Best games for an arcade

[yathis]

11 hours ago, ky802008 said:

So I'm working on an arcade, and currently I'm searching for games. Any recommendations? What games did you love playing?

(Consoles: GB, GBC, GBA, MAME, NES, SNES)

It is very rare to see arcades anymore. The only one I know of is in Vancouver downtown, perhaps Granville Road, near where the hostel is.

[Linksys120n]

4 minutes ago, yathis said:

It is very rare to see arcades anymore. The only one I know of is in Vancouver downtown, perhaps Granville Road, near where the hostel is.

sounds like you've been there... is it nice? I watch a youtube channel of a guy who wins stuff at arcades in Pennsylvania... That's the next state over but on the other side of the state so a 4ish hour drive for me... aka not worth my time unless I get a hotel and make a weekend out of it...

[yathis]

Cant say I actually stepped foot in the digs, maybe front door. Every time I hit Vancouver, I am usually drunk as shit by the time I get off the Greyhound bus. Vancouver is not a good city, not at all. Too many people, I think its actually an entry point for immigrants just like Toronto is.

[GuruMeditationError]

Scramble was probably my favourite cabinet when I was a kid (until OutRun arrived) and it's still pretty fun to play. Rush'n'Attack (Green Beret in the U.K.), Road Fighter's another good one.

 

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9447

 

Also, Joust is pretty cool...but those older games really were just designed to take your money, so there's not too much depth to the gameplay and the "playability" is lacking. That was a term in the UK video game print media of the eighties. Most arcade cabinets don't have great "playability", they're mostly just kill-screens

Pacman Arrangement is good and personally I really like Pacmania but the difficulty is pretty severe. Dig Dug is another classic. Also, Mr. Do, Galaxians, Galaga, Popeye (made by Nintendo believe it or not). Centipede's okay (I played it so much I got bored of it) but you need a track ball, missile command, but I think that was another trackball game.

Donkey Kong is an absolute must. Try and get the ROM hack with the multiple levels.

Gorf was a classic, Q-bert, another classic.

[GuruMeditationError]

@ky802008 Also classics: Defender, Frogger, Asteroids, Donkey Kong Jr.; also  Zaxxon can be considered a classic but was never one of my favourites. 

Phoenix is also worth checking out (if looking at these things in context, but...it is an old one), Robotron, Berzerk, Burger Time, Super Pac-Man might be worth looking at.

Also Hunchback was always a favourite of mine.

Tempest...reputedly part of the conflation that led to the Polybius myth (as legend had it, the screen used to rotate around the ship which would make people ill and reportedly hypnotise people and potentially trigger epilepsy, before it was recalled and reprogrammed) , not a great game but worth playing once you're familiar with the myth  (https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4362). It's my personal opinion that the name Polybius probably came from descriptions of an East-German arcade cabinet (coming from beyond the iron curtain in the 1980's), that would switch between games on a single board, as being a "poly-bios" cabinet, but that's just my opinion.

Star Wars was awesome...but...it needs the cabinet for the controller.

Kung Fu Master was a classic of sorts, for its time, but I don't remember it playing very well.

Later classics but classics of their time: Gauntlet & Outrun (which I loved), Hang On / Super Hang-On and Enduro Racer worth looking at but didn't age well at all. Afterburner and Space Harrier people seemed to love but I didn't like them that much (the Afterburner cabinet was cool, it was fun getting, literally spun 360 doing barrel rolls, in the special full cabinet, but apart from that, at the time I thought the game itself was a little underwhelming and it really hasn't held up at all. People loved Operation Wolf but it did have an Uzi as a controller mounted on the cabinet (it was never one of my favourites, but it was okay).

Probably the best, most authentic (in my opinion) OutRun is on the Sega Classics Collection for the PS2...it's basically just OutRun re-skinned in better textures and with a few more features added.

My favourite arcade Pacman is Pacman Arrangement (also check out Galaga Arrangement and Dig Dug Arrangement) but people swear by Ms. Pacman. But, overall, Pack Man Championship Edition / Championship Eddition DX+ is -- in my opinion -- objectively the best and most enjoyable Pac-Man game ever made.

