Chapter 27 - The 50 Greatest Arcade Machines of all time!

Seeing classic arcade game machines lined up next to each other is an easy way to have a wave of nostalgia smack you in the face harder than a hurled barrel compliments of Donkey Kong himself. It brings you back to a time when games were simple, fun, and fairly cheap to play for the most part. Whether it was laughing at how all the enemies bullets traveled 75% slower than your own or enjoying the cheesy digitized voices, there's no denying the classic games had something special.

But there is something about arcade games that we don't think gets enough credit. While everybody has their picks for the best games, most people don't give too much thought about the artistry that was put into the cabinets which held these games. It is with that in mind that I-Mockery is paying tribute to what we consider to be the The 50 Greatest Arcade Cabinets In Video Game History! Keep in mind, this list isn't ranking the games themselves, but the unique designs for the cabinets and cockpits which encased them. Chances are, you'll see some games on here that you've never even heard of, and that's likely because some of them sucked more than E.T. on the Atari 2600. But hey, at least their outer shell designs were damned nice to look at! Furthermore, if there are some games you feel should be on the list, let us know and we might eventually add them!

#50: Space Invaders



Nobody can deny the desire to pop a quarter into this ol' machine should they be lucky enough to spot it. The inviting drawings on this cabinet helped catch people's attention and made Space Invaders hugely successful. What's nice is how some of the artwork on the faceplate actually bleeds into the screen area. At first glance you might think that it would be distracting but it's not. It just helps draw you into the game that much more. And let's be honest, it's a very simple game and it's not like the artwork would be covering up some vital detail anyway. Another noteworthy thing is that there is no joystick on this cabinet, the left & right movement controls are all buttons, just like the fire button.


#49: Crystal Castles



Crystal Castles tried a couple different things with this colorfully decorated cabinet. Most arcade games used joysticks for moving the player around, especially when movement is limited to the four cardinal directions, along with their four half-and-half cousins. Not Crystal Castles, though; the designers decided that the player should have to use a trackball to navigate the grid-like mazes in the game. It's an ingenious way to make your game seem unique, while simultaneously drawing extra cash out of the customer by causing a lot of cheap game overs. The game also came in a cocktail-style cabinet, in case you could convince someone else to join you in getting screwed out of your quarters. Hey, at least the trackball was backlit. That's cool, right?


#48: Crossbow



They used to have this game at an old roller rink in town. The premise for the game is that you have to protect your friends from harm by picking off bad guys and flying debris with your trusty crossbow. To fully immerse you in the game, you had to actually use a small mockup of a crossbow. In a way, it was sort of like a primitive version of Silent Scope, except that there was no scope, just a couple notches in the thing that you lined up. The point is, the game allowed children to finally experience the elegant killing power of a crossbow (the H-bomb of the Middle Ages). Incidentally, there was a sharp increase in the number of crossbow-related injuries around the time this game came out, and the politicians of the day sought to pin the blame on video games. Frankly, I don't see the connection.


#47: A.P.B.



Being a cop requires certain specialized equipment. To that end, the designers of A.P.B. created a machine with a few special features to more accurately simulate the hectic life of a police officer. The game is almost all driving, so it's only natural that there be pedals and a steering wheel on the cabinet. However, the game also included one of the most memorable features of a cop car: the lights. Whenever you hit the "siren" button in the game, a set of red and blue lights at the top of the cabinet would begin flashing, giving you the chance to annoy and distract people from all the way on the other side of the arcade. Thankfully, though, the actual siren itself was in-game only. Also worth noting is that a platform seat could be attached to the cabinet, in case you felt your customers might not want to stand on one foot, with the other on the gas and/or brake, for an extended period of time


#46: Tapper



When making a simulator-type game, it is important that you nail down as many details of the experience as possible to completely immerse the player. One of the most basic steps you can take is to include a controller that looks and feels just like the real thing. That said, it's just common sense that Tapper, a bartender simulator, would have an actual pour spout to let you get the full feel of life as a bartender. Of course, you're not much of a bartender, as you only serve beer at your bar, and you only serve one kind of beer: Budweiser. Still, you got to experience bartender-dom in all of its glory. The cabinet even came with drink holders and a brass railing so that you could play as a bartender while still enjoying the amenities afforded to those on the opposite side of the bar.

The bad news: no tips.

It should also be noted that there actually was an alternate version of this game created for more family-oriented places (ie: Chuck-E-Cheese) and was renamed "Root Beer Tapper". Unfortunately the nice add-ons such as the brass railing and drink holders were not included with this version of the game.


