Arcade Machines

What's the point of having an arcade cabinet if it's to play a game that can be played just as well on a PC or console?

I would go for a Soulblade Alpha or a Police 24/7 with its vertical screen and movement tracking tech.

I have Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 machines in my garage that I am almost finished restoring. The MK1 actually has a MK3/4 Overlay on it now with the extra run button and it has an Ultimate MK3 installed in it also with a jamma switcher.


I also have my STTNG pinball. Once we find our new house and I have more room the collection will expand to a Super SF2 Turbo and some more pins.



As for why have a machine when you can play the same game on PC or Console? Its not even close to the same. Growing up during the peak of arcades there is just a lot of nostalgia involved. I also find a lot of enjoyment restoring these machines.

The 4 player Ninja Turtles game. Used to play it all the time at the skating rink in 4th grade.

Turtles in time was better.

I only played that on SNES though. Plus it came out after the Turtles started getting a little stale for me.

I almost bought one once, small arcade went out of business. I just didn't quite have the cash flow to do it and a buddy of mine and I were going to go 50/50 on it but we just didn't go through with it.

I'd get 720 degrees, an old skateboarding game from Atari. The controller is pretty much impossible to do via emulation and it was quite a fun game. I miss it still.

Its old school but I'd honestly get the original star wars game that was in the arcade. The vector graphics one with the big sit in cabinet. Something epic about that one.

Easy one here, I see some honorable mentions.




Both of these are on my "if I win the lottery" list. I'd want the 4 player setups though.

I remember a shooter from probably 10+ years ago where you played a helicopter gunner, and I loved it because it actually had a light gun about the size of a SAW that you used. I always loved arcade shooters where you used something other than a pistol, like crisis zone and silent scope.

Google-Fu gives me: Gunblade N.Y or L.A. Machine Guns. Both by Sega and both available on a single disc for... the Wii!

There was an arcade in my area which had Galaxian 3. It was like it's own room where 6 players went in and sat down and played gunners on a giant screen. I never did play it because it was around $3 to play iirc. Was still a pretty impressive booth.Here is a little article about it.

I'd have to say Pac-Man for nostalgia. It was the first stand-up arcade game I played.

xrg_sl said:

There was an arcade in my area which had Galaxian 3. It was like it's own room where 6 players went in and sat down and played gunners on a giant screen. I never did play it because it was around $3 to play iirc. Was still a pretty impressive booth.Here is a little article about it.

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I actually played the 28 players version of that in some Namco amusement park / super-arcade center outside Tokyo in 1995. Players were on a circular platform and surrounded by a 360? screen, but the kicker was that the whole room (or at least the platform) was on hydraulic pistons that faked pretty convincingly the movements of the spaceship you were supposed to be in. The only draw back for me was that I went there during a week day or something so there was very very few people on the site and ended up alone in my Galaxian session, so I missed the collective/frantic aspect of the fun.

Szlia_sl said:

I actually played the 28 players version of that in some Namco amusement park / super-arcade center outside Tokyo in 1995. Players were on a circular platform and surrounded by a 360? screen, but the kicker was that the whole room (or at least the platform) was on hydraulic pistons that faked pretty convincingly the movements of the spaceship you were supposed to be in. The only draw back for me was that I went there during a week day or something so there was very very few people on the site and ended up alone in my Galaxian session, so I missed the collective/frantic aspect of the fun.

Click to expand...

Was it like a sure thing you'd win or could you lose? I never could figure out the game's rules. It always seemed like entire groups would go in and play it and then come out.

I never saw or played the 6 people version, but with the 28 you go all the way through no matter what, so it took maybe 20ish minutes? It's too long ago for me to remember the game mechanics though... pretty sure you get an individual grade/score in the end and that you can take damage (I remember wondering how wide an area I was supposed to defend, because you could shoot on about 120? in front of you), but I don't remember any penalty for taking damage... maybe the gun gets locked for a while? I don't remember, sorry. The two things I remember the most vividly is feeling lifted and dropped by the moving platform and... positioning myself on a dot on the ground of a waiting room to hear a mission briefing / security briefing delivered by a japanese hostess whose professionalism forced her to go through the whole thing even if I obviously did not understand a single word of it all! Pretty typical japanese awkwardness.