Top 5 arcade machines you pumped most of your pocket change into?

[hudson]

Our lists may vary slightly due to having a rare gem (or not) sitting in your local chippy, video shop or swimming baths. I'm interested to see these ones over the predictable Street Fighter 2's that will no doubt be in many people's list (or maybe not!).

In not particular order, I reckon I spent most my milk round money on the following...

Street Fighter 2 (Aladdin's Palace - Liverpool)
Ridge Racer (Las Vegas - Liverpool)
WonderBoy in Monster Land (Local indie video rental store)
Chase HQ (Southport arcades)
Final Fight (Aladdin's Palace - Liverpool)

[Brad]

Street fighter 2 - student bar
720 - maldon prom arcade
King fu master
Space invaders
Ms pacman

[Colin]

I can remember my five easily!

Bubble Bobble
R-Type
Jackal
Robocop
Tempest

[CMcK]

There were two arcades in Falkirk back in the day both long gone now.

Daytona USA - spent absolutely loads on head to head races with my mates.
Starblade - credit feeding it to see it all the way through.
Steel Talons - great flat shaded helicopter sim which was 50p a go rather than the usual 20p.
Gunblade NY - massive replay value chasing high scores.
Tumblepop - replaced the Snow Bros machine but was nearly as much fun.

[Team Andromeda]

1) Outrun - Copper Coin Porthcawl

2) Daytona USA - Various

3) Wonderboy - Local Chippy

4) GunBlade NY - Various

5) Star Wars (Atari) - Dirty Duck Porthcawl

[Soundwave]

Damn this could be hard but I seem to remember these being well played...

Robocop
X-Men
Mortal Kombat
Simpsons
Turtles

Konami were kings of stealing my money as a child...it's a shame how far they have fallen since then
I could easily list about a hundred more that came very close but those were probably my most played back in the day.

Neil

[speedlolita]

Haven't really played in arcades too much so...

Street Fighter III: Third Strike
Initial D Arcade Stage 4
Sega Rally
Star Wars Episode I Pod Racer
Dancing Stage Fusion

[Asura]

Mine are mostly much later than most people here, as I didn't have the money in the early days!

1) Gundam CardBuilder 0079/0083. Hard to explain, this one. Whilst in Japan, I tried to get into a few very Japanese-centric games to try and help my Japanese along a bit, and this actually did help a lot. It's a mix of real-time and turn-based strategy. To start playing, you had to buy an initial pack of cards from a vending machine, and afterward, you were given a card each time you played. The cards included characters, weapons, mobile suits/vehicles and special equipment, and there were all sorts of rules about what you could equip, and the environments you could use different weapons etc. in. It had all these special moves you could do by putting cards together (e.g. if you fielded the entire 08th MS Team). It was a VERY skilful game, really fun, and like digital crack to a Gundam fan. I eventually had to quit, after I realised that over 12 months I'd probably put about ?200 into the machine and had a huge folder of cards.



2) Silent Scope. I must have put ?30-40 in that over the years. I still play it whenever I see it.
3) Crazy Taxi. Couldn't get enough of this, then I got it for the Dreamcast and played even more of it.
4) Knights of the Round. Was the arcade machine in a holiday resort we went to in Spain one summer. The resort was a nightmare (long story, mainly to do with the locals being very aggressive) so I ended up playing on this in the bar. I loved it at the time; played it recently and it's OK, but nothing special.
5) Gundam Senjou No Kizuna. Probably spot a pattern here. This was that massive Gundam pod game. I liked it, though not quite as much as Cardbuilder. The huge panoramic screen was a hell of a draw though (that new Star Wars game uses the same hardware, even down the cabinet which is a dressed-up version from the Gundam game).

[hudson]

Kung-Fu Master and Robocop were chippy and swimming bath arcades These are in my top 10.

Shout out to King of the Ring

[Baseley09]

From my youth:

Siebu Olympic Cup Soccer (Clarence Pier)
Martial Champion (Games Wharf - Clarence Pier)
Robocop (Games Wharf - Clarence Pier)
Numan Athletics (Clarence Pier)

In my 20s I really got in to Derby Owners Club, shame Sega never did a western home release.

Also Outrun 2 SP

[Pikate]

These are all from my trip to Japan (to be fair I didn't pump much into the last two but I only played about 9 machines in total so...):

1) Rhythm Tengoku
2) Taiko no Tatsujin 14
3) Persona 4: The Ultimate
4) Initial D: Arcade Stage 4 (The cabinet where you sit in the AE86)
5) Maimai

[acidbearboy]

Top Skater
Xmen vs Street Fighter
Simpsons
Die Hard Arcade
Taito World Cup

[MiG]

We had quite an odd selection locally, we had one local arcade called FutureZone combined with a laserquest, which was pretty good actually but most of the machines I played in random places, I always had a 50p coin for the lockers when I trained at the county Swimming club so I would buy a chomp for 10p then spend 40p change for 2 credits on the Arcade machines there.. they had some pretty good ones over the years..

Alien vs Predator (FutureZone, Cheltenham)
Contra (At the local Swimming pool)
3 Wonders (At the local Swimming pool)
Raystorm (again at the swimming pool but a couple of years later, this absolutely blew me away at the time)
Badlands (Whilst waiting for my burger and fries at Burger Star)

[BigDeadFreak]

Most of my money went into the arcades at Dymchurch where my parents would take us religiously when I was a kid. Whe I was really young I just randomly played whatever took my fancy but later on I settled on a couple of games and couldn't get enough of them (mainly Final Fight). My top 5 were probably:

Final Fight
Vendetta
Afterburner II
Street Fighter II
Ridge Racer

[Atticus]

1. Street Fighter II - Seaton Carew and Saltburn Pier
2. Daytona 4-player - Teesside Park
3. Ridge Racer - Teesside Park
4. Star Wars (Atari) - Billingham Forum
5. Spy Hunter - Billingham Forum