yet at the same time, more pool tables are being added.

 

And that's the problem with retro arcades: technical difficulties. These aging systems are gonna have more and more problems, and repair options are gonna get more and more limited and selection will diminish.

 

2) You're not gonna be creating new memories, you're gonna be reliving old ones. As a nostalgiac, that's not really a complaint so much as an attempt to point out that sticking just to the old games without bringing in newly developed, hot off the press ones is not a rebirth of the arcade, it's as I said earlier: dancing with it's corpse. But dancing with a corpse is exactly what we figuratively do everytime we turn on our Atari 2600, or our Genesis or NES or SNES or whatever else.

 

So I would agree that retro arcades are definitely not a bad thing, especially if they are well kept up and broad in the selection of games they have to offer. And I do still occasionally go to Loco Joes, and would more often if they'd start turning the tide towards video games and not pool, started bringing in more and in some cases, better games, and most of all, keep them up.

 

I hope you can find a retro arcade in your area, or if there isn't one, that one will spring up soon.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

3) Gone are the days of the $0.25 new arcade game. With games getting more and more complex, R&D costs are going through the roof, and with the demand for more and more, game screens are getting larger and more sophisticated, speakers are getting louder and better and peripherals like rumbling seats are getting fancier too. All of this costs bookoo.

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Many places have bartop games that charge $0.25 and seem to be very popular. The games aren't really any better than what can be found on the web, but nonetheless draw a lot of quarters. And I suspect the $0.25 price has a lot to do with it.

 

I suspect that a lot of arcades have games that would receive more than double the number of plays if the price were cut in half. The difficult thing to assess would be whether the extra revenue was coming at the expense of other, higher-priced games.

 

Personally, I don't think that an amusement arcade is going to be viable as an entertainment destination outside of a few specialty locations (e.g. Dave & Buster's). On the other hand, I think that mini-arcades in airports and other places that people have to kill some time would do very well to focus on things similar to the $0.25 bartop games. Such places aren't really going to be in competition with home systems since the people waiting in airports aren't going to have ready access to those. And on such systems, approachable gameplay will be far more important than super-duper graphics, sound effects, motion feedback, etc.

 

I see no reason $0.25/play shouldn't do quite well at such places.

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Alright. I meant the real-deal arcade games. You know, games as significant now as Pac Man was then. Sure you have the little bar counter arcade machines that still only costs $0.25, but what I was saying was that as far as the major production games go, "gone are the days of the $0.25 new arcade game."

[jbanes]

1) The arcade games they use are, of course, used. 2nd hand. And they usually have something wrong with them..sometimes making them unplayable. And Loco Joes either can't afford to, or simply wont have them fixed. So their selection of arcade games is getting slimmer and slimmer and the greatest titles are dissapearing. Yet at the same time, more pool tables are being added.

 

And that's the problem with retro arcades: technical difficulties. These aging systems are gonna have more and more problems, and repair options are gonna get more and more limited and selection will diminish.

 

Completely understandable. A classic arcade is almost guaranteed to have more technical issues than a new arcade. But that doesn't mean that all hope is gone. A "good" classic arcade would require a repair person on staff, capable of doing one of three things with the machines:

 

1. Fix them

2. Rebuild them

3. Replace them with a MAME emulator (hold onto the old machine for legal reasons, though)

 

The mechanical parts of the machine aren't such a big deal, as you can always have a few custom manufactured. It's really the electronics that are the problem, thus why you may have to eventually replace a few of the cabinets with MAME versions.

 

2) You're not gonna be creating new memories, you're gonna be reliving old ones.

 

Not really. For example, I have no memories of playing the 7800, because I never played a 7800 until recently. And my kids have no memories of going to these arcades, because they're too young to have gone to them. But I can share my memories and help them build their own just as easily. Some dads play baseball with their kids because that's what they have fond memories of doing with their dads. I play video games with mine.

 

As a nostalgiac, that's not really a complaint so much as an attempt to point out that sticking just to the old games without bringing in newly developed, hot off the press ones is not a rebirth of the arcade, it's as I said earlier: dancing with it's corpse. But dancing with a corpse is exactly what we figuratively do everytime we turn on our Atari 2600, or our Genesis or NES or SNES or whatever else.

 

Newly developed games are highly overrated. People still drive cars that are 20 years old, don't they? Ships sail the sea that are 50 years old. Homes are still used today that are over 100 years old.

 

Just because something's old doesn't mean that its only value is nastolgia.

 

Heck, I (and many others) still have old Sun machines from over 10 years ago still running important processes. Why? Because they're just too useful to throw out. As long as the equipment does its job, why worry about its obsolescence?

[King_Salamon]

Quote:

 

A few other things:

 

-Tetris is the most important game of all-time (in a lot of ways), but NOT as an arcade game. It's biggest impact was on the GameBoy, followed by PCs, and everything else

 

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I have one issue with that... when Tetris was released in North American arcades there were news stories about people (Suits I think they termed them - people who worked in offices etc) going to the arcades to get their Tetris fix. It was an epidemic in the late 80's early 90's when these people were taking extended lunches to play Tetris in the arcades. I think Tetris and Super Mario Brothers were 2 reasons why arcades lasted into the 90's.

 

as for the fighter games of the 90's. Yes SF2 was influential but unfortunately when all the other companies started building their own fighter (Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Tekken etc) it pissed off the crowds who wanted to see something else when they went to an arcade.

 

If anything, the fighter games in that list are partly responsible for the end of arcade gaming. (That and level of home gaming technology). A local arcade has a PS2 and an XBox for people to play and it does well! (People pay so much per hour and the arcades are on free play - with a couple exceptions).