My top five 1980s arcade games

I spent quite a bit of time (and money) in arcades in the early and mid-80s. The games were so much better than the systems we had available on our TVs at home that it was worth dropping a few bucks in quarters for an hour or two of fun.

For me and my friends, the primary destinations were Galaxy Gardens (the nearest game room), Up to Par (the biggest game room), and Fun and Games ($3 all-you-can play Tuesday nights!)

I don't have any photos from the time, but I distinctly recall wearing a series of very 80s painter's caps on these arcade excursions. Often I would decorate these caps with small metallic pins of my favorite musical acts of the time...most notably Men at Work, the Police and Duran Duran.

I did not, for the record, wear any neon, though.

As I've mentioned here before, video games kind of passed me by once the 90s rolled around, but I still have very fond memories of the golden era of arcade gaming.

Here, then, is one man's (and only one man's) ranking of the five best games from that period. Many of my fellow Gen Xers will be outraged to find Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man, Defender, Dig Dug, Centipede, Missile Command, Berserk, Joust and a host of others left off my list. Those were all worthy choices, they just didn't make my personal top five.

(5) Vanguard

This is a dark horse entry, to the point that many won't even be familiar with it. I was a frequent player for a few reasons, including the variety of settings through which you could fly your ship, the fact you had four directional fire buttons, and maybe most importantly, the very cool, Flash Gordon-inspired music that would play when you passed through one of the glowing energy fields. I pumped a lot of tokens/quarters into this one. (Speaking of great 80s video game music, while I never liked the game itself, you can't beat the driving distorted guitar riff of Reactor, which you could hear cutting through the arcade noise no matter how crowded it was.)

(4) Gorf

Gorf was among the first games to incorporate voice synthesis. It would semi-mock you with cries of "My Gorfian robots are unbeatable" and "Prepare yourself for annihilation!" Like Vanguard, I liked the variety in this one, even though it kind of ripped off Space Invaders and Galaxian. If you could get through the five different challenges, you would rise in rank from Space Cadet to Space Captain. If you could survive five full cycles of missions, you would reach the ultimate rank of Space Avenger. You could also get yourself more ships if you were willing to spend TWO quarters instead of one. This was a big investment but often worth it.

(3) Donkey Kong

I have grown to love the original Donkey Kong more in the 2000s than I ever did in the 80s. I play it on my laptop thanks to the amazing MAME emulator, and I've gotten to the point that a game isn't successful if I don't make it past the first "pie" board, as pictured here. (I call them "pies," but I think they were supposed to be tubs of cement or something similar. Mario was, after all, a career tradesman.) I love the barrels and rivets levels, and the pies are great, but I can do without the frustrating elevators. All in all, though, a very fun experience every time you press that one-player start button.

(2) Galaga

Lots of people loved (and continue to love) Galaga. It took the concepts of Galaxian and Space Invaders to another level of enjoyment, rather than just recreating them à la Gorf. The wrinkle whereby you could allow your fighter to be captured and then earn it back to be a double-firing, dual-ship juggernaut at the bottom of the screen was genius. And as valuable as they are to the environment, I never minded wasting hundreds of those darn bees every game. They deserved it. We have a replica cocktail arcade game in our basement that includes the original Galaga, and I play it often.

(1) Track and Field

My early-80s gaming friends could have told you even before they clicked on this post that Track and Field would be #1 on my list (and it isn't even close). If you were around back then, you will remember this as the game in which players had to repeatedly hit two buttons quickly to propel their little track athlete through the 100-meter dash, long jump, javelin, hurdles, hammer throw and high jump. The faster you alternated button hits, the better you did. Which led some to cheat through the use of combs or pencils held in such a way as to create a faster cadence of button mashing. I always played it straight, though, and I was pretty good at it, which is probably a big reason why I liked the game so much. Depending on the whim of the arcade owner, this game could be set to end after the high jump no matter how well you did, or it could simply start over through the cycle of events, though with tougher qualifying times and distances. Either way, this is one I wish I also had in my basement. But I just checked on eBay, and these machines are going for anywhere between $1,800 and $4,000. I didn't love it that much.