110 Of Probably The Best Arcade Games Ever

This was one of the best arcade games, where the player controlled a Formula One race car, driving it on a racetrack based on a real circuit. The laps are timed to make it more competitive, and you have to beat your opponents. Pole Position was a widely successful game at its time, inspiring plenty of sports-themed games afterward.

Street Fighter is another retro arcade game that found great success. It spawned a whole series of Street Fighter games, eight direct sequels, to be exact. The original cabinet for Street Fighter had a nifty punching pad. However, the players didn’t find it quite interesting, and the pad was soon switched to six-button controls. At the time, Street Fighter was nominated as the most realistic martial arts combat game, so no wonder why it became so popular.

TNMT beat ‘em up was developed during the high popularity of the TNMT franchise. In the game, up to four players get to control the mutant turtles fighting against their main nemesis, Shredder, and all the other enemies that we love to hate – Krang and the Foot Clan, for instance. All the beating isn’t without reason, too; it’s to save the kidnapped April O’Neil and turtles’ sensei Splinter. Though some critics weren’t in favor of the game, it proved to be a worldwide blockbuster, further fueling the fame of the TNMT franchise.

OutRun offered pioneering hardware and graphics, nonlinear gameplay, a selectable soundtrack, and the hydraulic motion simulator arcade cabinet. In this retro arcade game, you get to control a Ferrari Testarossa Spider from a third-person rear perspective. The goal is to reach the final destination against a timer while avoiding traffic so as not to crash the Ferrari. It was probably the greatest driving simulator at the time, thrilling plenty of auto sports enthusiasts.

In this classic arcade game, the player takes the role of a green-haired boxer (known as Little Mac in the NES versions) who must defeat his opponent. The green-haired boxer is shown from behind with a wireframe illustrating his body parts that can’t be seen from this angle. Although the opponent’s upcoming offensive moves are hinted at by his eyes flashing yellow, the player ultimately has to predict what kind of move it will be and how to block it. The game proved to be a great success and later spawned a series of sequels and spin-offs.

Here, you get to be the legendary Luke Skywalker piloting an X-Wing fighter. Although you don’t have to destroy all the enemy vessels and obliterate each gun turret, you have to survive for a set time to advance to the next level, which proved to be so much harder than it might seem! The Star Wars arcade game was praised for its smooth animations and very addictive gameplay.

In this classic arcade game, the player gets to control a knight, aptly named Sir Arthur, who must defeat all sorts of zombies, ogres, demons, cyclops, and dragons to rescue Princess Prin-Prin. After defeating the final boss, the player has to replay the entirety of Ghosts ‘n Goblins on a greater difficulty, only then reaching the game’s final conclusion. Though it hardly was a groundbreaking game, it nonetheless enjoyed great commercial and critical success.

Tron was inspired by the events depicted in Walt Disney’s movie of the same name, released earlier in the summer of 1982. It consists of four sub-games in twelve levels. Only by beating all of the four sub-games in each of the levels could the player finish Tron. The game later inspired a sequence, Discs Of Tron, but it was a sad flop compared to the success of its predecessor. 

Here, you get to control a paperboy on a bicycle, trying to deliver newspapers in a suburban area. Besides dropping off papers, you have to make sure not to crash into obstacles and vandalize non-subscriber homes in a noteworthy manner. Though it’s a simple enough game, it managed to garner plenty of fans and even earned an Xbox re-release years later.

The game is played from an axonometric third-person perspective to give it a 3D look. Here, you get to control Q*bert, a red entity with two legs and a trunk, hopping down a pyramid of 28 cubes. Every cube must be hopped on and marked with a changed color. That, of course, isn’t all – Q*bert meets plenty of fun enemies making his way down the pyramid. The adversaries are Coily the snake, Ugg and Wrongway, and Slick and Sam – all of which are drawn in the same quirky style as Q*bert itself. This was one of the best arcade games, which propelled the developers to come up with more than ten sequels and reboots.