Quarters Only! Arcade Throwback Thread--Dig it, Matcho Man!

[packerbacker180]

Hmmm, it seems like a lot of the games I'm picking so far were around 1987 which kind of fills in the age for at 9.



Here's After Burner, maybe one of the best arcade games of that era. Top Gun came out in 1986, so who didn't want to take that highway to the danger zone? From the makers of Out Run, After Burner had a joystick controller that would vibrate to the action as you fired or were hit. And if you were lucky enough, your arcade had the seated version for even better sound and action.







Of course, an arcade couldn't stand the might of the Hulkster (it's crazy how they act like this is some kind of space game when everyone can clearly see it's After Burner--I mean, really?)




There was a sequel in After Burner II, and I remember this for NES, though a console version couldn't compete with the graphics or the experience of playing it with the joystick controller. Though not everyone could enjoy the game, I suppose.

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooose!

[BrandonDaCollector]

I totally missed out on that Konami Kung Fu game

NO, Final Fight was an actual arcade game by Capcom in 1989. Like I said, I played it countless times at Pizza Hut. Its a true classic and one of the best beat'em up games ever. It got 2 different versions on the SNES and spawned 2 sequels but a superb version was released on the Sega Genesis all in the early to mid 90s. I gotta do a Street Fighter showcase.

I love Mortal Kombat, it was pretty big for Me in the 90s, I gotta do one of that was well.

Gosh PB, you did great here with After Burner. Never played the arcade version but got for the Sega Genesis 32X version however. The game was so revolutionary at the time Great stuff and I loved Suburban Commando

Here is a scene from T2, the galleria scene has always stuck with Me. You can see all kinds of arcade games and the young John Connor is in and playing After Burner in the cabinet in around 2:00 in the vid I provided



Great stuff

[BrandonDaCollector]

PLEASE NOTE: I had posted this a while back in My original video game topic for the 30th anniversaries last year as they both came out in 1991. These were awesome during truly a great time of arcade games. I thought it would be very apropos to repost it here because I believe it got overlooked. I loved how I did this one. Enjoy

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So continuing My anniversaries, here is 2 arcade games that obviously I do not have but I wanted to to share My experience within this topic while the year is still ongoing. It was 1991 when WWF Wrestlefest made it to the arcades in the summer of 1991 which was 30 years ago this year! Me & My family would go to a local bowling alley called Redbird Lanes. They moved out the area for unknown reasons and made it to Illinois thus being replaced by a Walgreens that I have got many great figures from not to long after this time period. I was into bowling but didn't play much because it was more an adult game at the time even though I wanted to participate but did it more. I always liked to get French Fries and playing the arcades more however. It was around Summer to late Autumn. Well, it was such a great time because they had a WWF game which was the first wrestling one I ever played via an arcade machine I was so amazed by the graphics and the roster. I mean it had LOD, Sgt. Slaughter, Earthquake and it still had My faves Demolition The way the Warrior looked on the roster pic is My fave of his ever! The gameplay was like a beat'em up which is one of My most fave game genres! The games was made by Technos which was cool but I never really knew why Acclaim & company didn't make it since they already had the WWF license for NES and upcoming SNES & Sega Genesis games! It was remade for mobile by THQ in around 2012 but sadly it was totally rebranded and lacked the classic feel to the original so that fact of the matter is this game never got the big console treatment. With all of the remakes, this trend is being wasted without even attempting to get this title it's justice IMO or at least try getting it to virtual console...I mean this year would have been the most ideal & perfect time to do cause its the game's 30th anniversary for cryin' out loud I do hope one day that it will have it's day sometime in the near future as I along with everybody else who loved this awesome game can experience it and relive it all over again during the time when video games were video games

This game is considered one of the best arcade games of all-time and I 110% agree

Here is all of the info via the Wikipedia page!

Here is the cool poster + roster!



Here is some great screenshots!



Now, also during this time in the Fall/early Winter I also played Terminator 2: The Arcade Game by Midway It was so awesome and true to the film (see My Odds & Ends topic for More T2) as I was a huge Terminator fan then waiting to the see the film again! I just loved the graphics & gameplay. The guns were fun to shoot too! This was one of the first games of it's kind at the arcade at the time. It was just so radical to play! I do have the Sega Genesis version and I may revisit this title in the future!



Here is the info via Wikipedia!

Here is the WWF Wrestlefest Arcade gameplay...it was wonderful!



Here is the T2: Arcade Game gameplay...it was superb!



Unfortunately them times had to come to an end but I can say that as a kid that loved wrestling and The Terminator got to play THE games back in 91 that would be the precursors of many, many great decedent titles of the future Now as a side but IMPORTANT note, around this time at another Bowling Alley called Crestwood Bowl, they had Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and I played it many, many times I had played Final Fight at My defunct (for about a generation now) Pizza Hut countless times from 89 to I believe 91 which was like My fave arcade game ever :heart:  Amazingly they both soon had ports of their own for the SNES in 92! I just wanted to point out that special milestone of Mine while I was at it

I hope you enjoyed this Next will be another anniversary update of sorts, till then I'll see you around

[packerbacker180]

I remember that T2 game. Not the wrestling one, though. I actually saw T2 in the theatres (and bought the "You Could Be Mine" GnR single cassette--dad, what's a cassette?)

