Best 80s Arcade Games, Ranked: Galaga, Frogger, Track & Field

Hello all and welcome to Past Times at 80s High. This is AJ. We are going to do another top seven list for you tonight. We're going to do our top seven arcade games from the 1980s. I got my buddy Kevin here with me. How are you doing tonight, Kev? Doing alright, AJ. How you doing, brother? Ah, doing great. Doing great. All right. Well, for me, you know, growing up here in the lakes region, um, we had Weir's Beach, which, you know, just a strip, you know, on the lake, tons of arcades. I say tons, I think it was like three, but to me it was like heaven. And we had a little building called Funspot that was probably, you know, only about 60, 80 feet long, 30, 40 feet wide, you know, big arcade. Well, now it's monstrous. Uh, it's the largest arcade in the United States, I think. Uh, but largest arcade museum, I believe, is the qualifier. Is that how they word it?

I believe that is, yes.

Well, yeah, that's where, man, just as a kid, I couldn't wait to get to those places and I loved it. How about you, Kev? Where'd you start playing video games and games?

Stoubling quarters and tokens as fast as you could.

Yeah.

Um, we had the dream machine at the lilac mall, and then there was an offshoot of funspot um over at the week's traffic circle in Dover when we could get a ride up there. Right. Uh that was that was a good place to go, but you uh couldn't get there on your bicycle at that age, whereas the dream machine was just up the road from the from the school.

So nice. Were they tokens or quarters?

Dream Machine was tokens.

Nice.

They were tokens, yeah. I I you said that and I could see the Dream Machine tokens.

That's exactly what I saw was a funspot token in my hand. They were exactly they were uh, I think back then they gave you a deal. Now it's just like a quarter, you know. You put a buck in, you get four. No more bargains for you, kid.

Yeah, exactly. I think it was yeah, let's do five for a buck or something like that. Uh they threw you a bone.

Right. All right. Well, let's get started on our list here, Kev, and I'm gonna give you the honors tonight, and we will start with your number seven.

My number seven is considered a vehicular combat game from 1984, and it featured the Peter Gunn theme. I'm speaking, of course, of Spy Hunter. Uh, that was a Bally Midway game. It was, you know, it was an overhead kind of moving screen, scrolling screen. Um drove your your fancy little jalopy. Uh it was kind of cool because it had that cool music, and and because you could drive into well, you could wreck up against the the utility van as it pulled out in front of you, or you could possibly drive into it and get different weapons. Uh so when you could accomplish that, it was it was pretty cool. Then you come out and really wreak some havoc on the enemies.

Oh, yeah. I love driving into the van. Yes, felt so cool.

Never knew what you were gonna get. Do I get the oil slick? Do I get the gun? Do I get the cloud?

Awesome, awesome. And that music. I can hear it now. I can't do it in my I can't hum it, but I can hear it. Uh, the so my number seven then uh just so happens to be another driving uh game, and this is from 1986, put out by Atari, and that is Super Sprint. I don't super sprint. Oh man, it was just awesome. The the greatest thing about it, and the reason I loved it, is it it had it was a stand-up game, but it had three steering wheels, three pedals, so you could play against two of your other buddies, and there was always a uh uh computer or two cars, you know, involved as well. And just you know, you'd you'd go around to gather wrenches, you get three wrenches, you could up your car, whether it's acceleration, top speed, what's uh whatever. But uh oh, just a great game.

There was a there was a very similar truck racing game. And I can't remember who it was. It was one of the one of the famed rally drivers of the day. Uh I can't remember who it was, but that just you talked about picking up the wrenches.

Yeah.

I remember that. But you're talking that was 86.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I can see because you just had like the one track, right?

Well, well, you had the one track that all three of you were on. It didn't scroll or anything, you just looked down on it from above, and I mean, there was like five or six different tracks that it switched between, but you'd crash if you blew up, a helicopter would come and drop you a new car, you know, just like that. You were fine.

Right. Am I thinking of the same one though? Because it's just one of the things that I thought was very strange was and that our kids will never understand, is the evolution of graphics.

Oh, yeah.

You know, they when you're talking from Pong up to, you know, whatever the different stages, but there were games that that didn't really follow that pattern. You know what I mean? There were games that came out in 86, 87 that were still way back, pretty basic in in their in their graphic style. Oh, yeah. And then there was and there were ones that were early on, and you're like, really, wow, those were really great graphics for for the time for for the early for the eight-bit era.

Yeah, and then you'd think, well, maybe they made up for that with playability, and then you realize, no, this sucks.