#45: Fonz



There are many motorcycle racing arcade games out there, but none of them were based on the most memorable character from "Happy Days", Fonz! In addition to having handlebar controls that functioned exactly like a real motorcycle, you had the Fonz giving you a big thumbs up on the side of the machine. His visage alone makes this 1976 Sega classic worthy of our list. Eeeeyyyyy!


#44: Two Tigers



Here's another fun one from days past. The idea was that you'd sink your opponent's battleship not by randomly guessing a letter and a number, but by blasting through it with bombs and flaming plane wreckage. It even had steering controls just like an old-fashioned fighter plane, or so I assume. Of course, it was a little hard to control the plane with these controls since the action took place from a side view, and not a cockpit view like you'd expect from games with controls like this, but still, it added a certain degree of realism to the experience. Not quite enough realism to offset the fact that you had an unlimited number of planes and that each one only flew about 10 miles an hour, but it was still fun.


#43: Bazooka



The game name? Bazooka. Your controller? A bazooka. Need I say more?


#42: Super Off-Road



I've said it before on this list, and I'm bound to say it again: I generally don't care for racing games. The sitting down is nice, but rarely do arcade racing games come with comfy chairs. Ivan "Ironman" Stewart saw this, and decided to save a little money on his racing game by simply doing away with uncomfortable plastic chairs and creating an entirely upright racing game. To some, this must seem like a bad move. Quite the contrary: indeed you are bound to get tired after standing for a while with one foot on the ground and the other tapping a squeaky metal pedal. That's where the "Ironman" part of the game comes into play. It was a race within the game, and a test of endurance without. One player toughs it out while his buddies crack from the strain and start mashing their "nitro" buttons, which merely leads to them slamming into the wall and griping about off-roading being a redneck sport. No no, thank you, Mr. Stewart.


#41: Battlezone



Here's an old school classic for you. The wire frame tanks were cool, as were the nifty stickers for fake buttons carefully placed next to the real buttons that controlled your own tank (which was actually designed in 128-bit color with amazing texture detail and bump mapping, all of which went to waste when it was revealed that the game was entirely in the first person perspective). However, some of the cabinets were designed to further sell the whole "tank of the future" motif. Instead of having an ordinary, blasé screen, they had a sort of periscope view. Normally, completely shutting out all outside light and subjecting your eyes to nothing but bright wire frames for long periods of time could be detrimental to your eyesight, but thankfully, the developers had the foresight to include open areas to the sides of the scope frame to let in some sunlight, and to let a few people look in on you to see if you were doing well or sucking out loud. If Nintendo had remembered this little feature when they were designing their damned Virtual Boy, I might still be able to see the color red.


#40: Exterminator



Having a game where you use a digitized hand to smash digitized bugs in a digitized house wasn't good enough for the designers of Exterminator. They wanted the entire cabinet to be shaped like one of the houses in the game, right down to the roof and chimney. It gave the game a very unique feeling, which was good because the cabinet couldn't be made to play any other games besides Exterminator (something that's commonly done in arcades). It was a very bold move. It wasn't a very popular move, especially since the cabinets themselves were pretty unreliable, but it was a bold move nonetheless.


#39: Title Fight



You kids today. In my day, we didn't have a "Nintendo Wii" with motion-sensitive control sticks for our boxing games. Oh no, we had our own kind of control "sticks" for our boxing games. Take Title Fight, for example. You had two joysticks, and each one was like a set of plastic brass knuckles that you would slam forward and backward in order to lay your opponent out on the canvas. There probably were sound effects in this game, but I could never make them out over the loud banging of the joysticks as I mimicked the motions (and enthusiasm) of real professional boxers. In a totally unrelated note, the local arcade was always sending their Title Fight machine away for repairs because somehow, the joysticks kept getting broken. Probably some punk kids spilling their sodas all over the damn console. I hate kids.


#38: Smash TV



Who doesn't remember Smash TV? Altered Beast had "Wise fwom your gwabe", and Smash TV had "Big money, big prizes, I love it!" Ok, I'll admit it doesn't have quite the same punch, but it was fitting, considering how many toasters and VCRs you could walk away with. The thing that really took me by surprise back when I first saw this thing was that instead of having a joystick and a couple buttons for shooting, it had an unbelievable two joysticks: one for moving, and one for shooting in one of eight directions. It was positively revolutionary. So much so that I didn't even mind the fact that I was getting totally reamed in that game, and shelling out more than my fair share of quarters trying to find the "Pleasure Domes", if you know what I mean.


#37: Laser Ghost



Lasers and ghosts were at long last brought together in this late 80's shooter. The cabinet featured plastic guns affixed to the console just like all the other shooters from that era. However, whereas other shooters could only fit two guns for two players onto the machine, Laser Ghost managed to squeeze a third gun in between the other two. This meant your other friend didn't have to wait for either you or your friend to die before jumping in. Unfortunately, the middle gun was much higher than the other two. Some versions of the cabinet included seats for players 1 and 3, and others included a seat for just player 2, but either way, someone was going to be left standing when you played the game. It was just a matter of figuring out which friend you liked least.


