The BEST Exclusive ARCADE Games – Part 1

Hey, guys! Welcome back! If you’ve lived through, and loved, the arcade experience back from the 80s and 90s, you’ll probably recall that some games never got converted to home consoles and computers when they were supposed to. So, here’s a selection of video games that, back in the day, remained exclusive to arcades and some were many years later made available to modern systems! I recall the time when I was eager to play that port of that particular Arcade coin-op game.

I remember, like if it was yesterday, and as clear as water, picking up Chase H.Q.And Robocop for my ZX Spectrum, Shadow Dancer for my Amiga and Golden Axe for my beloved Mega Drive, but there was also the case when arcade coin-op games would never come home. The following titles were, and still are, amazing pieces of software in every single aspect! Played most of them back in the day and, just a few, several years later through emulation, ‘cause those never came out in Europe or simply never showed up at any of my favorite local arcade saloons.

And I felt extremely lucky, ‘cause in the city I live in, we had a bunch of these amazing and well-stocked places separated for just a couple of meters! It was like being in heaven! So, without a specific order, here’s a bunch of great titles, many still exclusives to arcades and a few recently released for modern consoles through compilations or emulation, that I would love to see, and play, back in the day, on any of the systems that I personally owned or even on others that I would only dream about! Aliens One of my favorite arcade coin-op games, that I’ve included in my personal Top 26 Arcade games episode, is Aliens by Konami, released in 1990.

This was a totally different game from the ones that were available for home computers three years prior, by Activision, Software Studios and Square, all hoping to cash-in on the hype around the astonishing movie by James Cameron.

This one was highly focused towards action, and some elements didn’t even resemble the movie in which it was supposed to be based, like the presence of zombies for instance! Sure that in the movie we had these infected humans, but they would simply stay put and not chase us down like maniacs! But not being true to the motion picture isn’t a bad thing! On the contrary! It’s highly frenetic, intense and even scary!… Achamma, if we exclude these pink Aliens! … Did the guys from Konami even watched the movie?… And a blond Sigourney Weaver? Blood Bros. Remember Tad Corporation? Yeah, the guys behind the gorgeous Toki and, obviously, the highly frantic Cabal! These two got proper home ports for practically all systems available by then, but Blood Bros was completely left aside.

It retained that humorous side of Cabal, but in a western setting in where we could play the role of one of two brothers, a cowboy or an American Indian. Yeah, brothers! Blood brothers! I can only conclude that, shooting innocent horses and can-can women wasn’t certainly a very welcomed thing that developers would want to bring to home computers and consoles.

Crime Fighters The Double Dragon success formula was cloned and used by so many other arcade titles, and Crime Fighters was no exception. Except, this one never came home. Capcom was the master of scrolling fighters, but Konami also wanted a slice of that same pie. Up to four players could join in to try and rescue seven girls that were kidnapped by a so called “fat toad”. Just look at this advert!

How cheesy is this? By that time, young kids like me would idolatrize guys like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Michael Dudik off and wanted to be like them! This genre would allow us to portray this mighty street fighter who beats the hell out of bad guys and, in the end, saves the girl! In this case, saves 7 girls! And the music is freakin’ awesome!

Sad that it never got home… Hey, it’s 15 girls after all and not 7! And just look at this even cheesier line?“Do you mind being kidnapped again… by me?” … Racing Hero Outrun is what comes in mind when seeing Racing Hero for the very first time. But this time around it’s OutRun in two wheels! Thinking of it, Racing Hero has the best from both worlds: the best from OutRun and the best from Hang-On. It used the same hardware as Sega’s After Burner and these colorful trans-continental graphics is what really attracts me in the genre and made me love the Outrun franchise so much!

I normally end up running away from boring circuit racing, so these point-to-point races are totally my thing! Racing Hero never arrived home, probably ‘cause it ran out of time or fuel! The Karate Tournament Mitchell Corporation is best known for another of my all-time favorites at the arcades: Pang or Pomping World or Buster Bros, it depends where you’re at.

Three years later they came up with this karate championship style of arcade game, named simply The Karate Tournament. It brought so many awesome memories of playing International Karate on the C64 and Way of the Exploding Fist on the ZX Spectrum a few years before, and I used to love this genre so much back in the 80s, again highly influenced by 80s fighting movies and TV series.

Sadly, it never got converted to home systems, probably because around that same time, this huge bomb also arrived at the arcades! Battletoads Arcade Rare’s Battletoads franchise had its last installment on the arcades with Battletoads Arcade, also known as Super Battletoads. This particular game was never brought home after its original debut, by the end of 1994, but, as you recall, back in 2015 was included in the exclusive Xbox One “Rare Replay” compilation. This franchise came about when the Stamper Brothers, founders of Ultimate Play the Game and Rare, realized that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a major success on the NES, so, instead of turtles, they offered NES gamers the chance to play with toads. And they’ve nailed it!