They still haven't done that.

Like I noticed when I was studying for this, looking at which we didn't have a whole lot of time, but just watching a few videos, and uh this game, by the way, comes from Sprint, the original one, which was black and white. You probably can picture that one more than you can.

I remember that one very well, yes.

Yep. But uh when I got up to the last year of the decade, 1989, and I was watching some of the games, and the exact same fucking thing you said was I mean, the graphics were just terrible. I'm like, how is how is this is about like asteroids from back in the 70s, you know? It's insane. All right, man. Awesome. Well, that brings us to you for number six.

For number six, I went with one one that I I think really just goofing on it, um, might have been one of the one of the early uh pieces of our friendship, and and that would be the uh Konami track and field. Oh yeah. Because it was it was a challenge. I mean, everything every other game up until that, you just kind of like mashed the buttons at a at a regular pace. With track and field, you had to figure out like I remember just like the first year that it was out, just people just slapping as hard as they could. You could hear them all through the place slapping it. And then there was a kid that there's always a couple kids that had the pen trick, and they'd like make a fulcrum with their thumb and then tap back and forth with the pen so it hit both buttons to you know to get the the little extra boost. Yeah, exactly. But what a what a great game. I mean, it was so utterly simple, you know what I mean, graphically and and and playability-wise, but so difficult just from that getting up to speed and when to stop, the long jump. Oh long jump was just so like the and the hammer. The hammer killed me to to let go of it at the right time. The javelin, too, to let go at the right time was an art. It was it was it was so difficult. You like you'd be looking at it going, this is so simple, yet I I mess it up every time, every friggin' and I need to find more quarters.

My buddy VJ was just I mean, he was one of those guys that was good at every friggin' game he played. It was annoying, especially pinball. But the way he could tap those buttons was so friggin' fast, it was like he was having a you know a seizure, just his fingers didn't even leave the board, just whammo. Awesome.

We had a guy like that. We called him parlor Pete because he had all the parlor games down.

Oh, too funny. Nice. That's like Shamway here.

Which one?

Uh Aaron.

Aaron, yeah.

Table games, actually, for him. Foosball Pong, that prick beats me at everything. I get so mad at him.

Different, different podcast, right?

All right, so that brings me to six. And yes, I did pick this. Um, I had a hard time putting it on my list, but I was so addicted to it that I just couldn't help. And that is Frogger. Call me George Costanza if you want.

Can't stand you.

But just it's uh that was 1981 and it was Konami. And which I get confused because some of these games were developed by one company and published by another because Sega actually published this game, uh, and then later had it on some of their home systems, I guess. But I don't know. I just was hooked on it. I could not stop playing it. Maybe it's because it's one of the games that I was actually good at, but just the music, everything about it, I fucking loved. Um I uh what was I gonna say? The uh when you jump, you know, you get through the cars and then you get to the logs where you're technically technically trying to jump on and you know save the frogs for extra points before you got them home. And it just I always thought it was humping. I'm like, yeah, lands on her, he's humping her, and now he can take her home. And now he can take her home.

Yeah, moving in together. You'd probably take her home and hump her, but right.

But uh, it just I always think of remember when George was trying to get the guy, you know, the electrician in there with him, the moving vehicle, because he couldn't unplug it because he wanted to keep his high score, and then they show him trying to be frog or take pushing the machine across the street, and of course it gets smashed by a truck. But uh classic. All right, man. So number five to you then, Kev.

Number five is one of the classics, but again, like like we talked about a little bit and touched on, I'm going with the stuff that I just really love. There's absolutely I think I could easily do a top hundred uh uh of these games because you know they they they once they got their pace, they started coming out with you know more and more every year. So you've got a full decade just in the 80s of of of games, but uh uh centipede was just I mean it was oh what's what's the again this is early on, so nothing that that this generation would get, but right oh what color combination is the next level?

Yep, you know what I mean? Can you imagine what's coming down at you this time? Is it a spider?

Oh the fucking spider, yeah. Spider was brutal.

And remember when they came out when the when the spider were whatever it was was coming out, you'd hear that different you know, yeah.

I was liked when it when all of a sudden it would like drop like five levels, and if you were in the right spot, you could just kill the whole thing, yeah, and you just take the whole thing out. That was like light it up.

That was a wheel game, too. I loved the wheel, you know, or the ball, I should say.