#36: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT)



If you were at an arcade with both this game and The Simpsons, you had a tough choice ahead of you, but either way you were in for a lot of fun. Now, the obvious thing to do would be to go with the TMNT game that four people could play, but they still made a number of cabinets designed for only two players. That's how you knew if you were in a cheap-@$$ arcade or not. Anyway, the cabinet itself was decked out with images of the turtles, along with a couple actors portraying April and Shredder. Were the artists unable to draw convincing human characters or did they think these photo actors would make the appearance of the game all the more impressive? Perhaps it was simply too hard to find the real ninja turtles for a photo shoot? Only Master Splinter knows such ancient secrets. I'm sure that this machine was the start of a highly lucrative modeling career for the girl who posed as April too. Either way, it was a big, bright arcade machine that drew in gamers like pizza draws in turtles. Ninja turtles.

#35: S.T.U.N. Runner



I was never one for racing games, unless you were talking about those racing games where they added some gimmicks to make it interesting, like driving an armed hovercraft of some sort. That's where S.T.U.N. Runner came in. Oh sure, you'd start out as just a wimpy hover Ferrari, but once you got past the first level, they'd strap some wings, a nosecone, and a gun turret to your ship, and you were ready to start tearing @$$ around the long, tubular highways, gunning down any hapless motorists that were going too slow for your liking. Time just seemed to fly by on this machine, and let me tell you, that boxy plastic bench you had to sit on while playing the game was coooomfy! Plus the machine itself looked like it could pass for a futuristic vehicle of some sort. When you're a little kid trying to play this game, though, you were often better off just standing on the damn thing so you could get a good angle on the screen, but of course, some concerned parent would always be waiting somewhere nearby to scold you for standing on that narrow plastic seat, but hey, if they'd have put an accelerator pedal down there instead of just making the acceleration automatic, we wouldn't have had that problem in the first place.


#34: Top Skater



Joysticks can be useful for the majority of arcade games. Still, however useful they may be, you can't expect players to walk away with your game in mind if there isn't something special about it. Sure, you could try to make a memorable gaming experience with entertaining gameplay, but that will only draw in so much money. The real cash comes from drawing in casual players who are just trying your machine on a whim. Top Skater went for this angle with their tilting skateboard controller, the first of its kind. The player would stand on the board and tilt it left or right, forward or back, depending on what trick was to be performed. A nifty innovation by itself, but thankfully, the developers also had the foresight to install railings on the side so that you wouldn't simply fall off and twist your ankle the moment you attempt your first trick. You could still slip right off and smack your head on the railing on your way down, but it was still an improvement. Just make sure you aren't wearing flip-flops when you hop on the thing unless you enjoy having arcade crows laugh at your mishaps.


#33: Starship 1



A few decades ago, there wasn't much to most arcade games. Graphics and CPUs had only advanced so far, so developers would often try to spruce up the cabinet to make up for this. In the Starship 1 cabinet, in order to simulate the feel of space, the makers of the cabinet put in an angled mirror that reflected the image from the monitor onto a drawing of space. It's a pretty nifty way to make up for hardware limitations, and it must have been quite impressive back in the 70s. And let's not overlook the unusual futuristic plastic molding that was inserted into the front of the cabinet merely for aesthetics. Also, there were no in-game crosshairs (which are quite handy to have when running a combat flight simulator), but this was fixed by applying a couple strips of tape in a cross. Ah, the wonders of technology.


#32: Hang-On



With racing games, the basic rule of thumb is to put a steering wheel on the cabinet so the player will be drawn into the game. With motorcycle games, you use some fake handlebars, plus you can save extra costs by putting the accelerator on the handle. Of course, if you're standing up while all this is going on, the illusion is ruined, so Sega decided to turn out a version of the game with a plastic motorcycle that you had to lean left and right on to turn. It was quite unique, and it helped distract from the unremarkable graphics such as the solid blue sky and the generally barren areas on the ground.


#31: Thunder Blade



Arcade versions of flight simulators are fairly easy to come by. Most of the time, the manufacturer will just slap a special joystick with a trigger on the underside and a little button on the top, usually for machine guns and missiles respectively, on a regular upright cabinet and be done with it. If they were feeling generous, they might also throw in a lever for adjusting your throttle, or altitude, or whatever other bit of avionics they feel is necessary to get your precious quarters. Normally, that would probably be the case for 4 out of 5 Thunder Blade players. However, if you were fortunate enough to visit a ritzier arcade than those other chumps, you might happen upon a version of the game that used a cockpit-like setup that would tilt left and right according to how you moved the joystick. Fortunately, the developers had the foresight to include some metal cups for your feet so the machine wouldn't chuck you over the side after a sharp turn. However, that's not to say it didn't happen, especially if you made a right turn (no throttle joystick to catch your hip before your fall).


