What is your favorite arcade game?

[XRay]

When you go to Chuck E. Cheese's, Dave and Buster's, or whatever arcade place, what do you look forward to playing the most?

My favorite arcade games are House of the Dead series and Dark Escape. I also like Killer Queen and Blazing Angels, and I want to try Mach Storm.

[Yexin]

puzzle bubble

i just love it, i used to play it so much when i was a kid

[TheGoodHoms]

Pretty much any sort of fighting game I can get my hands on. It's just a genre that I've found a strong fondness for in recent years, probably because there's very little luck involved. Street Fighter is currently my favorite, but I'm always on the lookout for new games as well.

[BergelomeuSantos]

Well, it varies a lot depending on the condition of levers and buttons, but my favorites have always been fighting games and fast pace games (mostly beat'em ups and 2d shootings like Metal Slug). My list should be common enough, but here are some of my favorites:

The King of Fighters (mostly 2001/2002). KOF 2001 is my absolute favorite fighting game, especially because of the history that I have with it. Half of my friends were made just by the pure joy of failing specials and getting a hard counter on the face.

Metal Slug X. If there's one game that I'm kinda of proud to say that I spent numbers of hours just by training to do a no-hit run, this must be it. X is not my favorite of the franchise, but it is definitely my most played.

Captain Commando. This one is a classic. Finding one around here was enough motive to break down the pig bank.

Samurai Shodown I/II. Probably the pearl of fighting games around here. There's even legendary tales about a machine that only appears once a year (which is true, since it comes with a small festival) which had the maximum high score. I did saw this ''Legendary Machine'', but there was, like, 30 people ahead of me.

Marvel x Capcom Series. Last, but not least, we have this marvel'ous (sorry) fighting game. This one is on par with Captain Commando, only that this one has a strange luck. That luck being that the machine was ALWAYS either free or with a discounted price, FOR NO REASON. Hell, I even found one with 2 coins already inserted! (I did make sure that it was ok for me to use them, though)

[Reality]

I play stuff on MAME all the time and before that I always got the PS2 era "genesis collection, Capcom collection, midway collection, etc) 

My absolute favorites though-

Dig Dug - One of first things I ever owned was one of those plug-n-plays that Namco puts out and unlike everyone else, Pacman/Galaxian wasn't my favorite on it.

Gauntlet Legends - Played this on a physical arcade and it I thought (and still think) it is the hottest thing. I have a brother who loves Capcom-style 2D beat em ups and the Warriors series, but personally I've always preffered this game (and Dark Legacy) over all of them. It does have obvious flaws, but it's worth coming back to over the console versions - Console's Ice world is an abomination (as long as half the game combined) compared to the Swamp/Desert of the original. The original also retains timer based health and doesn't emphasize buying up stats by letting you "toggle off" powerups and then selling them. So it feels like a real arcade experience instead of a bad psedo action RPG. 

Smash TV - I can play this for hours and it still stomps out all the popular indie twinstick shooters. 

Rampage: World Tour - I love this extremely. It was also somewhere in my first 10 n64 games (good conversion only real change is to the health bars). Has a slightly weaker sequel (universal tour) and a Gamecube sequel (total carnage) but the original is still the best because it acknodlledges itself as a time waster and keeps you away from worrying about "progression" since you have to go out of your way to actually get to the moon and finish the game. I also feel like the "mini games" and cycling level challenges makes competition among players more fun than in the other games.

If you asked a couple years ago, I really love Daytona and even more Ridge Racer, but I barely manage to think about cars in videogames without going to Forza these days.

I feel like it would be cheating to put Puyo-Puyo Tsu, so I won't - but it overqualifies, I just mentally think of it as a Genesis game before an arcade game.

[Perkilator]

Time Crisis. A whole game revolving around a cover system? Sign me up!

[Captain Karnage]

Kinda depends on the decade, for the 80's I love Galaga

90's Crazy Taxi

00's idk, I remember the only arcade in the mall shutting down in 2002 maybe Marvel vs Capcom 2

[Hawkwing]

I beat Time Crisis 2 and 3 in the arcades. I still try to do so everytime I see the games in the arcade, no matter how much money it costs.

I also almost beat Deadstorm Pirates with both my youth pastor and a stranger I didn't know, but we ran out of money to spare in the final moments.

I seem to set a new high score whenever I play Sniper Elite.

Police 911 is also really fun, and having to move your body to dodge is a surprisingly fun gimmick.

I also got far in the Star Trek Voyager arcade game. In hindsight,

Meanwhile, I suck at hunting games. Seems like being right-handed yet left-eye dominant means I'm only good with pistols and sniper rifles.

***

As for non-shooting games:

Galaga and Dig Dug arrangement are incredibly fun expansions of the original games.

1943 I loved entirely for the music, and the game being a fun shoot-em-up was just an added bonus

Hydro Thunder shows that no only can boat racing be fun, but you can make crazily awesome levels that feature water.

Race Drivin', entirely because it taught me how to drive manual.

 

And probably several others that I'm blanking on right now. I really need to play one of the arcade collections I own again. It's been a while.

[Dragoncat]

I used to love the deer and turkey hunting ones when there was a bowling alley with an arcade in town. Got pretty good at them.

[eclipse]

DDR or bust.  Home mats aren't the same.