The best arcade games ever made are the topic this week, and the whole crew came ready. Everyone brought a list of favorites along with the arcade memories that go with them. Jack came in with fifteen picks. I brought eighteen. Nobody showed restraint and that’s how it should be.
So what are the best arcade games of all time? Ask six hosts and you’ll get six 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. X-Men put six players in front of two monitors and let Magneto welcome us all to die. Metamorphic Force and Mystic Warriors came out of that same Konami machine and never got the credit they deserved. Mystic Warriors in particular is the spiritual sequel to Sunset Riders, and I’d argue it’s the better game. Jack will disagree. That’s half the fun.
Capcom gets its due too. Final Fight built the template every brawler followed. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs let you punch poachers and drive a Cadillac through the survivors. Alien vs. Predator might be the best beat ’em up ever made, and it’s still stuck in license limbo, so the cabinet remains the only real way to play it. Magic Sword sent you up a 50 floor tower with rescued allies fighting at your side years before companion systems were a thing.
Then there are the shmups. Anyone building a list of the best arcade games without a shooter on it is doing it wrong. Truxton is Toaplan at its meanest, and that green skull bomb still rules. Forgotten Worlds launched Capcom’s CPS1 board with spinner joysticks that no home port ever got right. Gunbird has that razor sharp Psikyo feel. Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga are the genre’s high water marks, two Treasure games that turned bullet patterns into art. And Metal Slug belongs on every list like this. The first one is the purest and the third one is the maximalist peak. The pixel animation still embarrasses modern games.
Sega bookends my picks. Daytona USA looked like the future in 1994 and linked eight cabinets together while that soundtrack burrowed into your brain forever. OutRun isn’t even a race. It’s a Ferrari, a branching road, and a radio station you pick before launch. It’s the first game that was really about the feeling of driving.
The deep cut on my list is The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy from Data East. You whip swing across planes and dams in nonstop setpieces like a playable pulp serial. It never got a home port. Look it up and thank me later.
The rest of the crew brought their own favorites and their own arcade memories. Jack’s got stories about discovering Haunted Castle at an Aladdin’s Castle and driving two hours to play Drummania. We swap memories of dark rooms, quarters lined up on the marquee, and the specific sound of thirty cabinets running attract mode at once. If you grew up in arcades, this episode is going to hit.
We also cover the week in news. Gamescom 2026 brought a Witcher 3 remaster and a new expansion announcement. Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 finally frees MGS4 from the PS3. Xbox is beta testing a disc to digital program. And Dave Bautista is officially our live action Kratos.
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.
