00:00Okay man, start it up!
00:07Just Your Average Gamer here.
00:08Today I'm going to take you back to the 1980s
00:10and show you the best coin-operated games that were being played
00:13in all the arcades, fast food places, markets, liquor stores,
00:16any place that had space to put up a coin-op
00:18to rake in that quarter from the annoying neighborhood kids.
00:22These picks are based on my experience and what I saw during that time as a kid.
00:26I have 38 picks, and I'll show them in order by the year they came out
00:29and try to leave a comment on each game.
00:38Hong.
00:39The first time I saw this game was at a U.S. Coast Guard base.
00:42My father was stationed there.
00:44One thing I remember about this game were the paddles we had to use
00:47and that the game reminded me of tennis.
00:50There was this little trick I learned in the game
00:52was if you hit the ball at the edge of your paddle,
00:55it would make the ball move faster than having a regular bounce.
01:02Space Invaders.
01:03This was the first shooter game I ever saw.
01:06Apparently it was also the highest grossing game of that time.
01:09I remember always trying to kill the UFO that flies above the invaders
01:13for extra bonus points,
01:14which suckered me out from under the shields,
01:16which would usually get me killed.
01:18When the Atari 2600 finally came out with Space Invaders to play at home,
01:22it wasn't as good as the arcade version due to Atari's 8-bit graphics.
01:26In 1980, the Atari Space Invaders game cost about 40 bucks.
01:30According to the inflation calculator,
01:32that console game would be $124 today.
01:36That's freaking crazy.
01:41Lunar Lander.
01:42I remember when playing this game,
01:44it was the first time I experienced how gravity was accounted for in a video game.
01:49Another thing was it had this big-ass handle for thruster control,
01:53which was cool because it felt like what a real sci-fi spacecraft would have as a real thruster control.
02:02Asteroids.
02:03Asteroids was a different take on a shooter game,
02:05where you could move all over the screen,
02:07which was cool at the time.
02:08I remember as a kid having another friend with their finger on the hyperspace button,
02:12ready to push it to escape getting smashed by an asteroid.
02:15The problem was it never worked out that way.
02:18An asteroid would come close,
02:19you'd panic and press the hyperspace button,
02:21which would usually end up getting you killed.
02:26Battle Zone.
02:27When I first saw this game,
02:29I was thinking it was cool because of the graphics.
02:32This was one of the first times 3D line graphics were used in a video game.
02:36Also, I thought the controls looked cool.
02:39You had to look through a periscope with two big-ass joysticks that controlled the tank.
02:43Later versions of this game got rid of the periscope.
02:49Berserk.
02:50Berserk was the first top-down game I ever saw.
02:54So many top-down games mirrored this game in the 80s.
02:57One of the funny things the game would say when it was idling was,
03:01Coin detected in pocket.
03:05Missile Command.
03:08Missile Command.
03:08This would be the first time I see a trackball used for a video game controller.
03:13That trackball pinched a hell of a lot of kids' fingers spinning it around, including mine.
03:20Pac-Man.
03:22This is the game that brought video games into the mainstream.
03:25It had such broad appeal.
03:27I mean, every gamer in his family has played this game.
03:34This was the first shooter I saw that had different stages and a shield for your ship.
03:40I also liked the last stage because the main battleship reminded me of this anime called Star Blazers in the
03:45United States or Yamato in Japan.
03:47The cartoon had a similar enemy ship that used half of a moon as a spacecraft.
03:56Centipede.
03:57This was another one of those mainstream games like Pac-Man that had mass appeal.
04:05Defender.
04:07This game had the first mini-map I ever saw in a video game.
04:10It also had a cool weapon called a smart bomb that killed everything on the screen.
04:14If you used your smart bomb properly, it got you out of a lot of tight spots.
04:23Donkey Kong.
04:25Another one of those games that had mass appeal.
04:28It did very well for the arcade businesses.
04:30It appealed to so many people.
04:36Frogger.
04:37Another mainstream game that did very well.
04:43Galaga.
04:45This game came from the Galaxian game.
04:49I didn't mention Galaxian as a pick because I like Galaga much better.
04:53A cool thing in Galaga is your ship can get captured and you can get it back after shooting the
04:57enemy holding your ship.
04:59Once you get your ship back, it attaches to your main ship and you get double the firepower.
05:04That makes it a lot of fun.
05:08Gorf.
05:09This was the first game I saw that combined popular games based on stages.
05:13For example, you had Space Invaders which would be one stage.
05:17Then you'd have a Galaxian type game for another stage.
05:20Et cetera, et cetera.
05:22Gorf had a different fire control from the other games as well.
05:26The quicker you would pull the trigger, the faster your shots would come out, but they would only be good
05:31at short range.