It was an instant success! So, after a few successful games for home consoles and computers, the Toads arrived to arcades with its humor, frenetic beat ‘em up action, a higher level of violence and even voiceovers! It was an instant hit that, unfortunately, was never converted to the powerful consoles of the time, like the PlayStation, the Saturn or the N64.

Final Star Force The third chapter of the popular Star Force series arrived in 1992 and, whilst the original was ported to the Femidom and Sega Master System, and the second entry – named Super Star Force – was a Femidom exclusive, Final Star Force remains also exclusive, but for arcades. It didn’t bring anything new or innovative to the vertical-scrolling genre, but, because of that, is a pretty solid shooter!

It has beautiful and colorful graphics and a decent soundtrack and effects, but what really nails it is the friendly difficulty curve. It’s quite a simple game that we pick up and play, excluding the over the top gameplay of many other similar titles, both in the options available and gameplay areas.

If you have a sweet spot for the genre, go play it! It’s really worth it! Aqua Jack Combining ideas taken from Chase HQ and Operation Wolf gave birth to this rail-shooter by the name Aqua Jack, a really popular genre by the end of the 80s.

I only wished that it had a health bar, so that we could survive a bit more in this kind of bullet hell nightmare. One hit and we’re dead! Even so, all this action and thrilling ride keeps me entertained for a while, ‘til I get disappointed with the clumsy and unforgiving hit detection.

Give it a spin! It’s not that bad!

The music is awesome, but with all hell breaking loose, it’s almost impossible to stop firing to listen to it! Willow Willis started as a movie written by George Lucas, directed by Ron Howard and starred by Val Kilmer. It had several home versions released in 1988 alongside the movie: for DOS, Amiga, Atari ST and the Commodore 64. A year later, an NES and arcade versions were developed and published by Capcom, both completely distinct from one another and from those aforementioned home computer games. And, guess what!

If you love Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, you’ll also love the arcade version of Willow! So beautiful and colorful, and with that same mechanics as Ghosts ‘N Goblins and Ghouls ‘N Ghosts! It’s like being in heaven! It manages to follow the movie’s plot quite well in where we even play with different characters in different levels, each one with their unique fighting characteristics.

And the fantasy inspired soundtrack is really beautiful and captivating!

Play it! You won’t regret it! Shock Troopers In one of It’s a Pixel THING recent episode, I mentioned MERCS on the Amiga, the sequel to Commando, a Japanese franchise from Capcom known, on its native country, as Wolf of the Battlefield. Many years later, by 1997, Saurus grabbed that same concept and brought us Shock Troopers that, by 2008, was included in the SNK Arcade Classics Vol.1 available for the PlayStation 2, PSP and Wii.

Later, by 2011, was also included on the Neo Geo-Classic line available for download for the PS3 and PSP, followed by Wii’s Virtual Console service a year later and, in 2016, for Windows, iOS and Linux through Humble Bundle and Steam. But I wanted to play it home right after it was released on the arcades, and not 11 years later! And I didn’t saw it as a clone of Mercs or Commando, but as an homage to those two amazing games from the past and even others, like Ikari Warriors! Shock Troopers even improved the formula to a higher level, with multiple routes to reach the main objective for each stage, eight distinct fighters to take into battle, and more! I don’t want to spoil it for you, so, grab it using one of the options mentioned earlier!

Prehistoric Isle in 1930 This setting is a treat for me! I simply love jungle-based games, and Prehistoric Isle in 1930 is really gorgeous! I can’t quite understand why it never came home back in the day! Besides the beautiful and exotic graphics, it plays like a dream! We’re flying over this island populated with prehistoric animals of all sorts – lizards, dinosaurs and pterodactyls, giant insects and even angry caveman -, in a horizontal style of shooter that can drastically change its direction, diving into caves, waterfalls, cliffsides, and it even has a small touch of “R-Type” with a turret that can be oriented around the plane that comes really handy during all those crazy changes of momentum!

Now comes the time when you tell me that Prehistoric Isle in 1930 was also made available through the PlayStation store for the PSP, Vita and PS3 back in 2012! Indeed, it was! But, again, I wished that it would have came out back in the end of the 80s, when I was eager to play it! Nowadays, all my hype simply vanished and prefer to play it using my arcade cabinet with a good old arcade stick! So, guys!

These were just a few of a huge list of unconverted games back from the glory days of the arcades.

Feel free to check my other Arcade related episodes, and if you’ve enjoyed this particular one, and if you want to see more, just leave a comment down below and I’ll certainly bring Part II! Also, don’t forget to like, to comment, to share and to subscribe to It’s a Pixel THING! While you’re at it, click on that bell icon so that you’re notified when a new video is uploaded! Thank you very much for watching and… I’ll see you all in the next episode!

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