quater after quater: a look back at your favorite arcade memories

Cyber Troopers Virtual On

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9VhAit03LA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LgnDLWdOi0

man this game sucked up so much of my time as a kid

Cruis'n Exotica

Arctic Thunder

No quarters at the place I went. We would buy cards and we could play unlimited all day. The most fun was beating the Simpsons arcade all the way through multiple times and losing to my friends over and over at mortal combat.

Zone Hunter blew my mind in 1994~1995?...

yeah it's that awesome!

I'm too young =(

Quite a few, actually. The Arcade was the place to be when I was a kid. For people who can't relate to it, imagine going to your local mall and being able to play the Playstation 5 or something two generations ahead of home consoles, today. It was amazing! Some memories:

-When my cousin J.J. walked past the arcade version of the game, Firefox (based on the Clint Eastwood movie) and the game said what we thought was his name. We were amazed that the game knew who my cousin was!

-There was this guy named Benny who was ALWAYS playing Street Fighter 2. I never went to the mall without seeing him. If he wasn't playing, he was waiting to play. I sucked at the time but I had just read EGM and I finally knew some special moves. It was a close match, that first round but I snuck out a win. The second round, he ate me alive. The final round, it was insanely close and I thought I had lost. I threw my hands up in frustration. When I looked back, my character (Dhalsim. WTF!?) had performed a throw and I had actually won! Everybody thought I was so bad ass, even though I won by accident.

-Mortal Kombat. The first time I saw a Fatality, it was like I had lost my virginity. Video games had just grown up.

-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--it felt like we were playing a cartoon! My step-bro and I were Ninja Turtle fanatics. Couldn't believe our eyes when we saw that game. All of the big character from the show were there, the music was blasting, and the action was fast and furious. I could have died right there and been happy.

-Killer Instinct--I was 18 years old and I couldn't imagine graphics ever getting any better than that. I didn't even want to play the game. I just liked watching. Nothing available anywhere looked as good as that game did at the time.

Tons of other games amazed me. Stun Runner and its 3D polygon graphics, Dragons Lair which was just a cartoon on a laser disc, Pac-Man which I dreamed about when I wasn't playing, Crystal Castle (360 game room release raped my childhood.), and all of the classics--Golden Axe, Double Dragon, Frogger, Dig Dug, Paperboy, Moon Patrol, Rush N' Attack, Lethal Enforcers, Afterburner, RAstan, etc. I could name a million of 'em. Good time to be a kid.

Oh, Mortal Kombat as a series was shit.  I'll shout that from the rooftops.  I was just floored by my first taste of ultra-violence.  That's all.

Being that I'm an old man, I remember when I was a kid and they had all kinds of great games. Donkey Kong, Frogger, Space Invaders, Pole Position, Galaga, Joust, Robotron, Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, and the list goes on and on.

I didn't feel like I lost my virginity because I didn't know what that was, but it was like having all you can eat pizza and ice cream without ever getting full.

Turbo outrun was my favorite. Getting in the car in front of the big screen tv with the music blasting right by your ears was gaming bliss back then.

That's an outrun cabinet but it was the same for turbo outrun.

i'd love to see this game make a return and hit consoles http://youtu.be/k5fwGa8JEss

my favourite of all time, during my peak I could make it to the 2nd last stage without dying.