PixlBit

     Have you ever been to an arcade? Even if you're still in your teens you could've been to one at an amusement park (Hershey Park in PA has several) or at one of the few remaining arcade rooms like Funspot in New Hampshire, just a hour or two from PAX East in Boston. And oh yea, at the Cons. MAGFest this year in Maryland had a huge arcade. Or played one at a movie theater, I almost forgot. So even if you never lived through the Golden Age of Video Games when arcades were king, you may have still played the games at one of these places. So don't be shy, play with the big boys and talk some arcade games.

   And if you've lived through the glory days, retell your experiences of the glory days for the youngins or talk about arcade games you only just recently discovered. I'm always finding new ones.

     I often pick up collections of arcade games for various systems like the Data East Arcade Classics collection I just played on Wii, but whether it's in a cabinet or it's emulated, I don't care. If it was made for the arcade, I want to hear about it. Talk on!

I wanna bitch about continues in arcade games. Did game makers really want you to pump in so many quarters to beat a twenty minute game? I just played side/scrolling fantasy beat 'em up Wizard Fire and must've used up an equivalent of $20 in virtual quarters to beat it. The final boss had me continuing every ten seconds or so. It was rediculous! No amount of skill would've gotten me past that boss without some serious coin.

I'm a huge arcade and arcade game fan. I also buy a ton of those collections (although they weren't too common in the PS3/360 generation).

I'm lucky enough to live close to a local arcade (with an awful website) that we go to every once in a while. I've also got a barcade nearby too. Although it's nothing like those golden glory days, I can still get my fix. The worst part is that there are no new games coming out that have that classic arcade feel to them. It's mainly all Raw Thrills drivers and shooters at this point. Not that those aren't fun, but I like some variety.

The continue problem you are complaining about did get pretty egregious there in the '90s. Although it probably did a better job of suckering people out of their quarters than making the game really hard like the early '80s games were. This is one reason (of many) why I now detest beat 'em ups. Mashing buttons in TMNT or other Konami games just drives me crazy because nobody can get good enough at those games to not have to just roll quarters into it continuously. 

In that website's defense, it definitely reminds me of the 90s, if that's what they're going for ... not sure why the picture of death tornado above "family fun" sign, though. I get that they have Tornado in their name, but I don't see that image and think "let's go there for Timmy's birthday." 

As for the quarters thing, I guess I never actually tried to beat a game, moving from one to the next. I favored fighters and light gun games. Area 51 was probably what I played most as a kid, mostly at Cici's Pizza.

I wish there was a Barcade near me. There's just Dave & Busters but they don't have the classics games aside from Pac-Man. It's all games where you ride a motorcycle or jet skii.

Next time I play one of these collections, I'm going to try and simulate the coin-op experience and keep track of how many times I hit continue and add up the cost of playing the real McCoy.

I usually had like $10 total for the arcade back in the day and moved from game to game to make that last. One time though, my friend and I tried to see who would get to the end of Dragon's Lair first and I put all my money in it until I got to the end. It was basically just memorization, so it wasn't crazy hard like the way Xevious gets.

Since i'm not that old (I was born in 1996) and I don't live in the US, I didn't experienced the Golden Age or even had an Arcade joint. That said, I had gone to those Arcades in Malls and some individuals cabinets in random locations where they had a imited collection of cabinets. The common ones were the mid-to-late 90s cabinets like the racing games of Midway (Cruis'n, Hydro Thunder and some I don't remember), Daytona, light-gun Shooters like Time Crisis and in some places House of the Dead, among others. I also remember seeing cabinets of Pac-Man (the original), Soul Edge, Mortal Kombat 3, Metal Slug 3 and Tekken 3.

Neat! There were arcade machines everywhere back then. I remember going to a hotel to play certain games because they had a room full of them. Also, I played Spy Hunter at a pizza shop and there was a machine or two at Sears department store just by themselves in some unrelated department. People were putting them all over the place.

I've always wanted a sit-in edition of the old original Star Wars game.  I love that crap more than fat kids love fat. 

A friend of mine wants one of those. That thing takes up some serious space.

Just played a "s" load of arcade games on Taito Legends 2 for PS2. I really want to go to a real arcade to see how the brawling feels on games like Arabian Magic and Dungeon Magic. I also want to check out the Golden Axe series I just played on Sega Genesis Collection for PS2 for the same reason. There's something not right about the controls on those PS2 ports. Those games seem way harder than they should be. I really struggled with executing special moves and basic attacks in all those games.

Forgot to post a link to this site before. It's a great way to find an arcade near you, or even find a cabinet you want to go and play. 

@ Travis Hawks: Cool site. Thanks.

Anyone spot the arcade cabinet shown in the film X-Men: Days of Future Past?

Ok, fine. It was the original Pong cabinet and Quicksilver was playing against himself at an insane speed.