Hey all you 90's teenagers! What was your arcade game?

I lived in Utah and the only thing to do in the town was to hang out and play Street Fighter II at the Frosty Freeze across from the school.

*I started smoking weed too.

I recently downloaded the new SFII on my Xbox, and it brought back a lot of memories. TIGER! TIGER! UPPERCUT!

The best was the original SFII with the original eight. I used to love using Guile to do the invisible throw on people. And handcuffs was fun if you wanted to be a total dick.

I wasn’t a teen, I was little in the 90’s.Arcades I don’t remember buuuuuuut

But I LOVED Zelda, you know the one in the big gold cartridge. And omfg what was that game.. BURGER TIME.

Then on Super Nintendo.. Mario is Missing, Paperboy, DK, Mario Kart (obv)

Arcades in Ottawa (Canada’s capital).... were and still are pretty rare. They’re definitely not anything close to Japan’s awesome arcades, even worse than America’s. Apparently some towns like Toronto and Victoria are better arcadewise. Honestly though, most arcade games make money by being in the movie theatre lobby.

That said, I did get into DDR back when a friend brought it to anime night. While it wasn’t the arcade version, I think it still counts; I do pop on machines from time to time to wow the crowd with my elite feet action :)

When I lived in Japan I fell in love with Drummania. There was one machine back in Ottawa, but I think it broke and they shipped it off. I spent years crying over my loss until Harmonix came down from the sky and blessed us with Rock Band. Now I’m pushing up to Expert mode, which is pretty much the equivalent to knowing how to play real drums in terms of how fast you need to be.

Amazingly enough, one of the arcades here had a Para Para Paradice machine, now THAT’s a fun new DDR type experience! I gotta call them and see if they still have it around.

And darkstalkers was awesome. And it is funny that you mention it. A friend of mine had a list of all the moves in Mortal Combat II. I asked where he got it and he said, “On the Internet.” And I asked, “What is that?”

Now I feel old. That was in High School.

My brother got the moves off some BBS. He was totally into warez and crap. We had dozens of pirated games. We played the Leisure Suit Larry games in middle school! We were so bad.

I am still amazing at FROGGER and MS. PACMAN and MATA HARI PINBALL.

They were my three favorite in the arcade in my trailer park, and I spent every summer in the 90s playing them constantly!

I’ve played Super Mario World so much that I can play in the craziest way possible (insane jumps and spins, the best Yoshi abandonment moves ever, etc) and beat the game pretty quickly and with bonus style points to boot. It actually frightens other SMW players.

@dynamic, wow! And I thought it was impressive that I could beat all the “SPECIAL” levels! Gnarly! Tubular!

YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER!

Video

1) Cruisin’ USA at the movie theater
2) Primal Rage at the 7-Eleven
3) Maximum Force and
4) Daytona USA at the arcade in the mall

Yes, the SPECIAL levels! I had a friend who only last month was informed of these levels, and they played SMW a good deal as well. The incredulous look on their face was awesome :)

I remember the Top Skater simulator (guess what, after that I decided to get a skate board lol)
Metal slug 2
Tekken 3
House of the death
Time Crisis
Ohhh, 90’s at the mall, when I was young, cute and popular (lol)

@flameboi, all those games with the guns! I loved Area 51, but there were some timeless ones, like the Aerosmith one.

Reading these answers makes me realize that the 90’s were less about joysticks and more about crazy, big machines with guns and driver’s seats and dance floors.

X-men.

I was a pinball kid…until they started disappearing. /mourns the missing pinball machines.

@tonedef
Oh yes! Area 51 was great! The Sega Rally Championship II was awesome to the max!

Perchik is a pinball wizard!

My all time fav is Time Crisis 2. the actual recoil from the guns as you pull the trigger…. its the little things like that, that really bring out another element to games completely.

Tekken 3 was also the shit.

Did anyone else ever play Rampart? There was like, one button, and then a big trackball. You had to keep your walls completely connected, or else the other people would win.

By the way, I just realized it may have sounded odd that there was an arcade in my “trailer park,” so to clarify, it was actually one of those resort “campgrounds” near the beach, in which people vacation in trailers. My family and I went to our trailer every weekend in the summer when I was young.

@GoS, yeah! My family still goes down to one of those in the Keys every August. I was a bit puzzled. I was thinking, “Man! I wish I grew up with an arcade in my neighborhood!”

Marvel Vs. Capcom was the shit, street fighter II, Tekken 3, Bust a Move…can’t remember the others

Rampart all the way. I still have the SNES cartridge. The super nintendo version was super Rampart and actually an awesome game.

Samurai Showdown
MK 2
SF 2
Tekken 3
Killer Instinct
Soul Edge, thats right the precursor Soul Caliber,
.... I was a bit of a fighting game nut haha
Also Area 51 was sweet…
Ninja Turtles and X-Men…
We had this short lived arcade in my small town but it got shut down because it pretty much became where people went to fight haha

So much lurve for Kiev. I would ride my bike to pizza hut every day after school and play Time Crisis 2 with my friend Kevin.

Bust A Move.

Watch it or I’ll drop some serious bombs on ya.

Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time, Xmen(playing with 5 other people was the best) , The Simpsons game, and MK2

ive beaten all those games in the arcade, some on multiple occasions….yeaaa i had a bit of free time as a kid

Heh.

My grandfather used to be a race car driver, so he got a PS1 and some driving games when I was like three, along with some sports games. After I got used to the controls I started whupping his ass :P

I got really into games, and got a lot of Crash Bandicoot stuff. I got Spyro: Ripto’s Rage for Christmas, but I was so young that I was afraid of the “scary dragon” on the cover. My sister got me to play it, though. I loved it and got every Spyro game by Insomniac from then on, and became a great fan of them.

Nowadays I have tons of consoles and handhelds and have an estimated value of all the games I own to be about $4000.

Seems like a lot, but it’s about 13 years of passion, so…

I was never into arcade games though. I loved Galaxian and Galaga once I got my hands on a “pay only once” version.

@Sink, consoles are great, but I truly do miss the atmosphere and social aspects of being in the local arcade. It’s a shame that consoles all but put them out of business.

Turtles in time was so good!!!!

@flameboi yea but the sewer level was a bitch

Time Crisis 2 (the recoiling gun was probably one of the greatest things ever)
Xmen (amazing! but really hard)
1943
Operation Wolf
Cruisin’ USA
Soul Caliber
MKII
and the grandaddy of them all, SFII.
in high school i played alot of Police Trainer, which seems lame but actually was addictive. it’s funny reading these responses you can get a sense of who’s older and who’s younger. based on my choices anybody want to take a guess what year i was born? ill give plus or minus 2 years…

Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers were my favorite arcade games.

How about “Lucky and Wild,” that shooting/driving game. I liked being Wild, because I couldn’t shoot and drive concurrently.

OMFG i loved lucky and wild. I was going to say that as well but i couldnt remember what it was called. I always wondered why they didnt make more games like that, i thought the whole concept was great.

The 7th Guest :-)

@eatmunky well… its odd. my name is kevin… Dun dun DUNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

@emt 1988

@kiev no way. you didnt happen to go to el camino real HS did you? haha

pinball and does anyone remember the leprechaun game?? where u had to crush snails? i looooved that game

@uber
the grab and throw action that you could do to the foot soldiers was just awesome, and yes, the sewer level was just… that! lol

I only dabbled in arcade games in the 90’s, but I discovered Time Pilot at a bar in 2005 and have become pretty damn good at it, well good enough to log a score on Twin Galaxies for the MAME version. I’m the MAME champ of MIA as well, but I only played the real version a couple times.