Right. So that was 1981. That was actually uh developed by Atari and um published by Atari. So I I did look at that a little bit and and I did break that down. So a lot of them were um developed by one company and then uh distributed by a different company. And you see, obviously, like Namco and Midway work together a lot, but it was weird because at one point uh early on was Taito and and and Sega. Yep, were were working in unison. But I think a lot of that too was you know the development company plus the uh distribution company, plus you had Japan versus US, you know, who developed in Japan and and and who distributed over here in the US.

Absolutely. And something else I noticed uh it was the years, the the release year. There were a few that were, you know, one would say 81, one would say 82. So people, if we're if we're wrong out there, don't crucify us. Right. All right, that brings me to my number five, and that would be Tapper. This was 1983 by Midway. What a great, great game. It was originally, you know, you had the Budweiser sign in the background, and then they thought, okay, maybe this isn't a great idea for the kiddos, so they changed it up to Root Beer Tapper. But man, just being a bartender and serving people, the beer would push them back down the bar. You'd have to make sure you collected their empty glasses and grabbed your tips, and he'd always chug a beer at the end, throw it up in the air. There were little tricks you could do with that, but that game was so addicting, so fun. You always had O Susanna playing in the background, and just a lot of fun. I love the graphics in it and the different chains like you know, one you'd be in a bar the first round, then you'd go out to uh to an outdoor venue for the next one. Then you'd always in the bonus round, you'd get this creepy, weird guy that would come out and he'd have like five or six beers on the on the bar in cans, and he'd shake them all up and switch them all around, like kind of find the bean sort of thing, and you had to pick the right one. And if you opened it, you get a the right one, you get a ton of points. If it exploded in your face, anyway, I love that game, man.

That that was that was a great game. That's another one though. The 83, the graphics did not seem to be a concern with that, you know what I mean, in comparison to to the other games that were pushing the envelope at the time. But I I don't know, I can't prove this, haven't researched it, but um the big Budweiser bow tie in the back, I think probably had to have been the first product placement in a video game. Yeah. Or or near to it. And can you imagine at least for beer letting an eight-year-old today pretend to be a bartender with a big Budweiser sign behind and chugging a beer when he's when he finishes the round?

Yeah, that one.

Well, at the end of it, you could smoke a candy cigarette and exactly relax, right?

Count your tips, too funny, and then ride home in the back of the pickup.

Exactly.

All right, man. So number four to you.

My number four was sweet pain. It was a great game for the time. I really dug it. Um, you know, just the the guy getting blown up and ah flying through the air. Frontline. Wait a minute. What's the what's the game called? Frontline.

Oh, beautiful game.

I thought you were calling the game Sweet Pain. Oh no, no, it was a sweet pain because and I didn't realize this until I just started looking into this that I wasn't the only one that had trouble with it. The game took off with really great popularity, but then it waned because it got so difficult so quickly. Oh, so people just lost interest in it. But I mean, it was just great. You had the the guy had his helmet and the straps were hanging off. Yeah, you know, it was just it was so cool.

It was and the knob was awesome because you had the knob where you turned your to aim, it was awesome, right?

And it clicked and it had a million clicks. It wasn't just like right one, two, three, four, and it wasn't just a weighted thing or whatever else, but yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely they stepped up their game on the on the controlled design.

Oh, it was great. You could whip around so fast and dial it right in. So my number four and this game, oh, I love it, and it's Star Wars. Uh 1983, Atari, and they had the stand-up version and the sit-down version. I always played the sit-down one because I just felt so much more immersed with the with the speakers behind me, with Vader, Obi-Wan talking, and just what I want to ask is how many Death Stars are there? You know what I mean? I blow them all up. Jesus. But just you know, it's nice when you, you know, you you're fighting the TIE fighters, and then every once in a while you're hurling Vader into space by shooting him, and you go in, and every time you enter the Death Star, the first round, it's your typical trench, but then you go in and you have laser towers and just all sorts of different levels, and I was just so addicted to that game. And Kevin and I are both massive Star Wars fans. So and even then, uh what was what was great at that time, and and again the graphics were what year was that one?

81? Star Wars was 83. 83, okay. So that was weird because it was very much line-drawn graphics as opposed to you know what everything else was was doing.

I think it's because it was so fast-paced, they couldn't put that pace.

Well, yeah, it was it was a playability thing because you got to you got to drop a bomb right down the shaft. You got to be Luke flipping Skywalker.

Absolutely.

And you know, just like you were shooting womp rats back home.

Right. They're no bigger than two, three meters. Awesome. So number three to two.

