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The 5 best arcade games of ALL TIME!

For a long time, arcade games were among the most popular in the world. They usually have short play times, consistent challenge, and simple game play. Some popular examples from mobile’s early days include Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Doodle Jump. The result is a highly addictive, enjoyable experience that gives players the urge to keep going. Arcade games on mobile aren’t quite the same as their coin-operated predecessors, but they can still provide a good time. Here are the 5 best arcade games of ALL TIME!

If you were alive and had access to coins at any time between the 1970s and the mid-1990s, chances are you’ll have spent a bit of time in a video arcade, hammering buttons, frantically waggling a sweaty joystick and pumping a week’s worth of pocket money into Wonder Boy. The arcades have all but died out now, their venerable cabinets put out to pasture in vintage hipster bars, seaside towns and B-road service stations, but here are the ones to look out for…

1. STREET FIGHTER II (1991)

It was far from the first fighting game, but SFII epitomised the best things about arcade games: it was multiplayer, it was a bit weird in an imaginative (and very Japanese) sort of way, and if you gave it time, you could string together fiendishly complex special moves that made a bespectacled 11-year-old feel like Chuck Norris. Don’t agree? Well, tough: Street Fighter II is now legally the best arcade game ever. It’s on the internet, so it must be true.

2. PAC-MAN (1980)

Obviously you don’t need to be told what Pac-Man is. The only way you could have avoided hearing about Pac-Man is if you’re an 87-year-old judge who has assiduously avoided taking any interest in popular culture, or you’re some sort of rare Arctic moose. If you’re either of those things, welcome to a bewildering reality: people will spend billions (an estimated US$2.5bn in the first decade) on playing at being a small yellow cheeseperson who eats ghosts in the dark.

3. TIME CRISIS (1995)

Arcade gun games blew up in the mid-’90s, when the 3D rush brought Sega’s Virtua Cop and the House of the Dead series. Namco’s Time Crisis added a pedal to let players take cover, which brought a realism and depth of gameplay that had been missing from previous charge-through shooters. As a result it (or one of its sequels) is still one of the best ways to kill 20 minutes in a motorway service station.

4. SEGA RALLY 2 (1998)

Sega invented the bombastic race genre in the 1990s with Daytona USA, made it faster and more precise with Sega Rally, then added sexier visuals with Sega Rally 2. The key was how it managed the transition from loose gravel to grippy tarmac, a feeling no other racer captured so well.

5. GOLDEN AXE (1989)

The best from a huge selection of side-scrolling fighting games you could spend your Saturday plugging metal money into during the 80s and early 90s. With excellent two-player swordplay, scantily-clad characters and some ludicrous enemies, it was worth every penny. Its sister title, Altered Beast, was another classic fantasy merk-’em-up.