This journey into the heart of darkness was one of my favourite all time arcade games. Ikari Warriors was an action packed slaughter fest as you took on an entire army in your attempt to reach the village of Ikari. You could play co-operatively or alone and it was a challenging and addictive title.

 

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Final Fight was yet another side scrolling beat ‘em up in the mould of Double Dragon but this was no cheap copy; it was a well designed blast of violent urban action. Released by Capcom in 1989 you had a choice of three characters and could play co-operatively battering wave after wave of thugs into pulp in a desperate attempt to rescue a kidnapped girl.

 

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Shinobi is a series of ninja related games and the first one was an arcade game released in 1987. The height of the ninja boom, ninjas were super cool and kids across the land were hurting each other in playgrounds as they emulated ninja action. Everyone wanted nun chucks and throwing stars but the next best thing was to play as a ninja in a video game.

 

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For gamers who are desperate to relive that nostalgic arcade cabinet experience the options are limited. Most of the video game arcades are gone and those that remain are filled with Dance Dance Revolution and Virtua Fighter 82. If you want to play the games you remember from yesteryear then you might find the only way to do it is to track down an old arcade cabinet and buy it.

There is a whole enthusiast scene into refurbishing arcade cabinets and you can either pick them up or buy an old cabinet at auction and fix it up yourself. Most people install boards which include several titles since they don’t have the room to house multiple cabinets. There is an argument between purists who restore the machines complete with bevelled screens and antiquated controls and those who choose to adapt and update their arcade cabinets with new control methods and flat screens.

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Badlands was a fun game released by Atari in 1989. It was a driving game where two players raced armoured cars around a hazard filled track. You could also unleash weapons on your opponent and upgrade your car. The action offered a kind of top down view on the whole track and so it took some concentration to keep your car going the right way.

 

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Arkanoid was a seriously addictive game released in 1986 by Taito. It was very similar to Atari’s Breakout which was an attempt to turn Pong into a single player game. Arkanoid was a much more developed version of the same idea and it really chewed up the hours.

 

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Developed by little known Japanese company Data East the arcade game Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja was a comical 2D side scrolling beat ‘em up in the same vein as Double Dragon. It was released in 1988 and you could play alone or co-operatively with a friend to wade through a horde of ninjas before facing down a boss character at the end of each level.

 

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Ghosts ‘n Goblins was first released into the arcades by Capcom in 1985. You played as a knight in shining armour, or occasionally your underpants, and had to fight an array of supernatural baddies in your quest to save the princess. It was a fantastically imaginative 2D side scrolling game with addictive and challenging platform game-play.

 

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The Three Stooges were originally a vaudeville act who first appeared in the 1920’s. Larry, Moe and Curly became famous for their crazy slapstick comedy and fast paced one-liners. In the 1930’s they began to appear in films and they continued in various line-ups until the 1970’s by which time they were a US national treasure. In 1984 an arcade game was released called The Three Stooges in Brides is Brides.

 

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Hard as it may be to believe there was in fact an arcade game called Violence Fight. While this blog has mainly focussed on those golden moments from gaming history with a slew of wonderful and addictive titles Violence Fight is set to break that trend. This game was every bit as bad as it sounds and a long way from the beat ‘em up complexity of Street Fighter or even Mortal Kombat.

The best thing about Violence Fight was the awesome back story. The game was released by Taito in 1989 and it’s fair to say they didn’t spend a huge amount of time on translation.

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