Number three to me. Now I don't know if anybody else was into this one, but this this one, like for the longest period, especially I that was the one that I had to get a ride to Dover to play, and that was um uh the Konami game Time Pilot, 1982.

Time pilot.

I just loved it because you got that last, you got the boss, and then the whole thing froze, and the music and the sound effects were great. And then you came through and you went through the different wars, and you know, I think you started in in World War One with a biplane, and then you were in Korea, then Vietnam, and and then you were well into the future.

Oh, yeah. Oh, unbelievable. And that was you that I feel like if I'm not mistaken, that the screen scrolled, but you were always center. And you could circle, you could circle, you could circle right, but aim each aim up, but meaning the instead of well, off obviously you weren't moving, you'd be out of the building. But you get my point anyway, right? Right.

All right, so that brings me to my number three, then, which we've already discussed, and that would be your distance is seven point neural eurometers.

That's track and field. And I don't think there's much more than I can say that you didn't already say the friggin' hammer throw killed me every time. I mean, I'd I'd get past it mostly, but it took a look took a few tries, and then the high jump just, you know, I'd like to know how many levels there are are on that. Like if you get a secret screen or something beyond, like if you do go through it enough times, but just what a great game. So addicting. Uh, that's one of the first ones I hit. When I went in. Awesome.

And massive, massively popular. As a matter of fact, I read that um they they actually had a competition. Um Konami and Centauri, who basically it was like the one of the earlier video game competitions where people would come and play the video game, and they said they got a million people, and that was a record that held until 2016.

Holy shit.

Back in 1983, 1984. That game was in its heyday. It it set and and held a live competition record.

All right, man. So number two to you, Kev.

Number two to me was to me the definitive and the explosive 1985 motorcycle gang hang on.

Hang on.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that was the first one that I saw. I know that, but I don't know if there was any before that where you got on the motorcycle.

That I'm pretty sure was the original. They did. I loved the one they came out with after with the dirt bike. I don't know if you remember that. Same idea, but you were on a motocross bike. Oh, great game.

Talk about I mean a game being immersive. That's to me, that's where it began. You're getting into literally you could you could lay that bike down into the corner. Oh, absolutely. Your left your left leg was poked out and your knee was close to the carpet, and you were just riding a motorcycle.

And I'm riding a motorcycle. I kept my feet on the pegs too. A lot of people would just stand up over it and move the bike. I did it like I was riding the damn thing because I wanted to feel in, you know. So number two. And for me, and this game is just I struggled with this going between two and one, but I just couldn't do it. But this game is called Shinobi. Alright.

Oh, it was on my list.

1987 by Sega. And I I think the only one before this, which it kind of uh takes after was Rolling Thunder. And then, but if you if you watch after this game, there are so many that are such a copycat of it, but uh, you are ninja Joe Musachi, alright? And you're going after the Z terrorist group because they're kid they're kidnapping your clan students, and it is so fucking fun, man. The level that does everything about it. Throwing stars, you know, when you're a kid in the 80s, uh, everyone loved throwing stars. Awesome. You got close enough to someone and you'd whip out the samurai sword, and then you'd get guns once in a while. Uh, you had the green ninjas, the blue ninjas, the red ninjas, and they were battle axed, you know. They would just uh all right, so number one to you, Kev.

My number one is the greatest game ever, and I got a pretty good feeling it might be somebody else's number one, too. Uh the the ultimate fixed shooter from Namco Midway, uh, Galaga. I mean, yeah, you would get out there, you would the first three levels, you get that first second level, you get your ship captured, retrieved it, so you had the double ship, and then that challenging, that first challenging stage comes in, and you would just annihilate them, run the table, just run the table, and it was so awesome. And and it's another one where the sounds were just awesome. Even the the bass when when your ship blew up, it was the worst feeling in the world, but it was also cool because the bass oh you know, you felt it. They they they in that speaker right at your package, so you felt it with that when that when you're when your second or or or both ships blew up. Oh man, oh just a great, great ultimate video game. All playability was awesome.

Everything about it, and yes, of course, it's my number one two. It came out in 1981, and I played that game when I worked at the Pier restaurant every single day on my way into work. I'd get the high score and I would go to work. I'd come out from work at the end, make sure I still had it, maybe play again, and then go home. But uh, how many let me ask you this how many times did you fuck up and let them capture your ship when you had no guys left? Oh, absolutely.

Oh, I get so mad until I finally get to the point where I'd always check. I'd let you know, he comes down and goes and you see that little beam come down, and you're like, fuck, do I have another one? Okay, I I got one. All right, I get captured.