#30: Skydiver



For those who were too fearful of trying their luck at real skydiving, Atari had things covered with their 1978 release of Skydiver. This game created challenges for your sky diving character based on timing jumps and variable wind factors in order to eventually land on the target. What was truly unique about this cabinet is that the controllers were actual ripcord rings instead of typical joysticks! And if you didn't pull the ripcord in time? Well, your diver got splattered on the pavement and then an ambulance would come onto the screen to take the diver away. I'm sorry though, if you actually have a skydiving accident, you don't need an ambulance... you need a hearse.


#29: Paperboy



Paperboy instantly caught my attention in the arcade, not because of the insane things happening in the neighborhood where the main character has his paper route (fights, breakdancing, the grim reaper showing up, etc.); it was the handlebar controller that piqued my curiosity. In a weird way, it really did feel like you were riding a bike for the first time when you played the game. Problem is, all too often people would steal the rubber grips that were on the handlebars, so you'd be stuck playing the game by gripping two metal bars. You're clearly going places in life if you think stealing two plastic grips off an arcade machine is worth the effort. You know, roughly 30 years from now, there will be an elderly man living in a trailer somewhere, telling his grandkids about the wild days of his youth and when they ask him what it was like, he'll just wink and point to a couple of plastic grips he stole from the Paperboy arcade machine which he now keeps on the mantle like trophies. Paperboy is another game that I think could be remade for arcades today; the new version would have the player both steer and peddle the bike instead of just steering it like in the old version. It might not be easy to play, but at least it'd be good exercise.


#28: Tron



In any discussion of cool arcade cabinets, it is pretty much required that you mention the cabinet for Tron. Disney wanted this game to be as successful as the movie, if not moreso, and they spared no expense to make the cabinet eye-catching: The sides of the cabinet featured scenes from the movie, the control panel and a bunch of the surfaces around the screen were painted with white lines like those you'd find on a circuit board. Here's the real kicker: The cabinet also had a pair of blacklights, and when they were on, the circuit lines, and even the joystick, would appear to glow. It was a very cool effect, especially in a perpetually dark arcade. And as if all that weren't enough, even the profile of the cabinet was a unique shape compared to the rest of the games you'd find in an arcade. In fact, the only downside to the cabinet was that the screen was placed at an angle so that you looked down on it as you played. This meant that if you were short, you were basically screwed. On the other hand, isn't that just a fact of life?


#27: Sea Wolf II



Yet another old school game makes it onto our lists. As is the case with a number of other games we've mentioned, this one's an arcade-style simulator. You look through the periscope to spot ships in the distance, and fire your torpedoes with a thumb button on the joystick. For added effect, when you hit a ship, and when you've fired all your torpedoes, lights alerting you to these things will light up inside the scope itself. Better yet, the cabinet has two submarine periscopes side-by-side so that two players can go head to head to see which one of them can sink the most ships in the least amount of time. Word to the wise: during the second round, make sure you torpedo the RMS Lusitania in order to enter the WWI Lightning Round!


#26: TX-1



Let's face it: it's hard to improve upon the racing game. Apart from improved physics and graphics, there really isn't much room for innovation. TX-1 threw that notion out the window. In addition to cutting-edge graphics (green grass, blue sky, gray road) and state-of-the-art physics (car is held to the earth by gravity), Atari went a step further and put three screens into the cabinet. On straightaways, it's not a particularly useful feature, unless you want to make sure that the ground is the right color. However, when you come to a turn in the road, you'll notice that you're actually able to see more than ten feet of the road ahead of you. It was the most amazing thing to come to racing games since the steering wheel. Eventually, developers would learn that if the perspective shifted with the car, you didn't need to have extra monitors, but until that time, it was all about TX-1 and its fancy new setup.


#25: Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)



Personally, I don't care to do a lot of jumping and stomping while I'm playing my games. When I do some of that, though, it's usually because I just realized I haven't saved my game in almost two hours. Regardless, DDR took a very unique approach to the game of Simon. Each DDR unit consists of an upright cabinet with two huge speakers, and two dance stages, each with four pressure pads set up in a cross formation. You'd think these things would be in constant need of repairs, what with all manner of players stomping on them in the course of a normal day, but the dance stages were remarkably sturdy. Heck, the machines are even being incorporated into the physical fitness programs at a few schools around the world. Now you too can impress your classmates with your ability to match the rhythm of a whole assortment of J-pop songs!


