[BurritoBeans]

Yep, arcade thread - pretty much I just wanted to start this to see how many people still get out and play some arcade machines/at least pops up an emulator to screw around now and then, and if you do - what's your favorite title and/or some of your just generally more liked titles?

So if you've seen my other posts you know I'm a bit of a gamer, and if not then now you know I guess - I'm really into collecting games from about '72 to modern-day. For the arcades that this thread is about, I own boards and in day-to-day life I get a lot of time in with the things myself - it's just that most of the time is work, and that means is repair on cabinets, be it replacing sticks and switches, cleaning out cabinets, restorations, conversions, and chipswaps. My workplace has an arcade which we're building up slowly in a converted warehouse next to it, so on breaks I'll go over there and get a few rounds in on stuff like Battletoads, Centipede, AvP, Street Fighter II, Area 51, etc. which is a lot of fun. I love the hardware in these things - a nice big wooden cabinet with a massive array of chips, high-end controls, some fairly unique boards (My current project is a DECO Cassette System - it keeps demagnetizing the tapes which hold the games, just working on it is awesome) and apart from any CPS boards with the damn suicide batteries, they're a ton of fun to work on.

One of the recent recent project that my dad and I have been working on for the home is a multicade. A bit ago (like half of a year now) when we bought joystick parts and boards from focusattack to build the brothers some fighting sticks for the PS3/PS4/PC (They kick my ass every time at fighters, I suck hard at 'em, but throw in a trackball and that swaps...) they had a good deal on multicade boards - we ordered a Pandora's Box 4 645-in-1 board for like $70ish which was great. Build a cabinet around it, add in a MAME PC, a few extra JAMMA harnesses to hook up my personal dedicated boards, and top it off with some really generic and shitty graphics with black paint as a placeholder while the real stuff gets made to get this:

Spoiler: Images

For the favorite title, this isn't hard for me - I'm going with Splatterhouse. It's not considered a Namco "classic" but where it is known it's got some love. I dumped $150 on the original board alongside $30 in RAM ICs back in 2013 to get it working, and still want the original cabinet or at least marquee and poster if I could get my hands on 'em. It's a really solid sidescroller, the mechanics all work smooth, the thing has fairly impressive graphics for the time, the soundtrack has some really nice bits, there's Captain Mozzarella, and it's definitely got a bit more gore in it than say Mortal Kombat. I love the game to death - it got me into speedrunning/TASing (possibly another thread? I'm working on developing a possible ACE in The Lawnmower Man for SNES as I type this post...) and was the reason I bought two systems - the PC Engine Duo-R and FM Towns - just so I could play their ports.

For additional mentions on games, there's three that come to mind - Crossed Swords , Centipede, and Battletoads. The first, Crossed Swords, is a little hack & Slash ARPG by Alpha Denshi - it came out on the Neo Geo, both the MVS in the arcade and the AES at home. Grab a friend and sit down to pretty much play Punch-Out!! with a fantasy setting and waves of enemies - it's completely worth the coins it eats out of my pockets, or so I think. Centipede is a classic, and most people know it - I've played this one since I was little, it's the big reason we added a Trackball to the cabinet, and the gameplay is just solid with a bit of challenge on the side. Finally, there's Battletoads - most people know the NES classic, but not a ton play the arcade. The game is innovative in ways (The first Rare game to use the PowerAnimator, experimentation with 3D, etc.) and fun but by no means fair on any difficulty option that's given. Still, it's a lot of fun and a complete change compared to the console versions - add in a lot more violence, a higher difficulty level, etc. and you've got it anyways. I love the thing enough that I've got a board and I don't regret the purchase.

TL;DR/Summary - Do you play arcade games still, and if so what are some of your favorites? I love the things, and my answers to the questions are yes and Splatterhouse is the favorite while Crossed Swords/Centipede/Battletoads come in right behind it.

[Skullmeat]

Been playing Raiden Fighters Jet alot, my current high score is over 19 million. Also really enjoy Smash TV, as well as Vindicators.