Having one of my record games, and that happened to me the dumbest friggin' move on the planet, but the origin that's a takeoff from I think it was 78 or 70 and 79 uh Galaxian, which I never liked. I I just couldn't get into it. But Galaga is I thought Galaxian came after. No, before it didn't, huh?

Yep. Interesting. I always thought that was the the imitator, not the originator. Oh you've got your Galaga 88 and whatever else, and they just they weren't they weren't the same. But I'll tell you how well Galaga holds up is when my son was small, and we'd go to Funspot and he'd have the big jug of tokens, and I'd take four of them, and he'd go out and he'd go through that whole thing. Like we would when we were kids, just waste all those tokens. He'd come back and I'd have two tokens left. I'm just sitting there going nuts on Galaga at 40 something years old and having a ball.

What an awesome, awesome game, man.

Yeah.

Anyway, uh any honorable mentions you got?

I have only about 70 or 80, but why don't you start them off?

Oh man. All right, I'll do two, let you do two, we'll do them real quick. But uh neither of us took Donkey Kong, and that's not even my honorable, but I did love Donkey Kong Jr.

You know, I did like Donkey Kong Jr. better. Absolutely, but but Donkey Kong is definitely one of those pinnacle games. I mean, we didn't take Pac-Man either, and Pac-Man was the biggest, probably, and a great game. Yep. And I remember playing that as well, but it just because it was, I guess, a more obvious choice.

Yeah, that and uh another one, I don't know if you remember it, but I friggin' loved was uh I'm not sure. I've seen it, they named it two different ways online. I always thought it was Tutencommon, but oh they also call it Tutencom. Uh, you're in like a pyramid, and oh I remember that. Talk about sound effects. That game had great sound effects, man. How about you?

Okay, so I will tell you that um again where we talked about uh um graphics and the interesting progression, or not with some games, Arcanoid. Yeah, it's just breakout. It was breakout, but that was 86. Yeah, which I mean they definitely had the technology to do that back in the you know 79 or 80. Yeah that game could have been created, but it came out in 86 and it was a it was a great game.

Now, there were a few differences with that though, like every once in a while couldn't you like shoot bullets with your with your paddle to blow them up the block?

Yeah, I mean that's what made it cool. You had the magnetic, you could get the different pill. Yep, exactly that would give that would give your paddle a different uh different control, yep, or a different special feature. Um so that was very cool. Another one that I don't know if anybody else really but xenophobe. Ooh, I know that one eighty seven. Good graphics. It was like you had like three levels of a space lab, and and obviously the aliens had hatched and and were coming out, and you had to shoot them. Um, I had a lot of fun with that one. That was yeah, it was 87. I'll have to look at another ballot midway, but like had really good graphics for the time.

Let's see, what else we got here? Uh Gauntlet was great. Shooting all the ghosts, you throw the action at the ghost, defender, Robotron. I loved the two joysticks. How about Starcastle? Remember that one? Yeah, you had to break into the middle.

Tempest, I sucked at.

I sucked at that too. My buddy V always played it and was good at I didn't I didn't love it in the graphics. No, but it was great.

It was interesting. It was it was a game I wish I was better at just because it was it was kind of cool. It wasn't my favorite because I sucked at it, but it's all that stuff flying out at you and the shapes changing and whatever else. But um, but I did want to mention karate champ. Oh, that's my next one. You did I'm sorry, dude. I'm kidding, and I didn't mean to.

I loved it, loved it. Come on.

I love I love I love the sensei in the back. He ended up doing Fu Manchu, but he just looked like an angry hippie. Four point.

That was a great one. Let's see. I had Wonder Boy. Remember on the skateboard? You're in the jungle on a skateboard, which I'm sure would work, you know, very well. Jungle Hunt, love jungle hunt, you know, jumping between the ropes, swimming with the crocodiles. Every show, I swear, generates 10 more. So we got the pinball, we got the tabletop games, you know. I mean the home console, just everything, and I can't wait. I it's gonna be a lot of fun, I think, and hopefully everyone out there will will feel the same because we like it when everyone goes back in time with us because those are just the greatest, greatest decades, man, and I miss it so bad.

I know things were things were better then, or we were just not aware of how bad they were.

They were gonna be. Exactly. Awesome. Well, Kevin, thank you. Thank you, AJ. Yes, sir, and everyone out there, thank you so much for listening to another another episode of Past Times at 80 time. We hope to see you real soon. Thank you very much.