It was an everyday affair for me. I spent at least 2-3 hours daily and even if i wasn't playing, i've been going there just to watch my friends/odd people playing. Good times! I have way too many favourites, from the early ones such as Pac-Man, Galaga and Asteroids, to more recent ones like Metal Slug and Time Crisis (w/ lightgun).

Apart from the classic ones, some of my (more recent) favourites are:

- Cadillacs & Dinosaurs
- Punisher
- Snow Bros
- Midnight Wanderers: Quest for the Chariot
- Chariot: Adventure through the Sky

When I was 11, my father ran some kind of bar with an Airwolf machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNPkyGiL9hs

Which was comfortable, because we kids would just run back and forth from the machine to the counter to get new coins, and it wouldn't cost him a thing (I think).

Four years later, I got hooked on the Turtles game in a UK arcade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS3PuLkCUJ4

I very effectively wasted most of my allowance there. And I haven't touched an arcade machine since, because that left a mark. :)

Oh yeah.
By far, Time Traveler and Golly! Ghost! were my favorite arcade games.
Runner up is probably Steel Gunner ;D

I am surprised that Golly! Ghost! would be mentioned here.
Everyone who never heard about it should check the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnK9t0ebiV8

The haunted house in the game is Physically Real™.

Hell yeah! Thanks for sharing the vid, bud.
Two-player mode is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, memberries aside. 10/10 would sit my ass all day again just packin' some Taito coins in the slot and indulging myself ;P

Cabal!

If I had all the money I put into the Asteroids game I would be a rich man now. But I wouldn't have the great memories.

Late 70s to mid-80s. A lot of time spent on those machines. Early on - around 5th and 6th grade, I'd ride about a mile to a friend's house, and then we'd head over to 7-11 to play Defender and Dig Dug. Later on we moved close to a mall with a full arcade. Another friend had a dad who was trying to buy affection so he always had money for the arcade. Played a bunch of stuff and sucked at most of it. The favorites were Spy Hunter and Gauntlet. Got really good at Spy Hunter, putting the initials PUD at the top most of the time.

No. The games were made much like freemium games today: to maximize money extraction rather than for best game play and fun.

I enjoyed Galaga in the arcade, but my #1 passion was pinball, and that can never be replaced by a computer screen. :)

Most of the games in the arcades never tempted me as those martial arts, sports and driving games leave me cold but I did like this https://www.libertygames.co.uk/store/air_hockey_tables/commerical_air_hockey/wik-gold-air-hockey/ and played a little on some pinball machines.

Maybe not, but you can give it a damned good try ;-)

Over here full-fledged arcades are typically located at seaside areas, and in recent years the games machines have been replaced with children's gambling machines (you're never too young to start!). Leisure centres and tourist spots usually had a couple of arcade cabinets though, and you can bet I ran my parent's bank accounts dry on those. In particular I recall my nature-hating butt being dragged along to a caravan site and was thankful to find Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, one of the greatest arcade games ever.

I used to love arcades. Early favorite games include Donkey Kong, the Pac-Man games, Popeye, Time Pilot, Joust, Burger Time...later on I really got into Double Dragon, Smash TV, Narc, NBA Jam, all those licensed beat-em-up games like TMNT and the Simpsons, Raiden.

I started losing interest in arcades around the mid-90s. I would walk into one and see nothing but Street Fighter clones, some driving games, and maybe a light-gun game. It was just depressing to see all the old variety flushed out in favor of one or two genres.
Aw, how could I forget Star Wars? Still my favorite Star Wars video game ever. Vector games were so cool back then - Tempest, Black Widow, Battlezone, Star Trek, etc.

Not really, but by the time I got there, arcades were mostly confined to waiting rooms and retirement condos. And, of course, Chuck E. Cheese's. Chuck E. Cheese's usually had me just camping on the Star Wars machine until I ran out of tokens. It gave out zero tickets, but carnival-style games were never really my thing.

Still, that one retirement condo either had a pretty awesome selection, or was just so boring that it made the arcade look about a thousand times more interesting than one usually would. It was the only arcade I'd ever burned through an absurd amount of quarters in, and the prime money-sucks were The Simpsons, Prop Cycle, and Area 51. I was surprised there weren't more bored grandkids in there.