#24: Guitar Freaks



These days, you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who's never heard of Guitar Hero. For that very reason, it's worth acknowledging its arcade predecessor on this list. The cabinet had two guitar controllers with it, each with a fret bar and three colored buttons on the neck, which presumably makes it easier than Guitar Hero, with its five colored buttons. The cabinet could also be linked with the arcade game, Drummania, which is the same sort of game but with drums. Even better, those two systems could then be linked with the game Keyboardmania. What this means is that not only do you have the progenitor to the Guitar Hero games; you've also got the earliest version of the game Rock Band!


#23: Panic Park



Pushing and shoving... it's what friendship is all about. Well, some brilliant people at Namco figured out a way to make it into a video game. Panic Park consists of a series of mini-games in which you must take your controller and try to physically push your opponent out of the way at just the right time. Keep in mind, your opponent is trying to do the exact same thing to you, so the end result is a big shoving match and a lot of laughs. And no, there's nothing wrong with kicking your opponent in the shins to give yourself that extra "edge" needed to win the round! Come on, you know you've always wanted to shove your friend into a raging fire... Panic Park actually gives you that chance! If you've got big hands though, watch out, because you can really smash your knuckles when ramming those two controllers together if you're not careful. Then again, what do a few bloody knuckles matter in the grand scheme of things if you win the war?


#22: Arm Champs & Arm Champs II



Here's another game for those of you who like to show off your machismo at the arcade. Arm Champs had no joysticks or buttons to mash, you simply grabbed onto the arm which protruded from the machine and tried to pin it down. For added amusement, they included a monitor which features the head of your opponent so you could see 'em struggle when you were winning or see 'em laugh at your weak @$$ when you lost. While Arm Champs II had a wider distribution and a few more characters to arm wrestle, I prefer the cabinet of the original simply because it had a molded, muscular upper torso and the monitor blended in with it much better. The original one also had lights on top of it which flashed at the end of each match, which could be extra embarrassing for you if you lost. Oh and if you're wondering why Arm Champs II had a robotic arm, it's because the final opponent in the game was an android named "Specks" who looked kinda like Robocop.


#21: Caveman



You're probably asking yourself, "Why the hell is there a pinball machine on this list? That's not the same as an arcade game!" Well before your head explodes with bewilderment, take a closer look at the machine. Notice anything different? That's right, Caveman was the first Pinball machine to have an arcade game built directly into it. After you hit some of the proper targets with your pinball, it would place the ball in a holding location while it switched to the video game mode. You would then grab a hold of the joystick and try to guide your caveman to hunt down some food, but if the T-Rex ate you during your game time you'd lose a ball. While the idea of creating a pinball/arcade hybrid game was unique, it unfortunately never really caught on and only a few more games of this nature were ever created.


#20: Death Race



I had always believed Carmageddon to be the father of vehicular homicide-themed racing, but that was before I found Death Race. Though the art on the cabinet itself gives the impression that this is just a friendly race between two grim reapers, but in truth, the goal is to run down as many pedestrians as possible. And if you had a friend, you could compete to see who could run over the most people in a limited amount of time! It all sounds quite grand, until you consider that the 70's era screen could only render black and white stick figures. Plus, the bezel itself was at least as big as the screen that actually showed the game you were playing. Still, it was quite upsetting to people back then, though that may be due to the fact that the game became linked to the hilariously bad Sylvester Stallone/David Carradine vehicle (no pun intended), Death Race 2000. Perhaps they could've sold a few more of these cabinets if those two had appeared on the side of the cabinet. Then again, Death Race was banned due to its violent (stick figure) content, so it's unlikely they would've sold many either way.


#19: Star Trek



This game came in the standard, garden variety, mom-and-pop upright cabinet, but for my money, you'll be much better off if you experience it through the "captain's chair" model. Granted, the captain shouldn't have to push his own "photon", "warp" and "thrust" buttons to get things done, but this is at least a step in the right direction. A "Strategic Operations Simulator" must be designed to prepare you as a captain to take over in case your button-pushers are burned by hortas. You even got Scotty and Mr. Spock to introduce you to the game and call you "the captain". I guess they were willing to take anyone over Shatner.


#18: T-Mek



Competition. It'll spice up even the most mundane trip to the arcade. I brought my younger brother along with my whenever I went in part because he brought his own quarters, but also because I could persuade him to try just about any game with my as long as it had some sort of gimmick. In the case of T-Mek, it was the chairs with the speakers built into the headrests, and the two joysticks you'd push and pull in various combinations to get your T-Mek in gear, use your special weapons, etc. Sure, other games would come along where you used two joysticks to pilot a tank, or a giant robot, or something (but usually one of those two), but they didn't have the tank/robot that you piloted painted on the sides of the cabinet like a dogin' van mural! Plus, there was a light above each player's chair that let everyone standing nearby know that someone was handing out an @$$-kicking.


