Line those quarters up!

Videogames have been apart of me for a long, long time. From the old Atari to the latest gen Xbox 360 and to going to the arcade, I've owned/played them all at some point in time. I still recall the first time I 're-set' the high-score on Asteroids on the Atari 2600, the score went from 999,999 back to 000,000 and I went nuts! It was a HUGE achievement when I was like 7 years old. :)

From time to time, me and buddies reminisce about the old videogames we've all played and which ones of the classics are our favorites. And specifically an arcade game. Why arcade games only? Because I practically grew up there. The arcade was the place for the fancy graphics, the competition and the gameplay. The arcade was similar Xbox Live but you got to leave your home to experience it. The home consoles didn't really hit it's stride until our latter years. And now arcades are becoming obsolete like the VHS tape. :(

Now, trying to pick a arcade game, that makes us recall how much fun and money we blew away in quarters; is a tough task. But there was one game that I went crazy for and couldn't wait 'til I got out of school to play. It's got to be Taito's 1987 *classic* Double Dragon. We always had to wait our turn to play that game and we lined our quarters up to reserve our spot in line.

The story was simple, girl gets kidnapped and the 2 heroes Billy & Jimmy Lee set out to save her. It's a cliche story but who cares! Because I can't think of another arcade game that had the most devastating move of all-time, 'The elbow smash'. You can literally beat the entire game with that single move. If there was a Hall-of-Fame for unfair advantages to gamers, the elbow smash would be a first ballot entry.

What made this game fun for me was the co-op aspect to this game. When you grabbed an enemy and slapped that full-nelson on him; your friend had so many ways of disposing the enemy. The simple side-scrolling beat-em-up gameplay was just too addicting. And if you made it to the last level of this game; those cement pillars and the statues with the spears; always made you chug more quarters in. Like every sucessful movie/game etc...there we're sequels made but none of them re-captured the gameplay as the first one.

As I mentioned before, there's just too many games that I can't deem one as my favorite. But the original Double Dragon is closest one to being the it game. And since I can't pick just one game, here are a slew of arcades that received mention from my buddies and I: Time Pilot, Terra Cresta, Gauntlet, Quartet, Tekken Tag 2, Time Soldiers, Cabal, Heavy Barrell, Ikari Warriors, WWF Superstars, WWF Royal Rumble, 6 player X-Men, 2 Button Street Fighter and the list goes on and on...