Celebrate: I beat a game at the arcade! SF4.

biggles

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 25, 2005
Messages
2,215
So I was off on vacation for a couple of days with the wife. We went into a video game arcade in Santa Cruz, CA. Now, I had already played SF2 and SF 4 in the past, the latter on Xbox 360. So of course I knew the basics (combos, specials, super specials, etc). I managed to beat the game with Ken with just one play and no continues! Pretty exciting, my wife was shocked as she did not realize there are arcade games that actually have an ending. Anyway, first time in my life I have ever made it to the end in an arcade game. Anybody else beaten any arcade games in the past? Pretty great feeling actually.
 
I beat the Lava Jet Ski thing in Battletoads when I was, like, seven.

Probably the peak of my gaming experience.
 
I remember beating some of those 'beat 'em up' games, but that was only because I spent too many quarters on them. Can't say I've ever beaten a fighting game in the arcade.

What happens after you beat the game? Does it restart at a higher difficulty? Eat your quarter and tell you to insert a new coin if you want to continue playing?
 
I remember beating some of those 'beat 'em up' games, but that was only because I spent too many quarters on them. Can't say I've ever beaten a fighting game in the arcade.

What happens after you beat the game? Does it restart at a higher difficulty? Eat your quarter and tell you to insert a new coin if you want to continue playing?
Just the credits, and they do not even let you enter initials for a high score. Still, it was such an achievement that we immediately left the arcade. Had to leave the place on a high point, lol.
 
Just two games I beat Contra in the late 80s
and Aliens Armageddon pretty sure that is it.....I might have beat Yie Ar Kung-Fu as well.
I know I got to the last guy in the game Blues. I know I beat him in Mame I finishd alot
of Mame games but that really doesn't count along with NES Arcade Knockoffs.
 
Just the credits, and they do not even let you enter initials for a high score. Still, it was such an achievement that we immediately left the arcade. Had to leave the place on a high point, lol.
In a lot of the Street Fighter games, you'll get a much higher score if you're whomping all the challengers than if you take one credit through the computer opponents. I don't know if SF4 got rid of the high score table (I more or less stopped playing before SF 3). If you're still on vacation near there, consider the Pacific Pinball Museum, across the Bay, in Alameda.

I've beat several of the street fighters in the arcade; I think maybe once with a single credit on X-Men vs SF, otherwise sometimes with a couple continues, often with a whole bunch / strategic selection of challengers. I've got a SF2: Hyper Fighting machine and still can't beat it on a single credit (although I could switch it to easier probably). I think I beat both TMNTs, but with lots of continues; same with Lucky and Wild. I can't think of anything else I beat in the arcade. I also can't get terribly far on my T-Mek :( Oh well.
 
Wasn’t on a single credit but I remember beating the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

When I was 7 or 8, my mom worked at a pizza place that had an arcade attached. On days I had to go with her, her coworkers would give me cup fulls of free arcade tokens to use while they were working. No idea how many tokens I used but sure it was a lot as I remember that game being a real MFer.
 
So I was off on vacation for a couple of days with the wife. We went into a video game arcade in Santa Cruz, CA. Now, I had already played SF2 and SF 4 in the past, the latter on Xbox 360. So of course I knew the basics (combos, specials, super specials, etc). I managed to beat the game with Ken with just one play and no continues! Pretty exciting, my wife was shocked as she did not realize there are arcade games that actually have an ending. Anyway, first time in my life I have ever made it to the end in an arcade game. Anybody else beaten any arcade games in the past? Pretty great feeling actually.

Everything that had an end I played I beat! I also have the actual boards and cabs at home for things I really liked. SF games aren't that bad arcade wase, neither are Namco games, it was SNK games that had the quarter sucking boss syndrome. If you'd like to try a fun arcade look into Capcoms Alien VS Predator and thank me later.

