Martin wrote:


Same here, I've always preferred pinball machines but they're so hard to find now. I was in Thorpe Park recently and fragged off the rides in favour of the arcade but what a sorry state that was. Taken up mostly with gambling machines (which I never play), the rest were all dog eared and half broken. Don't you hate it when you pop a quid into point blank or time crisis, just to find that the gun doesn't do that cool recoil action?

Anyway, after dropping a few quid on crappy shooter games, I found that they had one pokey pinball machine stuck in a corner somewhere. It was an Austin Powers themed one that kept bringing up admin errors on the LCD screen but it was playable. I popped in a quid which got me 4 goes (remember that?) and for two of those I got the match at the end for another free go! Now that's value for money. There wasn't enough hours in the day to spend too much money on it.

Incidentally, when you do get the match at the end- why do the machines always let out that high pitched noise for a second? I've seen it on many machines before.

For home pinball, I can recommend Zen Pinball, available on the Playstation Store, there's even a Streetfighter themed table to download!

Steff.

Crikey, so many to choose from and so much money spent....

I guess there's a few that have really sucked money off me. These would be.

Asterix - Konami scrolling beat'em up from the late 80's. Ate many an old style 10p
Virtua Racing - 1992 Sega - I think this probably ate most of my holiday money in the early 90's
Time Crisis 2 - 1998 - Brilliant

More recently, Street fighter IV before the home release was a coin eater as was Outrun 2 SP (2006), Initial D V2 (2005 on) and House of the dead 4

I was never a big coin-op player (Fort William not having an arcade when I were a bairn) - but I did play a lot of conversions on my Spectrum.

Bomb Jack and Paperboy were two of my favourites, along with the obvious Death Star Trench Run and Speeder Bike Chase ones.

Golden Axe was my first love, it was the only arcade game I managed to complete thanks to finding a machine set up for 10p a credit! (Final cost? 2 quid. Yes, I suck) I also loved Streets of Rage 1 & 2 and I ended up developing an unhealthy lifelong obsession with Blaze Fielding as a result. Virtua Cop 1 & 2 were the best shooters, I wish they would bring them back for the Wii, either on the VC or a new pack. I've never seen the 3rd one to give it a go.

space invaders, seeing as it was the first game I ever played. And yes, I shot up through the shield.

buck rogers on the planet of zoom, a basic shoot'em up similar to space harrier or thunderblade. I shoved a whole load of ten pence coins into that machine that cemented my love for games

street fighter 2, I remember when this first came out, one week it was the fighting game you just discovered, next week everyone was raving about it. The controls were excellent, the characters all looked (ken and ryu excepted) and fought different. The last great arcade hit before the rise of more powerful home systems more or less rendered the arcade redundant.

teenage mutant ninja turtles. If only I knew of the old credit cheat on the four-player machine. fun, cartoon acurate and contributed to my delinquency. What more could you ask for? Apart from "who put the lights out?"

Used to blow heeps on Golden Axe and Double Dragon when i was a kid. Total playability !!!!