Raiden is a classic, but for a similar game with a completely different feel (and personally my favourite of that era of vertical top-down shoot-em-ups) check out Psikyo's  Strikers 1945 II, Strikers 1945 III (aka Strikers 1999) and Gunbird 2 (also, take a look at their Dreamcast game: Cannon Spike (aka GunSpike)) and their Arkanoid(Breakout/Super Breakout)/Shoot-em-up hybrid, Gunbarich.

Also, Gradius (Scramble's "spiritual successor").

[Edit] Also, I'd recommend TMNT for the GBA (it's the last of three Turtles games for that system and it's titled simply "TMNT", make sure you play that one and not the others)...it's a brawler produced in the arcade style, just years later, and with much better graphics and gameplay (and it's not programmed just to get coins out of you). Also, I'd say play MotoRacer Advance instead of Hang On or Super Hang on...it's the same deal as the GBA TMNT (with regards it's relation to its arcade predecessors) and is a much much much better game with tons more depth and longevity (but avoid its sequel on the DS it's as bad as MotoRacer advance is excellent). In that same respect play Medal of Honor Infiltrator for GBA in place of Commando (also an arcade classic but also just programmed to kill you for coins) and Balloon Fight in place of Joust.

...and if you're playing it through a CRT I recommend Irridion 2 for the GBA ([edit (sorry, got that a bit wrong) but even then I'd recommend a 9" HD CRT and probably nothing larger for that particular game, or otherwise just sit well back from the screen)...it doesn't have saves unfortunately and works via a password system for getting back into the game, but if you're playing on CRT it's worth looking at, if not, you should probably skip it.

PS1 shoot-em-ups to check out: Raystorm and Raycrisis are okay but very Japanese (maybe too japanes). Einhander, a Square Enix side-scrolling shoot em up...I get shivers just typing that. And Philosoma, a shooter that takes all of its cues from the crazy obscure arcade cabinet space shooters of the eighties and rolls them into a super-playable hybrid experience you shouldn't miss if you have nostalgia for that era, but again...that's another one that really needs to be played on a CRT (and don't worry about its sequel, it's a strange kind of adventure RPG type game that continues the Philosoma's story with the main characters from the first game...that's not to say it might not be worth playing for what it is in its own right, just that, it's just not really an arcade game).

Also, Mortal Combat was a classic and to a certain extent Virtua Fighter, and the original Street Fighter II was an absolute, must-play, staple back in those days (and was the game that tipped me over into buying a snes) but...it's pretty much ubiquitous these days so, I guess just pick a fighter of your choice, but...if you have absolutely no fighters, then get Mortal Combat & Street Fighter 2. 

...that's by no means the last word on what you should play...these are just the main classics as I remember them as well as the stuff I've found that's most worth playing...there are always going to be the milestone archetypes and the stuff notable for its academic value, in terms of the development of the genre (and its attendant sub-genres etc.) but they're just not always worth playing.
 

Also, you might want to include the original Mario Bros arcade ROM.

Also, I forgot Double Dragon...it wasn't a favourite of mine, but it's a simultaneous 2 player game and people loved it.

Take a look at Smash T.V. also...another simultaneous two player game and one of the first twin-stick shooters (after Robotron).

...but for the really old arcade stuff I'd seriously recommend picking up a CRT; for the really old arcade stuff probably a regular (not High definition) CRT. But for home console stuff, including GBA and up to and including Gamecube and original Xbox, I'd recommend an HD CRT.

A couple of Gamecube games to check out are Wave Race and 1080 Avalanche (and there are selection of good arcade style titles for PS2 and the original xbox, but they're more of a deeper single-player experience with roots in arcade but not really a pick up and play kind of thing). Beyond that we're more or less into the modern era (I personally define modern era as downloadable games developed for flat screen LCD)...basically most definitively with the move from Gamecube and original Xbox to Wii & 360 (Sony on the other hand I think kind of straddled that transition more broadly and more smoothly).

