Consoles blow when compared to arcades. The best games have always been arcade games, and i regularly visit my local arcades to play with strangers and watch queues of obnoxious idiots get their asses handed to them by a small group of nerdy Tekken players.

Arcades have never really been big in the UK and that' ll likely never change. They' re usually confined to cinemas and tourist resorts, and often share floorspace with bowling alleys. That being said, i' d rather visit an arcade full of annoying teenagers than a pub full of annoying teenagers I love arcades.

I' m as obsessed now with Tekken: Dark Resurrection as i was in the early-mid nineties with the original Tekken, a time when i would have gladly bankrupted my parents to keep playing. Hahaha, every time i went to Alton Towers or Lightwater Valley (?) my mother would give me money for food and i' d spend the lot in the arcades.

When i was in Benidorm a couple of years ago i spent £400 on House of the Dead 3, even though i owned the Xbox version.

When i' m abroad and i spot an old SNK or SEGA cabinet, say Daytona USA or Metal Slug 2 it' s like striking gold because the majority of British arcades only have the newer machines. Finding classic games in dark and dingy, smoky Spanish bars or whatever are some of my fondest memories.

So i ask you; a) do you regularly visit arcades??? and b) what are your favorite games???

i was fond of arcades one upon a time, before i had a decent way to play computer games. then i got my pc, and it all changed. Now arcade games arent fun for me anymore, now and then yeah, but regularly, i prefer not!

Screw current-gen arcade games, I wish I was around in the 70s in America when arcades were really big. My dad tells me he used to visit the arcade all the time for a nice little Asteroids tournament or games like that. I wish I could live through those days, with at least 10 people crowded around one machine at a time.

That' s my idea of heaven.

Back when I was young, there was this arcade that me and my brother would visit. The arcade was hidden in the side of the local Saan Clothing Store in some small strip mall, so if you didn' t know it was there, you would never find it.

Anyway, this arcade rocked, I remember playing hours of WWF Wrestling with all of your old favs, Hogan, Sargent Slaughter, British Bulldog etc. Also remember playing 1942 quite a bit as well.

The best thing about the arcade though, was the fact that the guy who ran it, posted all of the top scores on large chalk boards throughout the arcade. Just though at the time that it was awesome he would do something like that. That way we were all looking up at the new postings to see who and what score we had to beat.

Oooh a thread after my own heart :D

I' ve always been a HUGE fan of arcade gaming.. I' m an arcade gamer first and then a console & handheld gamer next. Regardless of how ' perfect' consoles emulate arcade games or how accurate the ports are, they always lack the magic of the coin-op machines..

A friend of mine has an original table-top Donkey Kong machine. That thing is pure gold.

I remember having a fairly nice arcade in the local Westland Mall. " American Arcades" or something of that nature. That place was absolutely amazing for an arcade in the late 90' s. It was bigger than most of the restaurants, and had the latest in games. They actually had a dreamcast hooked up with " Typing of the Dead" constantly running. I loved that thing man.

Yeah, arcades rock. I always got so much more excited about an upcoming home console game if it had an arcade counterpart first. The console that had more arcade games on it that I liked was the console I got. And that' s why I started my videogame journey with the Sega Master System.

I agree that there really isn' t too much consoles can do to perfectly emulate the arcade scene. Without gawking teenagers putting their coins/tokens up on the cabinet to procure their standing in line and commenting on how awesome/crappy you play, it' just not the same. You also need a muffled siren-type noise in the background that goes off every once in awhile, and the place CANNOT be brightly lit. But even without all that, Space Harrier and After Burner on the Sega Saturn played with the Mission Stick is as close to arcade perfection that any home game can ever achieve EVER. Harrier re-centers if you let go of the stick. You can fire missiles with your thumb on After Burner. You can play both games one-handed. Awesome!

The arcades I went to as a kid were dark, smoky and loud! I remember being amazed by Sega' s " Turbo" ... then a while after that, my brother running up to me and telling me I had to see a game that blew " Turbo" away, which turned out to be " Pole Position." (Of course two or three years later, " Outrun" was shockingly fluid.) I remember old black & white Atari coin-ops that like " Stunt Cycle" which actually had decals on the screen to indicate certain features which graphics couldn' t yet represent. I remember when coin-op machines had metal coin slots instead of plastic ones, so I could build up a static charge by rubbing my shoes on the carpeted floor and then zap the coin slot and get a free play on " Berzerk." Those days were a lot of fun, but the limitations were frustrating too... I recall being so disappointed with the " Tron" arcade game because I wanted it to look as good as the movie. Nowadays of course, the level of details and realism can be easily surpassed by these incredible little boxes in our living rooms.... I' m really glad I' ve gotten to see that progression, although control schemes have gotten a bit overly complex. Some of the classics are must-play as far as elegance of design: " Joust" is a great example of simplicity and perfectly balanced controls.

