The best arcade games ever made are the topic this week, and the whole crew came ready. Break, Jack, Logan, and Darria each brought a list of favorites along with the arcade memories that go with them. Jess is out sick this week but will be back Tuesday for Pokémon. Nobody showed restraint with their lists and that’s how it should be.
So what are the best arcade games of all time? Ask four hosts and you’ll get four very different answers, which is exactly why this episode exists. For me the answer starts with the Konami beat ’em up era. TMNT turned a license into arcade gold and made picking your turtle a real negotiation. I can still remember walking past the arcade, hearing “Cowabunga” from the front row, and realizing my prayers about playing it at home someday would take a few decades to answer. X-Men put six players in front of two monitors and let Magneto welcome us all to die. Captain America and the Avengers lived at the Chuck E. Cheese in Wichita, and the gloriously bad voice acting lives in my head to this day.
My deep cut this week is The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy from Data East. You whip swing across airplane wings and speeding trains, and there’s even a dam level, all in nonstop setpieces. It never got a home port. Look it up and thank me later. I also made the case for NBA Jam as the best arcade sports game ever, Daytona USA and the greatest soundtrack singing you’ll ever hear from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, Metal Slug and its untouchable pixel animation, and Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, the System 32 sequel Sega never brought home. Death Adder did not get his revenge on consoles and that’s a crime.
Jack went full Sega with OutRunners, After Burner II, G-LOC, and Time Crisis II, plus Sunset Riders, Mr. Do!, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the one and only Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. Yes, the one where he turns into a robot and fires missiles from his chest. Logan brought 1941, Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Paperboy, Star Wars, Joust, and Q*bert. Darria repped the classics with Galaga, Space Invaders, and Galaxian, and shared the best arcade memory of the night, a two player Pac-Man table at the dentist’s office in Mississippi.
Anyone hunting for the best arcade games in the wild got some field notes too. We talked about where you can still play real cabinets around Kansas, including The Pennant in Topeka, The Arcade in Wichita’s Old Town with unlimited play for 13 bucks, and Up-Down in Kansas City. The crew is already planning a group trip.
We also cover the week in news. Xbox announced its disc-to-digital program, rolling out to Insiders next week for Xbox One and Series games. The new Bloodstained game slipped to 2027. Lego Skylines got announced by the Cities: Skylines team, which has Jack’s Lego heart racing. Hideo Kojima turned 63. Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 lands tomorrow and finally frees MGS4 from the PS3 after 18 years. And Dave Bautista is officially our live action Kratos in Amazon’s God of War adaptation.
The Game Show has been running since 2002 as one of the first video game podcasts ever made. Every week the crew talks about what we’re playing, the news shaping the industry, and whatever else we can’t shut up about. New episodes drop every week right here on breakmanx.com.
Pull up a chair and drop a quarter in. The best arcade games ever made are waiting inside.