#17: F-114



This cabinet was easily one of the largest ever made. The player would sit in a swiveling chair and steer with the aid of a joystick mounted on the right side of the chair (sorry all you southpaws). All the action was displayed on a large curved projection screen, and all the sound effects came from, believe it or not, an 8-track player within the cabinet. I'm not overly familiar with 8-track players, as they were created and phased out before I was even born, but apparently someone knew of a way to wire one into the cabinet of an arcade game. There was also an area just below the screen made to look like the console of an aircraft, albeit with light-up hit counters that I doubt are included in real military aircraft. Or maybe I just need to watch Iron Eagle again. While I'm at it, you think the soundtrack is available on 8-track?

#16: Sonic Blast Man



We've all played those games where you test your punching strength by hitting a target and it tells you how many pounds of pressure you contacted with. Well, the Sonic Blast Man game took it a step further by actually making a real video game out of it instead of just a way for you to show people you could hit hard as Ivan Drago. In Sonic Blast Man, you play the role of a superhero who has to fight crime and basically save the planet. So you strap on the pair of boxing gloves, punch the target as hard as you can and then see if you did enough damage to the enemy on the screen. Enemies included a purse snatcher, a runaway semi-truck, a skyscraper, a giant mutated crab, and a meteor headed for earth. While the moon was the hardest, I always thought the giant mutated crab was a really random thing to throw in there. The game always drew lots of crowds and laughs as some people would get a running start before throwing their punches. I actually saw a guy practically miss the entire target once and man oh man did he ever feel like an @$$! The one drawback of this game was that, even with all of the padding on the cabinet, it was out of order all too often. I guess you just can't make an electronic machine that people are supposed to wail on and not expect it to malfunction at some point. Even better, because some people are complete idiots when it comes to throwing punches, "Taito lost a class action suit for $50,000 to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) because of injuries sustained by players of Sonic Blast Man. The CPSC alleges that between 1991 and 1994, Taito failed to report about 70 cases in which young players fractured or injured wrists and arms as a result of hitting Sonic Blast Man's punching pad." And these people had the nerve to put on those boxing gloves and call themselves superheroes. Pfft.


#15: 720o



Long before Tony Hawk realized how much cash there was in the virtual skating market, the king of the skating games was 720 (that's two 360's for our less mathematically-inclined readers). You controlled a skater with a joystick and two buttons for performing tricks (and dodging killer bees). Here's the catch: normal joysticks work when you tilt them away from the center in the direction you want your player to move. The joystick for 720, however, could only be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise. To the casual observer, it looked like the joystick was broken since it was fixed tilted as far from the center as it could be. Not so, gentle readers. The funky-shaped cabinet also included a couple speakers at the top to give you real stereo sound and the look of a boombox! That meant you could enjoy all the best video game skateboard music the 1980s had to offer, so long as the arcade was willing to supply all the proper cable hookups. At the very least, you could enjoy the sounds of a digitized "Skate or DIE!" voice in full stereo sound.


#14: X-Men



I remember walking into a small arcade and seeing this X-Men machine for the first time. I was absolutely floored by it. At the time (around 1992), it was easily the biggest multiplayer arcade machine I had ever seen in person. This beast was covered in bright X-Men character graphics and had two monitors connected together which gave you a 50" wide viewing screen. It had 3 coin slots on the left side and 3 coin slots on the right side. And if you were fortunate enough to get in on a 6-player co-op game and play it all the way 'til the end, it would probably end up being one of the greatest arcade gaming experiences of your life. Partially because it could get pretty crowded with 6-people standing around the machine at once and you'd often end up getting in some major shoving matches. But hey, that only added to the excitement of playing the game. A big colorful machine that took up more space than any other arcade game at the time... is it really any surprise that this massive arcade cabinet made it on the top 50 list?


#13: Star Wars



There are a lot of movie tie-in video games that people avoid the plague, and rightfully so, but the original Star Wars arcade game was not one of them. While there was a stand-up version of this game, the truly nice one was the sit-down cockpit environmental one. Combined with the nice artwork, a cockpit reminiscent of the inside of an X-Wing, the lighting, the music and sound effects directly from the movie, this game really made you feel like you were Luke Skywalker flying towards the Death Star in your trusty X-Wing. The only thing the game was missing was an R2-D2 unit on top and an X-Wing pilot helmet for you to wear while playing. Well, that and giving you the opportunity to play as Porkins too.