Like Joe, the arcade connection led me down the Sega console path. Of course I liked Nintendo' s arcade games, too, but Sega was on some super mushroom crack in the mid-to-late ' 80s arcades. And the whole NES vs. SMS fanboyism that I indulged in those days... I' ll just say it was quite a crushing blow to the NES players when Sega made a " Double Dragon" port that was actually 2-player as opposed to the NES 1-player version.

These days I still like to look around in arcades, but they don' t have as good atmosphere. Frankly they are a bit too well-lit, and for some reason they no longer crank out Journey and Foreigner and Black Sabbath and AC/DC. I went to one of the Gameworks arcades, in Seattle, and they have some interesting giant games with screens two stories tall, and games with elaborate force feedback seats. Interesting, but it' s not quite as exciting because big new arcade debuts are so much fewer and farther between. Back in the day, you would be astonished by all the new games that showed up in the arcade which were major technological and artistic breakthroughs.

I never had enough quarters to finish an NBA Hangtime for a full game. I remember being extremely happy when I had enough to get to Halftime. Portland Trail Blazers was the best, back when Rasheed Wallace was so inspiring with his technical fouls.

In all my years of playing games, I' ve probably only ever used arcades a couple of times. The reason being, that I don' t possess the elite skills of your average arcade goer and I just hate to be made to look bad, even if I am.

Growing up i enjoyed going to the arcade because back then the atari nor the nintendo had any thing on it. The graphics and sound rocked.
One dollar went a long way. 4 coins!!!
I loved Xmen esp w/co-op, metal slugs, samauri showdown, Soul Edge, Tekken1,2, MK2,3. Old WWf games w/ Undertaker and sargent Slaughter, Terminator, Opperation WOLF because the light gun gave a different experience. And the car racing.

I used to go into arcades all the time and was a regular player up until 2003, when all my usual haunts became dead and devoid of competition. KOF 2002 was the last game I could hang around with my friends and various Asian uni students to play and enjoy.

Since then another local arcade got Tekken 5 and OutRun2 SP, but it being a seaside location never attracted any arcade loving folk, except me and all but two friends. It seems shoddy sequels like KOF 2003 (1st new engine by Playmore and 1/4 SNK old staff), poor racers like Fast And The Furious, and an excess of gambling machines - plus an obvious lack of decent new games, have driven away any hardcore arcade gamers away. It' s now a place for chavs mainly, and the odd few emo kids to mess around in. Still... did complete HOTD 4 twice there recently and keep venturing back in the hope of new games.

Most memorable titles were probably:

Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition
Mortal Kombat 2
King Of Fighters 98'
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtua Fighter 3 (criminal to be removed after just six months or maybe less)
Scud Race
Daytona USA
Virtua Cop
Samurai Shodown 2
House Of The Dead
Sega Rally 2
Metal Slug
Street Fighter Zero 2
Time Crisis
Tekken 3
Ridge Racer
OutRun2 SP
Tekken 5

There were more, but I think those are the highlights.

I won' t post much, because it would be too long, but I have to say this.

What about Marvel Superheroes, Xmen vs. Streetfighter, Capcom vs. Marvel, Marvel vs. Streetfighter? These games were huge at the arcades in Canada

Yeah marvel vs capcom 1,2, street fighter ex these were the last few vs games i played in the arcade. By that time Ps and PS2 were out so played these game those instead.

I spent some quality time in one arcade in particular, but more than that, there was this record store and this bowling alley that I spent a LOT of time in! The record store had Mortal Kombat. The game wasn' t the greatest, but it was only about 3 blocks away. The bowling alley had Mortal Kombat II.

There was also this go kart place called the Michigan Fun Center where they had MKII up on this HUGE screen (two of them, actually). Good times.

Nowadays, there' s not much out there. About once a year I make it out to Dave and Buster' s, which is kinda cool, but it' s just not the same.

You guys sure as hell don' t want me posting about my arcade gaming history/highlights.. You' ll be here all day reading.. Let' s just say the mid-80s till the mid-90s were absolutely AMAZING times for arcade gaming

Ok back in the day my precious pocket money was taken up by (and please excuse the mis namingof the game.) a game called Pengu, this was based on a penguin pushing blocks around to squash bears, he could also " wobble" the sides of the playing area to stun the bears.

There was also a FMV game set in space that ran a film in the background and had film explosions and cutscenes, looking back it was 1982 / 83 and things were very cheesy then. I also remember playing one of the first afterburner sit in arcade machines at the time I thought it was the best ever.

Shamelessly bumped.

I can count the amount of times I' ve been to an Arcade on my left hand...

There was also a FMV game set in space that ran a film in the background and had film explosions and cutscenes, looking back it was 1982 / 83 and things were very cheesy then.

Yeah, those old laserdisc games. Of course Dragon' s Lair is the best-known of those, and probably the best quality-wise. But you just reminded me of a jet-fighter game around that same time that was a FMV laserdisc game where you saw this desert-like landscape that you were flying over, but the plane and the enemies were all sprite-based graphics. So nowadays it would be said to have been " on rails" as you always flew over the same sequence of scenery, but the image would rotate depending on which way you were banking your aircraft. I don' t remember what this game was called.