Another vein you might want to tap is indy couch-co-op stuff for retro-looking 2-player games such as Nidhogg (but that's not really an area I've personally looked at). 

[Mira Yurizaki]

No arcade can be complete without Metal Slug and a 2D fighting game!

[GuruMeditationError]

29 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

No arcade can be complete without Metal Slug and a 2D fighting game!

For sake of completeness I guess I'd have to agree, but...I've never enjoyed Metal Slug...I love the graphics to bits, and I want to like it and wish I wanted to play it, because I just love the graphics and the design of the game so much, I just can't get past the gameplay, I think it's just bad...to the point where I just can't play it. For me Metal Slug is the arcade equivalent of the band you want to like because the t-shirt looks so cool, but as much as you wish it would do it for you, it just doesn't...but that's just me: I love stereoscopic 3D and I think Metal Slug is a bad game...but, as they say: "De gustibus non est disputandum".  

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, GuruMeditationError said:

 I just can't get past the gameplay, I think it's just bad...to the point where I just can't play it.

Well, it's designed to be a quarter sucker.

[GuruMeditationError]

23 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well, it's designed to be a quarter sucker.

I know, but...that's primarily what's wrong with it at its very core.  

I don't disagree that it should have its place in the pantheon and be represented, and I can sit and watch people play it but I just can't get past the disappointment that something with so much production value is just there to take your money...but I guess that's how they afford to make the presentation so lavish...by sucking coins out of your pockets  

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, GuruMeditationError said:

I know but...that's primarily what's wrong with it at it's very core.  

I don't disagree that it should have it's place in the pantheon and be represented, and I can sit and watch people play it but I just can't get past the disappointment that something with so much production value is just there to take your money...but I guess that's how they afford to make the presentation so lavish...by sucking coins out of your pockets  

Well, it's like game design back in the 8-bit era. Inflate the difficulty beyond reasonable to mask the fact your game could be beaten in a day if you didn't.

[GuruMeditationError]

7 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well, it's like game design back in the 8-bit era. Inflate the difficulty beyond reasonable to mask the fact your game could be beaten in a day if you didn't.

And even then I personally beat quite a few games in a single sitting...I finished Super Mario World in a single 24 hour play session (I didn't 100% it in that time but I did beat Bowser).

Also, most of the old console games are just the same thing over and over again, so the only real way of creating a sense of progression or to maintain interest is to just keep increasing difficulty...upgrading a character and having character progression was more or less unheard of (I guess with the exceptation of Megaman) and even today core gameplay is generally always just one thing (games like GTA being an exception with stuff like driving, flying, and minigames like golf etc.). GTA V has Rockstar's Smuggler's Run's entire concept literally subsumed into it as a bunch of optional gameplay quests you can play with Trevor...it's amazing how far this stuff has come. 

Edit: actually looking closer, Smugglers Run was published by Rockstar, but developed by someone else (Angel Studios) but...you get the idea.

[Edit]...been meaning to play through this at some point also: Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters (1989)...one of the most unusual arcade concepts (aside from physical novelty cabinet construction and bespoke control input device) that I've seen...

...it seems the concept behind this one was, rather than having lots of people jumping in and out for short periods of gameplay, to just keep one person playing over an extended period (very unusual for that era)...later side-scrolling brawlers were designed to support that kind of play, but a single play-through of this thing, is over 40 minutes long...

...I've heard it said that later Sega cabinets were created to promote the home games and home systems; I'm not at all sure if that's actually true, it's just something I heard somewhere; if that is true, it wouldn't surprise me if this was the same kind of thing, otherwise, I just don't know how something like this could exist...maybe limiting availability to increase demand, but just actually in situ and for an experience rather than a physical product...at a time when less people were frequenting arcades? ...as reported by wikipedia it was: "ported for most major home computer platforms of the time." so, potentially might have been developed as an arcade cabinet as a marketing exercise...that would account for why my cursory search seems to suggest the cabinet might be something of a rarity.