Capcom Street Fighter
This was all about the one-on-one, giving you six buttons to kick the shite out of your opponent with the usual beat down combo of jumping, standing and crouching, plus strong, medium and weak punches and kicks. This game was a wonderful mixture of Japanese cute and kickass combo moves. I still remember the twitchiness when Sagat came on-screen: would I be able to react fast enough to avoid his power move?
"Shoryureppa! Shinryuken! Feel my burning vigour!"
Namco Time Crisis
This genre-defining game always made me wish I had way better co-ordination, since it was all about the foot pedal. Release pedal, duck and reload! Foot down, fire! This on-the-rails first-person shooter allowed you to duck behind objects to stay safe while blasting with your lightgun through the game. While navigating each level you gotta kill all the bad guys in each area before time runs out but can gain time bonuses if you get really good.
Reg Hardware extends a special thanks to Arcade History and Alexis Bousiges for help sourcing the pictures for this round-up.
Top Ten Arcade Classics
COMMENTS
Yeah
Space Harrier FTW. The sheer *speed* that all the scenery came up at you was mindblowing, even before you reckoned on the scenery being 50-foot-high multicoloured metallic mushrooms. Afterburner was fun, but nothing like as good as Space Harrier.
But the list misses out Pitfighter. OK, it doesn't have the special moves of other games, but it replaced those with being realistic, and with moving at the speed of a real fight. Street Fighter, you could hang back and fire stuff. With Pitfighter, hanging back just got you kicked to death.
The list also misses out Hard Drivin'. Fully 3D graphics, a steering wheel which pulled against you when you do stuff, a manual box with 4 gears, and tracks where it wasn't just about going flat out with briefly dropping to low gear. And you got a stunt track with a broken-bridge jump, a loop-the-loop, and various other goodness. Outrun was cool and fun, but Hard Drivin' was *THE* first realistic driving game, the daddy of every current rally/F1 sim.
Pin ball
People around my age (43) just timed it right for video games, and home computers for that matter. I still remember my friends describing Space Invaders to me, after they discovered it at the local baths: "It's like pinball! All these monsters.. you shoot them its like pinball!". They were in a frenzy about it.
Pinball's not dead, the real machines are still around - aren't they ?
Too short
Only 10? And no Strider or R-Type?
Tcchh - I'm not coming to your video arcade. Hardly worth getting my change from the grumpy git in the glass box for...
Arcade Speak
I remember playing GORF some years before Gauntlet. I was drawn to its ominous cabinet by the hypnotic "INSUURT COYNE" digitised speech. Cost me a bleedin' fortune, it did!
