I grew up with playing arcade games in the 80's. These machines were EVERYWHERE. It wasn't unheard of gas stations and grocery stores having their own mini arcades, especially locally owned mom and pop stores. They were in theatres, porn stores, airports...

I old enough to remember when there were black and white arcade games like Seawolf by Midway.

Pacmania was in full swing. When Ms. Pacman came out, it was a massive hit. There were lines to play this game, with people putting their quarter up on the machine to show they were next. I had a rubber Pac-Man toy that looked like his original cabinet art.

Pac-Man was such a cultural phenomenon that he had his own song simply known as Pac-Man Fever.

Many of the games were very different from each other and tried to be distinct on it's own. Gyruss was a 1983 game that shot at aliens like Space Invaders, but you rotated around the whole screen. I remember liking the music.

Gauntlet came out in 1985 and was a game changer. A game where 4 people played cooperatively at the same time? It was unheard of. Dungeons & Dragons and high fantasy was big at the time, Gauntlet was a huge success. The Elf was my character of choice.

Another favorite machine of mine wad Xenophobe by Atari. A three player simultaneous cooperative game with the screen divided in thirds, you played a Space officer clearing space stations of aliens before the self destruct goes off.

Many arcades you exchanged cash by putting it into a token machine, you would often have special days where you got more tokens for your dollar like Sunday. Some places could be rented out for Birthdays and machines put on free play for a couple of hours.

There was a big arcade crash in the 80's with many arcades folding and the number of machines were scaled back. They persisted with chain arcades like Aladdin's Castle through the 90's but even these disappeared. They could not compete with home consoles.

With home consoles and PC's dominating video games in the 90's arcade games had to get creative, making games with arcade only experiences. Like Sniper Scope, a gun game that a smaller screen in the gun's scope.

There also a proliferation of sit down racing games in arcades at the time. Like GP Racer or this Harley Davidson Motorcycle game that could tilt side to side matching your motorcycle's in game movements.

Light gun games also increased at arcades in the 90's with classic games like Lethal Enforcers or House of the Dead.

Unfortunately arcades have to seem to have all but died off with exceptions with "barcades" like Dave & Busters, or some games that specialize in bars. Even Japan, the birthplace of Arcades, they are much reduced and struggling.

Anyway this thread became longer than I intended and that is my trip down memory lane about arcades.