7. Spy Hunter
Bally Midway is responsible for many classics, none more 'ready-made' cool from our past than the 1983 release 'Spy Hunter'. This driving/combat style game had some of the most unique controls for a coin-op at that time; no joystick, this time you were given a wheel, plus a gas pedal and gear shift. You still stood at the machine, so it remained outside of your 'Pole Position' type of driving set-ups where you might sit in a large console behind a wheel. The game put you in the character of a wheel man, a SPY HUNTER if you will, racing down a vertical scrolling highway, chasing after bad guys racing away. To add some more difficulty, there were civilian cars on the highway, so you couldn't just go all out and fire away with up-gradable style machine guns and missiles your mean driving machine came with. At one point you could become a boat, at one point a chopper shows up to menace you and the Peter Gunn music was rocking. People, myself included, didn't even seem to mind that the game actually DIDN'T have an end to it (despite some urban legends) because it could be played so many ways with the weapons of choice and the often difficult enemies that you were faced with during play made it such a challenge. You might not have known it, but Spy Hunter actually spawned a sequel back in its coin-op days, but I'll be honest with you I never saw one of the Spy Hunter II machines myself and from what I heard of it, the Hunter II stank to unholy hell. But Spy Hunter is unlike some of the other titles on this list in that in recent years, it HAS been revived in numerous attempts, and with some success. There have been versions of it come out for everything from the Gameboy Advance to the Playstation Vita. And I'm not here to debate good or bad of any of those versions, only to offer my own vision of a new way to revive this game in a way that I think it has been 'forgotten'. The versions of Spy Hunter these days come with all the bells and whistles of a modern home-console game, high attention to graphic details, all sorts of choices to make regarding your car, an actual plot to the highway shooter. Well, what about something different, and again, I call upon the gods of 'old school' and say bring the game all the way back to its arcade roots, game play and detail wise. Yup, get rid of all the new story, all the new toys for your car, but of course you say, well that's not the kind of game I play these days? Really, well, now we get to what we do with my new version of the game that will make a connection with present-day gamers everywhere-make it Co-op, Team Deathmatch, Last Wheel Standing ready. Change the game from just you in a car chasing bad guys with no point, to an experience where you are part of a team of Spy Hunters choosing to take on whatever challenge suits you. Maybe you want to brawl with another Spy Hunter gang. Maybe you want to join with another gang against another. Maybe you want to form an ARMY of Spy Hunters and just take on the bad guys, all for which you'll get credit/rewards/medals/trophies for, the only modern update I'd make to the game play. Give the enemies a name/likeness and set an online community where people across the globe participate in an thin, easily understood ongoing plot line, pushed along by how all the Spy Hunters are doing around the world against the bad guys. 'Live the game, don't just play it' could be the catchphrase for advertising. There ya go.