10 Arcade Video Games To Make You Feel Like A Kid Again 

After Burner, better than all.

After Burner
Sega

If you could travel back in time, what would you do? See the dinosaurs? Kill Hitler? Give your past self that Sports Almanac from the future, like Trump probably did?

If the answer is yes to any of those, you've made a huge mistake. Because what you should be doing, is revisiting the greatest institution of our collective childhood - the arcades.

Amusement arcades were a mecca for young gamers. Every weekend they'd descend in droves, with loose change and time to waste.

Hours, nay, days, were lost amidst this paradise of bright pixels and banging chip-tunes. The arcades were a beautiful cacophony of all the things our pubescent brains could want - before we got distracted by those devilishly tempting alcoholic beverages, anyway.

Like our childhood, the arcades drifted away over time. Home consoles became the gaming trend, rendering them a tad obsolete (in the west at least, Japan always knew the score). But if vinyl can come back, aren't we due a hipster-inspired arcade renaissance too?

Yes. Yes we are.

10. Sunset Riders

Do you wish you could've lived in the Wild West?

Konami's 1991 run-and-gun classic was the game for all of us wannabe gunslingers, because this rootin' and tootin' arcade title was a veritable joy to play. Incredibly easy to pick up and shoot away, it still offered enough challenging stages and fiendish boss battles to keep you engaged throughout.

And it had all the obligatory multi-player options that you'd come to expect from a Konami arcade title at the time (more of those later). Which meant you could play stereotypical Cowboys and stereotypical Indians with all your stereotypical friends.

Today we have much more complex, nuanced studies of the wild west with games like Red Dead Redemption, but Sunset Riders will always have a special place in the hearts of anyone who just wanted to pretend they were the Riviera Kid for an afternoon.

In this post: 
After Burner
 
Posted On: 
Contributor

Writer. Proud owner of a 1950-2000 Grays Sports Almanac. Has never created a dystopian alternate timeline (yet).