Arcade Games

Arcades were fun, but they were also designed to empty your pockets of any change that you happened to bring with you. These days, that's less of an issue, as we can emulate arcade games and effectively play them like a millionaire might have done. We have access to the engineer's menu, or the dip-switch selection, to reduce difficulty if we want to, and we can switch them to freeplay, or just keep hitting the "insert coin" button. However, that was only their first tactic.

The second tactic was to use the same sorts of features we see in mobile games to attract us to put our coins in. Big flashy graphics, loud sounds and music, and the most important of all - the same old dependable gameplay they'd already released a hundred times before.

Some games did try something new though. Here I intend to celebrate those games. The ones that didn't copy what the last machines did, and the developers that were happy to take risks.

Here are a collection of short recommendations for those who want to play something a little different to your average beat em up for a change.

The games here are recommendations only. You won't find any downloads available on this site.