[BrandonDaCollector]

Yep, it was great. Oh the WrestleFest was too. I saw T2 twice, once at in theater and at the drive-inn. I remember you showing your cassette. Not sure what you meant about the dad part though, did one of your kids ask you that or you just saying how cassettes have been forgotten

[packerbacker180]

Yeah, I guess I did mention seeing T2 before. Repeating myself in my old age. The cassette joke was just a joke. Every time we mention or see something old, we say something like that. Like if we pass a pay phone, "dad, what's that?"

In 1983, we all learned the theme to Peter Gunn by the great Henry Mancini, many of us just didn't know what it was.



Spy Hunter debuted at the arcade in 1983. Originally intended to include James Bond but Bally was unable to attain the license, so instead we got the G-6155 Interceptor as we traversed up the screen shooting baddies and making them crash with oil slicks and smoke screens. I don't know why many of my choices so far have included special steering wheels. I guess they were more memorable. I mean, the Atari 2600 had joysticks, I could play that at home. There was something more exciting about using a steering wheel that made plucking down that quarter feel like you were getting more bang for your buck.




When the license for James Bond couldn't be attained, Bally pivoted to Peter Gunn, an old private eye tv show that aired from 1958-61, and thus a video game ear worm was born.



Spy Hunter proved to be a very successful game and has since spawned multiple sequels, including Spy Hunter 2 which tried to add a three dimensional feel to the driving, but wasn't quite as good.



In the early 2000s the Rock had signed on to star in a Spy Hunter movie, but after many stops and starts through the years, filming never started and Dwayne eventually dropped out of the cast. I guess we'll always have The Fast & the Furious, which, actually, we don't have, because admittedly I've never seen any of them. Vin Diesel? Sir Mix-a-lot scoffs and says, "only if he's an alien tree."




Spy Hunter was also one of those arcade games that translated well to home systems. I had the Nintendo version and loved it.

Sadly, we still haven't gotten Pie Hunter.



Anyone remember Johnny Arcade?


I never knew it as a kid, but Spyhunter had no ending. The arcade version would just go on until you ran out of cars, which for me, wasn't long. If I got to be a boat for a turn it was a successful quarter.



A helicopter blew up your boat? Break out another thousand!

[packerbacker180]

I'm going to do a second one today because I just remembered several old arcade games I hadn't thought about in ages and wanted to cover them all before my addled brain forgets them again. We'll see how it's going after that. If the thread isn't garnering much in response I might just stop doing it like my other longform threads. What's the point?

The good news is, this one didn't have a steering wheel. It had a trackball. A trackball was the rolly ball you had to push for speed and direction to control whatever it was on screen. Think Golden Tee.



1984 saw the introduction of a relatively simplistic trackball game called Marbel Madness. The game was pretty simple, you had to guide your marble down several MC Escher-esque race levels and beat the clock to the bottom. But roll too hard or too wild and you'd find your marble going over the edge or getting eaten by one of the Slinky like green worms. There was also a dreaded black ball who would, well, try to black ball you, I guess.




You could also compete in a two player mode where if you fell behind your ball would respawn farther down the course.




Marble Madness was known for using innovative game technologies as it was the first to be programmed in the C programming language, and one of the first to use true stereo sound. Maybe Acid can explain what C programming means because it's gobbledygook to me.



The only mistake they made was not using the Rube Goldberg cartoon music, you know the one I'm talking about. It was in tons of cartoons. "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott.



Like a lot of arcade games of that era, they eventually made versions for home consoles. I remember having the Nintendo version, and it was okay, but wasn't the same without the trackball.



Still, Marble Madness was a natural video game progression of old school wooden marble labyrinth games for a new generation of kids.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Yep, Spy Hunter. never played the arcade version but I played the heck out of it on on the Commodore 64 and especially on the NES, that was one of the many games in My NES collection by the way

Forgot about Marble Madness Never played the arcade but I think I rented it once at Movie Mogul back in the day. I think I wasn't crazy about it all then and never gave it a second chance

Another great one PB

[packerbacker180]

Yeah, without the trackball Marble Madness wasn't that much fun.

[packerbacker180]

"Ah yes, another one of those 1987 arcade games, huh, PB?"

Yeah, it is. It's my arcade wheelhouse and I certainly remember playing this game quite a bit in my solo walks to Putt-Putt. Xenophobe was basically an unofficial Star Trek and Aliens crossover as you patrolled corridors as characters who wore red, blue, or yellow looking Star Trek uniforms (don't pick red!) trying to destroy all the aliens before time ran out and the ship self-destructs. The aliens took the form of eggs who would grow into little rolling aliens and face huggers who would grow into springy snake like alien adults and spit green acid at you who grow up into Democrat Socialists.



One of the cool things about the game was you could play simultaneously with two other people on the same mission with the screen split into three separate players but could also interact in the same room together if you ran in to each other--not that I ever played with anyone (sad Eeyore face).



Each color had three unique characters some of which looked human, others of which looked more alien, like Dr. Kwack above. The game was a bit simple, you could pick up various weapons along the way or extend the clock. But it was memorable for me because it took two things, Star Trek, which I always found kind of boring, and the Aliens franchise, which was a bit scary when I was younger, and mashed up into a cartoony game that was neither boring or scary, really.



There was a version for the NES that wasn't bad. You could only play up to two players, but the graphics weren't really as good looking more Atari 2600 than cartoony. But the gameplay was fairly faithful.



I mean, they didn't even really try to hide it was a Star Trek ripoff. Dammit, those ain't tribbles, Jim!