The 7 Arcade Games That Had Me Hooked

I am a child of the 1980s, and as such I am a member of the arcade generation. Like many kids my age I spent the 1980s with a pocket full of quarters seeking out my favorite video games.

I tried them all (PAC MAN, DONKEY KONG, DEFENDER, etc.), but as a person that has always had defined tastes there were clearly machines that captured my interest more than others. These were the machines that kept me coming back to that certain convenience store, that certain sandwich shop or pizzeria, spending hours trying to 'win'.

Below are the top 7 games that had me hooked (with one honorable mention). Yes, when one thinks about the ease of playing video games these days on one's phone, or the quality of consoles in people's houses it seems amazing that as kids we'd walk or bike long distances for a chance to drive, jump, fly and shoot...but it's indeed what we did. At the very least it got us out of the house!

Without further adieu...

1) GORF (1981; Midway) My journey begins in the summer of 1982. My brother (4 years my elder at age 12) and I spent that summer in Las Vegas visiting my grandmother.

Like most good grandmothers she did her best to keep us entertained. Towards that end she took us to a famous kid-oriented casino called CIRCUS CIRCUS. Grandma could dine and gamble while we kids ran around on the upper floors with attractions more geared toward our liking.

One of the main points of interest were the large arcades. And within one of these arcades I was introduced to the first arcade game ever to grab my attention: GORF.

GORF was a standard 'fixed-shooter' space game, similar in play to SPACE INVADERS and GALAXIAN, though featuring five boards. The thing that hooked me, however, was that IT TALKED.

The gameplay for the machine was good, but nothing extravagant. But that crappy robotic voice...that's all it took to keep me coming back for more. Perhaps I am a masochist but I enjoyed the machine's insults.

In the early days of arcade games it was the small bells and whistles that often distinguished machines and caused them to stand out.

"Some galactic defender you are, space cadet!"

 

2) WIZARD OF WOR (Midway; 1980) Another entry from my Las Vegas summer. ..there was a 7-11 a few blocks from my grandmother's house. This 7-11 became a special place for my older brother and I. For one thing, there were no 7-11's at that time back in our native Brooklyn. This made getting Slurpees a special occasion. Secondly, this 7-11 had a WIZARD OF WOR machine.

WIZARD OF WOR was a sci-fi/ fantasy-based machine, which were genres we were heavily into. The player's 'worrior' proceeded through a series of maze-like 'dungeons' slaying monsters as he/ she went, all to some eerie music. And, as with GORF, the machine talked!

I never got particularly good at WIZARD OF WOR, but I did give it my best shot.

“Another coin for my treasure chest!”

3) BUMP 'N' JUMP (Bally Midway; 1982) There was a filthy convenience store 3 blocks from my elementary school. After school my friend Lenny and I would walk there for a few rounds of BUMP 'N' JUMP.

BUMP 'N' JUMP was a pretty standard driving game viewed from overhead. The two features on this machine were that you could BUMP other cars off the road, or JUMP and land on top of them, crushing them. Pretty basic stuff.

Still, for a few months there in 1983 this guy was eating all my quarters.

 

4) SPY HUNTER (Bally Midway; 1983) In 5th and 6th grade our elementary school let us 'out' for lunch. What this meant in practice is that students could walk 3 blocks to the main commercial strip in our area (Kings Highway) and get lunch from the bagel place, the pizza place, etc.

Most of the time you'd find us at the BLIMPIE'S sandwich shop. BLIMPIE'S had a SPY HUNTER machine.

SPY HUNTER always seemed a cut-above the rest in terms of action. Maybe it was the cool, futuristic driving yoke used to play the game. Maybe it was the mood-setting Peter Gunn theme song that played incessantly. Or perhaps it was the wow factor of a car that could shoot machine guns, fire missiles or lay down oil slicks and smoke screens. If you were lucky you might even find one of the 'sit-down' versions of this game to really maximize your playing experience.

Whatever it was about SPY HUNTER we were addicted. We'd tear ass to BLIMPIE'S as soon as the lunch bell rang and then play away until the very last moment possible, sprinting back to school like Carl Lewis in the hopes of getting back before the bell rang.

This ritual went on for months, until one day BLIMPIE'S took the SPY HUNTER machine out. :(

 

5) STAR WARS (1983; Atari) Like SPY HUNTER this machine was available in a stand-up and rarer sit-down version. The Kingsway movie theater by our house featured a stand-up version. I have to admit I went to the movies quite a bit in 1984, arriving hours before the show in order to play STAR WARS.

A first-person space simulator game featuring vector graphics, the player takes on the role of Luke Skywalker attacking the Death Star in an X-Wing fighter from the first STAR WARS movie.

There are three attack phases, and the gameplay on this machine kicks ass. Also, like many of the other games I became addicted because this machine talked. There must have been some significant technological development in the voice modulators between 1981 and 1983 because, unlike GORF and WIZARD OF WOR, you could actually understand quite clearly what this machine was saying.

The force must have been strong in me because I always did pretty well at this game.

 

6) RUSH 'N' ATTACK (1985; Konami) In 7th grade I went to a new Junior High School in Manhattan. 3 blocks from school was a pizzeria we use to go to for lunch. Said pizzeria had a RUSH 'N' ATTACK machine.

Ah, the Cold War atmosphere of the 1980s! This is a 'side scrolling' machine where play centers around a character running with a knife and dispatching enemies from this mortal coil. Additional weapons are acquired in the hopes of rescuing P.O.W.'s about to be executed somewhere in Siberia. The game consists of 4 stages or boards.

I had a nice run on this machine, though I don't believe I ever completed it. As with the SPY HUNTER machine at BLIMPIE'S we'd book to the pizza place as soon as we were allowed out for lunch, play as much as possible and then tear ass as quickly as we could back to school so as not to be marked late. Heaven forbid you were having a particularly good game right at the end of lunch period. You were either going to be late or you would be forced to abandon your mission. More than once kids got in trouble for coming back tardy, though I'm sure if they got further than the rest of us on RUSH 'N' ATTACK they saw any punishment as the cost of doing business. Sometimes you have to take a few licks if you want to strut.

  

7) ROADBLASTERS (1987; Atari) Having to attend summer school sucks. For me the blow was softened a bit by the fact that the convenience store on Ave. M had a ROADBLASTERS machine.

Each day after class I'd bring a buck in quarters and play for over an hour. I got pretty good at this game, which was similar to a militarized version of POLE POSITION or a 3D version of SPY HUNTER. The graphics and gameplay were cutting-edge when this machine was released and it remained popular for a few years.

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HONORABLE MENTION: 

8) TRON (1982; Bally Midway) I was a big fan of the TRON movie, having seen it in the theater a few times the summer it came out.

Much like the computer graphics in the TRON film, the TRON video game was also cutting-edge for the time. It featured 4 sub-games (light cycles, battle tanks, i/o tower and MCP cone), and had cool black-light effects around the cabinet and in the joystick. This game was very popular. According to Wikipedia it generated more revenue than the initial release of the film! I played it when I came across it, though I was never addicted. When it came to TRON I was merely a casual user.

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There you have it- the arcade games that had me hooked. Between them all I probably spent enough to afford to buy a crappy car. Whatever. They caused me stress, they caused me anxiety but they were also a lot of fun. The venues I played these games in and the friends I played alongside will forever be etched in my memory- the sweet experiences of my 80's youth.

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PLEASE NOTE:

All pictures of marquees and cabinets in this article were scoured from the internet. I claim no rights, they are merely included for demonstrative purposes.