 
I remember playing Super Punch Out constantly when i was in the military back in the 80's that we had in our dorm. (Someone had rigged it to not need coins)
STILL looking to get a Star Castle Arcade machine but other than parts it's very hard to find one. Used to play it forever when i was a lot younger.
 
I'm definitely a child of the second arcade era. Not the old school Pac-Man, Frogger, Dig-Dug era, but the wave that started with Double Dragon, Heavy Barrel, Strider, TMNT, etc. and carried over to the fighting game era. I kept going until the fighting game era collapsed around 2001. When I was young, every Saturday I'd blow my allowance at the local mall. I probably won every major arcade game there was back then, but some of 'em cost me quite a bit to do so. I could win a few of them with only a quarter or two, though.

The main thing to remember about the games from that era is that they're designed to earn money. They're going to hit you with cheap shots whenever possible and even though they might have a pile of advanced techniques, you usually want to just stick to something very basic and spam the everloving shit out of it. For example, you can win Double Dragon pretty easily by just doing nothing but back-elbows over and over to everyone.
 
Last edited:
Ahh... all those wasted quarters in the student union. I have finished SF1, SF2, MK1 in the arcade. Not on one quarter alone though IIRC.
 
Quite a few games. But being an older millennial means that arcades were still part of growing up for me.

SF2, SF2 Turbo, MvC, MvC2. Samurai Showdown.
There were a bunch of other games too that I have beaten but for some reason they aren't coming to mind.
But for sure some beat-em-ups and overhead shooters. TMNT is in there.

Been a long time on all of those games though, and I'll confess to only being a casual at best. I never really got good at any of them.
 
Wasn’t on a single credit but I remember beating the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

When I was 7 or 8, my mom worked at a pizza place that had an arcade attached. On days I had to go with her, her coworkers would give me cup fulls of free arcade tokens to use while they were working. No idea how many tokens I used but sure it was a lot as I remember that game being a real MFer.


Yeah, that wasn't hard to do if you had 3-4 players. I did it several times.


My best game finish solo: I beat Black Tiger on a single quarter. ( Never beat before, took me about a year of playing it on weekends before I finally pulled-off this feat!)

Never repeated the single quarter glory run again, but I could do it on a maybe a dollar. My favorite Capcom dungeon crawler ever!
 
Last edited:
Just two games I beat Contra in the late 80s
and Aliens Armageddon pretty sure that is it.....I might have beat Yie Ar Kung-Fu as well.
I know I got to the last guy in the game Blues. I know I beat him in Mame I finishd alot
of Mame games but that really doesn't count along with NES Arcade Knockoffs.
Memories......I remember the first time beating Tonfun. Good times as a high school freshman in 1985!
 
Yie Ar Kung-Fu was totally ahead of its time. I remember playing the crap out of that at my local roller rink. Kind of like all quarter munchers, the best strategy was usually to go ham with 1-2 particular moves, though. From memory, there were little short-hop jumpkicks or jump punches that beat almost anything if you ever got close enough to use them.
 
Yie Ar Kung-Fu was totally ahead of its time. I remember playing the crap out of that at my local roller rink. Kind of like all quarter munchers, the best strategy was usually to go ham with 1-2 particular moves, though. From memory, there were little short-hop jumpkicks or jump punches that beat almost anything if you ever got close enough to use them.
All the enemies had patterns that could effectively be engaged with just one or two countermoves so you had no choice but to rely on just a couple of moves. Also, during the early stage of combat before you actually engaged you could rely on landing a few low kicks as the enemy walked back and forth but once they engaged and began employing signature moves you had to rely on a single pattern of jumping and kicking that had to be repeated over and over. For sure one of the ancestors of the modern fighting genre!
 
The game I played the most was Track & Field. I don't think you could beat it, you just got to the high jump and it kept getting higher until you got knocked out. Still took a while and you could play a long time on just 1 quarter.

And then you got to put your name in the high score list but it could only be 3 digits so everybody had to think of cool 3 letter names because just putting your initials in was too boring. Mine was Axe lol
 
TMNT, The Simpsons, turtles in time. Other than that, I don't really remember beating much else in the arcade.
 
