NAT THOMSON'S TOP TEN COIN-OP VIDEOGAMES Agrobotics@aol.com 10. Shinobi (Sega) What a great game. Except for the fact that the first boss is impossible to beat when you're 7 years old and your hands are covered in pizza grease.. 10. Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) Yeah that's right. One of my earliest encounters with Mario. I read the instructions on the panel, it said to jump into the pipes. So the first pit I come across I hopped right in, I was sorely disappointed when it turns out that the green things were the "pipes," what's up with that? 9. Double Dragon (Technos) Before they were Billy and Jimmy Lee they were Nails and Anvil. At least i think. I know the left controller was Nails, what was the other one? I'm pretty sure it was Anvil, or was it Hammer? Anyways, Abobo was a chump and that dude with the gun was way unfair. I don't know how many times I fell in that river. Why didn't they fix that stupid bridge, it just would have taken like a couple of two by fours. Nonetheless, a rad game. 9. Altered Beast (Sega) My love for this game was forbidden. I was a devout Nintendo freak, but this super foxy Sega babe stole my heart. And when you punch the dead dudes, they would fall apart. Sweet. Awesome transformation screens too. 8. Rush 'N Attack (Konami) What cold war? I am bias toward this game because I scored it for Christmas one year for 50 bucks. That's (up)right. Anyway it is a perfect game but I have yet to beat it. The picture on the side of the cabinet shows this Tom Selleck looking dude with a rocket launcher with the onion tops of the Kremlin burning in the background. Also, the Konami logo has a weird looking tail on the leg of the "K". 7. Street Fighter/Street Fighter 2 (tie) (Capcom) Who's the best? Is it Guile (hey kid, how do you pronounce that?) No dude it's the fat guy. For senior week me and my friends went to Ocean City, Maryland. We had just gone to the crappiest thrift store when I was running around freestyle walking; and I look up and POW! The words ARCADE in the window paint of the upstairs of an ice cream parlor drew me in. RAD! I ran up and it's a sauna in there. It had to be 80 degrees, but in the corner next to Tetris and Xenophobe was SFII: World Warriors. I ran and got my friend Geoff and he beat the crap out of me as Ryu. What a rush. I remember just as well finding a Street Fighter I in Peoria, Illinois at a bowling alley. Japan, USA, what the hell? Balrog (Mike then) destroyed me in front of Mount Rushmore. This was the first actual fighting game I can recall besides the overly technical Karate Champ. I am twisted off of Capcom fighting games. It permeates every aspect of my life. Skullomania be my savior. 6. NARC (Capcom) This game was one of the first to use these rad graphics that looked like real life. I think this game actually made me avoid drugs as a child. Those perverts in the trench coats were sick. Plus you could crouch and not get hit, while you picked up money and bags of coke. I guess the anti-drug theme made the ridiculousness of the game OK. Was this the game that started those presidential seals that say "don't do drugs" during the stuff when the game wasn't being used? Could be. 5. Splatterhouse (Namco) This game was so far out. They had it at a grocery store in Beaumont, Texas, and man what a gruesome game. This game pioneered the blood and guts path of video games. Soon to follow was Time Killers, a complete turd, as well as Mortal Kombat, Smash TV etc. Anyways I was obsessed with this game for obvious reasons, those monsters were just as scary as any in House of the Dead or Resident Evil. And what's up with that? Both those games have the same Frankenstein's Monster story, if you have made it to the end of either you know what I'm talking about. . 4. Mortal Kombat (Midway) I was the first kid in the 6th grade to view the splendor that is Mortal Kombat. I went to Illinois State University with my mom one day, and there in the student union was my new love, Mortal Kombat. I was like "holy moly they look like real people!" And they can kill each other! I can remember describing it to all my friends on the soccer team. Recently I was pleasantly surprised when I heard "get over here!" sampled in the song "B-Boys Revenge" by Mr. Dibbs on Return of the DJ Volume Two. When the home versions came out I was blue balled, no blood on my Nintendo, but Game Genie could make the spit red. 3. Gauntlet (Atari) "Green Elf needs food, badly!" He sure does. I remember watching older kids play this and yell at each other about how they could hit each other on this level so back up. The bar on the side was always on the screen, so if you find one it should be burnt on the screen. Anyone who played as Merlin was a doofus. 2. Neo Geo (SNK) I remember the lore involved with the Neo Geo. "It's a home system in Japan, this rich kid at my school has one, it costs 500 dollars" and all that. These are very frequent if you haven't noticed, but some have the crappiest selection. Like that Baseball game, that stunk. Once I accidentally selected it, I was so mad. Did you ever notice that they always had credits already in them? I guess people couldn't figure out that the credits was in the little LED display in the corner. I recently played it at Crazy John's Arcade in Baltimore City, and it had this horrible game on it, it was like Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown put together. Blech. 1. Ms. Pac-Man (Namco) I started to notice that this game was in every arcade and there was always some old dude playing it. It started when I went to Philadelphia for the weekend one time. It was in the arcade on South Street, in a laundromat, and at this diner me and my dad and my brother went there late one night. This guy was playing it and he made it to Act 5. After this night I saw 3 Ms. Pac-mans, and I decided to do a photo documentary. I found many at Ocean City and Rehobeth, where I found two right next to each other. Springfield, Missouri had the most suprising finds. The first was a red and pink cabinet version, the next and the most suprising was a Ms. Pac-man with a new add-on chip titled Heart Burn. What the chip did was replace the sprites and graphics for the mazes so Ms. Pac-man is a flame and the ghosts are firemen. The maze is a crude interpretation of a building on fire. I think the furthest I have made it is either a pear or a pretzel level, at least past the 3rd Act. This game is excellent in execution.