#12: Shark Jaws



While this cabinet looks fine 'n all as far as classic games go, what's truly great about it is how they avoided being sued by the filmmakers of "Jaws". If you look closely, to the top left of the word "Jaws" is the word "Shark" written in tiny letters. What this accomplished is the average kid back in 1975 would walk by the arcade game and only really see the word "Jaws" and think it was some official game based on the hit movie. Smart move! The added screaming sound effects whenever the shark ate a diver didn't hurt either.


#11: Ms. Pac-Man



If there was ever another standard arcade cabinet that stood out more than Ms. Pac-Man, I honestly don't remember it. In a sea of standard cabinets that were almost always black with some artwork on the side, Ms. Pac-Man defied our comfortable corneas with a bright blue, pink and yellow cabinet that just screamed "Hey you! Yeah YOU! Get over here and play me!" to anybody that crossed its path. This thing was so bright that it almost appeared to be neon. And hey, there's no denying that Ms. Pac-Man is far sexier than Pac-Man could ever dream of being... even the ghosts are in love with her for chrissakes! This game didn't just look good, it also made guys comfortable enough in their manliness to be able to play a game that had pink all over the cabinet. Viva la Pac!


#10: Time Traveler



In the early nineties, the lead designers at a lot of game companies got the idea into their heads that the future of video game graphics was Full Motion Video (FMV). Essentially, rather than hire artists and programmers to create characters and settings for your games, you could just hire actors, shoot them doing scenes as you would for TV/movies, compress those video files into ugly little bits of footage, and then string them together with a little interaction from the player to make what is generously called a "game". Sega, however, decided to take all this a step further. Anyone could make a plain, old, two-dimensional FMV game. Instead, they decided to take a step into the field of holograms. Kind of. In reality, the game just used mirrors to make two-dimensional projections appear to be on different plains, thus creating a "3-D" effect. Pretty weenie, Sega. And you didn't even bother to make a decent game to go along with this "innovation." For shame.


#9: After Burner



With the popularity of movies like "Top Gun" and "Iron Eagle" at the time, it's no surprise that people wanted a chance to get in on some of their own realistic dogfighting action. After Burner allowed you to do just that with this cockpit-style arcade machine which rotated in 4 different ways depending on how you were flying your jet. John Connor even played this arcade game in the movie "Terminator 2"; perhaps as a testament to his skills as a future leader of the resistance.


#8: Sinistar



Sinistar was well-known mostly for its steep difficulty creepy voiceovers. However, almost completely overlooked is the stuff on the outside. The most basic Sinistar machine was just a plain old upright machine, but if your local arcade was willing to spring for the high-end model, you were in for a real treat. The entire cabinet was made up to look like a spaceship. If you ask me, though, the thing looked more like a solid black semi truck cabin with a muffler on the driver and passenger side windows. You'd think that if they were going to make the cabinet look like a spaceship, they would make it look at least a little like the spaceship in the game, a wimpy triangular ship. Hey, but what do I know? Maybe you felt better about being pursued by a shrieking monster if you thought you were in a hulking, boxy starship. Could this be the true origin of the SUV?


#7: Pong



Many people believe Pong to be the first arcade game ever created, but that honor belongs to Computer Space which was released a year earlier in 1971. Still, Pong was the first successful arcade game that had a really wide distribution and was eventually released n a home console version as well. In addition to being a simple game that anybody could pick up in an instant, Pong came in a much more basic (and lighter) cabinet than Computer Space, so that might help partially explain why it was successful. You didn't need a forklift to move the thing. Granted, it didn't look nearly as futuristic or flashy as Computer Space, what with the wood paneling 'n all, but this game is what really brought arcade games into the mainstream and we owe a lot to it for that reason. When you think about it, a game as simple as Pong probably should have a cabinet that matches it in terms of simplicity. Well, you can't get much simpler than a cabinet covered in wood paneling.


#6: Baby Pac-Man



Not to be confused with Pac-Man Jr., Baby Pac-Man was a whole new spin on the Pac-Man series combining both video game and pinball gameplay into one machine. While the Caveman pinball/video game hybrid came out earlier, Baby Pac-Man was the first to combine the two into a standard upright arcade machine rather than a bulky pinball machine. The way the game worked is you started out in a standard Pac-Man maze, but the ghosts in this game were far more intelligent than in any other Pac-Man game, so you often wanted to make a run for the escape tunnels. Once you made it into an escape tunnel, the pinball game down below would launch and that's where you could score yourself some much needed power pellets. While the game itself only enjoyed moderate success (primarily because it was extremely hard), it sure looked damned nice with 100% completely unique layout.