I'm definitely a child of the second arcade era. Not the old school Pac-Man, Frogger, Dig-Dug era, but the wave that started with Double Dragon, Heavy Barrel, Strider, TMNT, etc. and carried over to the fighting game era.
Good thing as back in the "day", games weren't designed to be won. High-score was your "tag" and the more tags you had in an arcade brought you serious cred. Your "second era" arcade evolved to have game-play that had a story or at least a series of events that lead to a conclusion.
I hate all ya 40 yr. old punks who had it so good :D
 
I loved Galaga. I stunk at it though :p.

I still love Galaga, don't stink at it either... The game just gets crazy around level 9 or so.

As for arcade games I've beaten, only one that comes to mind is Capcom's X-Men: Children of the Atom back in the summer between 8th/9th grade.

So many quarters..
 
I liked Galaga cause of the sounds and you could double or tipple up the ship for added fire power.I didn't realize when you got in the tractor beam you could double up your ship making shooting kinda easier. I saw a guy get his ship captured one time in the arcade so I got smart to it.
 
Last edited:
Good thing as back in the "day", games weren't designed to be won. High-score was your "tag" and the more tags you had in an arcade brought you serious cred. Your "second era" arcade evolved to have game-play that had a story or at least a series of events that lead to a conclusion.
I hate all ya 40 yr. old punks who had it so good :D

This makes no sense at all. Second era games high high scores as well! Street Fighter, MK, all of that stuff would flash the score chart with the three character tags when cycling through the waiting for players. Even the more modern games out now do this. It never went away.
 
You know, this is making me nostalgic. Think i'll watch "Pixels" tonight. :rolleyes: Not the greatest movie, but good to watch every few years.
1658602647414.png

(Plus she's fun to look at)
1658602776673.png
 
This makes no sense at all. Second era games high high scores as well! Street Fighter, MK, all of that stuff would flash the score chart with the three character tags when cycling through the waiting for players. Even the more modern games out now do this. It never went away.
Many games became more of an experience as tech inproved. I have no clue what I scored on Dragons Lair, Final Lap or Afterburner.
 
Last edited:
Many games became more of an experience as tech inproved. I have no clue what I scored on Dragons Lair, Final Lap or Afterburner.
Still makes not all that much sense. Even in todays arcade era shmups and such still dominate and they are score based. You could finish the old games, pacman and donkeykong did end, so did gauntlet. Now pulling it off was another matter entirely. Games weren't really infinite loops. The catch is most games, even now, still can be. There are settings that only the opperator can access. I've got a few boards at home and typically you can unlock both free play, and continue after complete (plus various difficulty toggles and other things). Most people weren't aware of this because they never bothered to pickup the hardware for obvious cost reasons, and also the way it was deployed. If it was a single player or coop game in a dedicated arcade enabling it would be stupid because you'd always get a few people who could just cycle the damn thing permanently. If it was in a pizza hut or movie theater you wouldn't know if it was or not because people would play a limited time before they had to go do what they came to do.

Even in the second era first era games were around. And, at least in my experience, there'd be a guy who worked at the place who'd sneak you into the shopping mall via the loading dock late at night, kill all the sounds on the games so security couldn't hear you, close the shutting door on the front, and turn everything to free play or looping and you could just go at it. That's how fighting game tournaments really started. I've still got the arrest record while in middle and high school to prove that old crazyness (I regret nothing!).

I'm not disputing that games became more flashy and whizbang, always true. But even now, today, you can load up brand new games on steam that have score boards that are published on line and you put up your tag globally.

It's still out there! Jump back in with shoot em ups and you might be shocked!
 
Like for my Cousin's birthday they let us have free reign in a local arcade for 1 hour unlimited tokens ended up playing Gondomania and Super Contra.

When my cousin got a NES he got Double Dragon biked 20 mikes one way 40 miles total to play the game the VS mode was fun.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top