05:32The slower you'd pull the trigger, the longer your shot would travel, but your rate of fire would suffer.
05:38Ladies.
05:39This game reminded me of Phoenix.
05:42It was very similar.
05:44One part of the game had this landing stage where you had to park your ship on target.
05:48I found it difficult because the controls were fine-tuned when you were fighting in space.
05:53Then when you're trying to land, which the controls took a different feel, which made the landings more difficult than
05:59they should be.
06:03I remember always having to pull the joystick backward or left to slow the screen down to bomb the enemy
06:10that were behind cover.
06:11It took a bit of timing to do this.
06:13Also, if you can get low, you can rack a lot of kills by just skimming the ground.
06:20Tempest.
06:21The spikes.
06:22The damn spikes always killed me when leveling up and going through those tunnels.
06:31Dig Dug.
06:33This game felt like a Pac-Man game to me.
06:36It had broad appeal.
06:37I mean, who didn't like squashing things with rocks and pumping stuff up till it exploded?
06:44Joust.
06:45I liked playing this game because at the same time I was in Dungeons & Dragons,
06:50I was all about jousting with knights in full-plate male armor, riding ostriches in a video game.
06:59Moon Patrol.
07:01I like how you had to worry about three things at once.
07:03The terrain, the enemy in front of your vehicle, and the enemy in the sky.
07:08It took a lot of timing.
07:14Pole Position.
07:15Everybody loves racing cars.
07:17This game became the highest-earning game by 1983 and sparked all the racing games that came after it.
07:26Q-Bert.
07:28This was the first video game to have puzzle-type gameplay,
07:31being unique among all the shooters, driving, and action games that were coming out during this period.
07:39Robotron.
07:39Two joysticks for controllers.
07:42I remember this game being a lot more fast-paced compared to Berserk.
07:48Tron.
07:50I loved the movies, so of course I was into the game.
07:53The light cycles were my favorite stage.
07:58Zaxxon.
07:58This game was a 3D person, 3D shooter,
08:02and it was the only video game that had its own TV commercial.
08:08Dragon's Lair.
08:09This was the first game that had animation.
08:12Although the timing and transition times were a bit clunky, it was still fun.
08:16This was also the first time a video game charged 50 cents.
08:20Two quarters was a big thing to a kid in those days.
08:25Spy Hunter.
08:26This was a fun game where you had a James Bond type of car
08:29that would do crazy things like oil slicks, smoke screens, etc, etc.
08:33I mean, with all the James Bond movies at that time,
08:35who didn't want to be like James Bond?
08:41Star Wars.
08:42I'm a big fan of the trilogy, so of course,
08:44the chance to fly an X-Wing was shit when you were young.
08:58I was also into martial arts,
09:00not to mention the Karate Kid movie was in the theaters at that time.
09:04It was also the first fighting game I saw
09:06where you could fight other people in PvP,
09:08which gave the game a whole different dimension
09:10and started the whole fighting game genre.
09:15Paperboy.
09:16I liked playing the game during this time
09:18because it was funny breaking people's windows
09:20and using rolled up papers as weapons.
09:23Funny thing is,
09:24I shared a paper out with a friend during that time.
09:26So nostalgic,
09:27because nobody gets their own news from papers anymore.
09:32ER Kung Fu.
09:33Another fighting game that came on the heels of Karate Champ,
09:36but ER Kung Fu didn't have the PvP option.
09:42Gauntlet.
09:43If you were a Dungeons and Dragons player,
09:44then you had to be playing Gauntlet as well.
09:47Warrior needs food badly.
09:54Hang on.
09:55Of course, with all the car games,
09:57you'd have to have the motorcycle to follow suit.
09:59The cool version of this game
10:00had a sit-down replica motorcycle
10:02where you actually sat on it while playing the game.
10:08Russian Attack.
10:09A military action game that comes out during the Cold War
10:14and right after the movie Red Dawn.
10:16The Russians were the boogeymen during that time.
10:22Outrun.
10:23I remember Outrun sticking out
10:25because it brought driving games to the next level.
10:27Better graphics,
10:28more realistic,
10:29and better vehicle controls.
10:33Afterburner.
10:34The movie Top Gun had just come out in a theater,
10:37so everybody wanted to fly a F-14 Tomcat.
10:39This was the first jet shooter I ever saw.
10:46Double Dragon.
10:47This was another fighting game,
10:49but it brought a new fight mechanics to the genre.
10:52You could grab, kick, punch, throw,
10:54and pick up weapons and use them.
10:56Another cool feature of the game was the co-op option.
10:59Having co-op added another layer to the fun.
11:26Let's turn it off, man!
11:28Let's turn it off, man!
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