#5: Fire Truck



Now here's an old game from 1978 that took two-player cooperative gaming to a whole new level. Player one got to control the cab of the fire truck, while player two stood behind and drove the trailer. It was just like driving a real fire truck! Ok not really, but the idea was still good. The object of the game was to drive to your destination as quickly as possible while avoiding hazards in the streets. What's funny about the cabinet is that the steering wheels and the gas pedal were the only things that had any effect on the actual gameplay. The additional buttons you see would simply make bell and horn sound effects. Player two also had the option of smacking player one on the head from behind and annoying the living hell out of him, thus Fire Truck never became a big hit. If you ask me though, this game is begging to be remade for modern arcades complete with fully-functional fire hoses.


#4: Tank 8



Tank 8 was the follow-up to Atari's hit "Tank" game and it was about as unique as arcade gaming experiences got at the time it was released in 1976. An unheard of 8-person multiplayer game in which you have 8 different colored tanks to control. It also featured two modes of play; you could play on a team, or you could play as a lone tank hell bent on destroying every other tank in your path. As you can see, the layout of this machine was really different - a cube with 2 sets of controllers on each side and a 25" color screen in the center. Each controller set consisted of two joysticks for you to maneuver your tank with in the same way that you'd drive a real tank (ie: pushing one joystick forward while pulling the other one back to make a sharp right turn). I call dibs on the green tank!


#3: Computer Space



This one should come as no surprise to any video game history buff. "Computer Space" was the first commercially available arcade game ever, released back in 1971. With its molded retro sci-fi look, this fiberglass cabinet is an absolute gem in the minds of collectors whether it's the original 1-player or the 2-player version. While the game itself was never a big hit, people are always excited by the chance to see one of these rare machines in person. And a true testament to just how awesome the build of the cabinet is, even though there weren't a ton of these machines produced, they still made their way into popular culture. The "Computer Space" game appeared in the movies "Jaws" and "Soylent Green".


#2: Maneater



Another game created to cash in on the "Jaws" craze, Maneater didn't need to try and trick people with its name like "Shark Jaws" did. Maneater had more than enough visual charm to attract just about anybody at the time. The screen and controls are brilliantly nestled inside the jaws of a big fiberglass shark! You just know this design made some young children too scared to even play the game. Gotta also love how they didn't even consider the fact that some people like resting their arms on arcade cabinet surfaces. They may not be sharp, but I doubt those shark teeth are a comfortable place to rest your arms while playing the game. Unfortunately, these machines are really hard to come by these days so don't count on finding one at your average arcade. They have been on display at some retro gaming exhibits before though, and if there's any arcade game cabinet worth taking a picture of with your head in it, this just might be the one.


#1: Discs Of Tron



This is it. The creme de la creme of all arcade video cabinets. Weighing in at over 730 lbs of pure video gaming joy, the environmental cabinet version of Discs Of Tron was in a class all its own. Unlike other environmental cabinets at the time, Discs Of Tron didn't have you sit inside of it. Instead, you stood up and leaned back in it, just like your disc-chucking character on the screen as you listened to everything in full stereo sound and enjoyed the badass glow of the blacklight enhanced artwork. It's truly one hell of a fun time standing inside one of these bad boys and if you ever have the chance to do so, do not pass it up. What really horrifies both myself and arcade collectors worldwide is how many of these amazing machines were eventually sawed in half. You see, not every arcade could afford to have a machine that weighed so much shipped to them, nor did they all have the space for this behemoth. So, what Bally Midway did with many of the unsold larger environmental versions of the game, was saw it in half and ship only the front part (it wasn't built to split apart even though looking at it would make you think otherwise). As a result, finding a complete version of this game that wasn't sawed in half has become increasingly difficult over the years. Even worse, I've heard tales that many of these machines ended up in landfills, much like the legend of Atari's infamous dumping of countless E.T. cartridges. Another interesting note is that Discs Of Tron was originally supposed to be a fifth game in the original Tron arcade machine (which also had the same stylings as this cabinet, but sadly didn't come in an environmental version). While there's no doubt that the original was great, I think we're all glad that Bally took the time to keep Discs as a separate game of its own. After you've had a chance to look at this cabinet inside and out, you'll quickly realize it wasn't just another cool game... it was a true work of art through and through and I've yet to see another arcade machine that comes anywhere close to it.


And there you have it for our list of the top 50 greatest arcade cabinet designs! It took a lot of time for the two of us to compile this list, but there's still a good chance we've left out some of your favorite arcade picks. If that's that case, by all means post your suggestions in the Reader Comments area down below to let us know what we left out. Who knows, maybe we'll update the list to cover 100 arcade cabinets sometime! Thanks for reading and may the warm glow of the arcades guide you all in your darkest hour.

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