Top Five arcade games that never were..

[J0e Musashi]

Gradius V is the undisputed champ of this thread. It basically is an Arcade game. Although, with a single loop lasting well over an hour it would need to be edited heavily if it was to actually make any money.

That's exactly the same as Final then non?

[Kubrick]

Final doesn't feel like an Arcade game to me. Too slow-paced like MattyD mentioned earlier, plus the 100 ships and "replayability" etc just screams "consumer product".

It's almost like IREM were ticking off a checklist of stuff to include so mainstream mags and websites like IGN wouldn't level the usual complaints against it like they do with any STG.

[J0e Musashi]

If edited there is no real reason why it couldn't be though. Obviously they'd have to do away with the 100 ships thing. Perhaps you could pick one from each group of ships or something. It's actually a shorter game that Gradius V too. Delta would make for a far greater game than any of them though IMO.

[MikeB]

Delta's my fave R-Type, hands down. It's just so playable. Much more so than previous iterations. Final's great but its level design (bar the Battleship level) is less inspired.

If anyone's interested I've knocked up a Making Of for issue 51 of Retro Gamer

[Shoju]

Streets Of Rage 2
Contra 3
G Darius
Thunder Force 4
ISS 98

[Vince]

G Darius

This actually was an arcade game, although i imagine it never made it to the UK. It was on the Taito FX system http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=670.

[Pilotwings]

Streets Of Rage 2

2nd post

[ShadowDancer]

I love R-type Final Too. I invested some serious hours into that game and bought it on Japanese release. Perhaps its not too arcadey and Gradius V is more so. Loved both tho.

[NemesiS]

Another two games that would have made great arcade games imo would have been:

Bounder (old C64 bouncing tennis ball game. Had wicked music as well if i remember)

Speedball 2..would have been an ace 2 player game