He neglects to mention that when Dragon's lair came out, it was one of the first games ever to cost $.50 to play. before that, nearly all games were a quarter. This made it all the more expensive.
I must've wasted well over $5,000 in quarters lifetime on playing at the arcades and it was so much fun,too bad kids nowadays won't know what it was like lol
I hardly got anywhere with that game as a child. I'd press the stick in the direction of the flashing light, like you're supposed to, and he always died anyway. After 3 or 4 tries I never played it again.
+Jim B. too easy to be a quarter muncher. I would get to the samuraii boss with just one quarter back in the day. And TMNT cost me 1$ to finish the game last time i played it. Those Konami games were fun, but very far from being unfair in any way.
Thanks, ANTI HERO! That 1550 I mentioned? It actually morphed into a 1,940-in-1 Ultracade. Granted, I don't even bother with probably 1,900 of those...but it's still cool bragging rights for a bachelor! Life is good.
My friends and I chipped in and bought the book for Dragon's Lair through our scholastic book club. Was basically the only book we read in the entire 6th grade. I could finish dragon's Lair and Space Ace.
I was down to full play through on 1 credit...yeah I was awesome back in the day...now just a sad old man that remembers hearing the voice "DRAGON'S LAIR!" and running to it like a meth freak.
When I was a kid, I will never forget the first time I saw Dragon's Lair! It was amazing! My friends and I were instantly hooked and we spent so much money trying to defeat that game. Eventually, the arcade had to purchase a second Dragon's Lair game because of the waiting lines! And in all the time playing and watching that game, I only ever saw it defeated twice! Still one of my Top 10 games ever.
Lmfao 😂🤣😅 Exactamundo. That game drove me around the bend tryin to finish that game. It's still my mission in life to find and play that game and finish it.
Krazimuffin same here, as a kid i watched the "older kids" play that awesome game, then i tried it and BAM dead...but i still to this day love Dragon's Lair AND Space Ace..lol
Oh yes on "Ikari Warriors." (Especially since you couldn't get fire bullets or grenades right before the most difficult parts.) I was relieved when I got it on the ATARI 7800. Not only did it not cost me a quarter every time, but it was more fair. And there were a lot more opportunities to get fire bullets and grenades.
I got skilled enough to finish the original TMNT and X-Men in one credit, but Turtles In Time... damn you. Even at the easiest setting, things got ridiculously hard with as much as 8 foot soldiers attacking at once.
+Derpurs Machinest (Gamer88) simpsons arcade took loads of my cash, but it was one of the easier arcade games, I actually beat mr burns a few times in the simpsons game, lisa was my character, I liked the jump rope
You mention Ghost'n Goblins for the time limit (which most arcade games had at the time, specially beat'em ups) and you skip the fact that you have to finish the game TWICE to reach the real ending? Shame on you!
+Brandon Withnell hence greed in my book. If there were such a thing as a game that includes free DLC and doesn't require online+network membership, BS DLC that are just features/coding in disguise via demo/beta, split screen capabilities, ability to mod saves or the game itself, a pause menu to restart a level or adjust something, and some genre that isn't survival/FPS based(hyped and cliche) as of today; then you're out of luck unless you want to play amiibo or build a PC and play Fallout 4 or some shit and finally say "the gaming industry sucks."
Heavy Barrel. I adored that game so much. When the second level boss, the one with the mechanical arms on a rail one, gave me so much grief, I must have spent a small fortune on it. Of course since you can die in one hit anyways, it was already a black hole for quarters.
Jesus Black Yup, keeping up with all the chaos was an acquired skill. I did significantly worse whenever there was a second player thrown into the mix on bullet hell games.
I remember when Dragon's Lair came out. I never even tried it. I watched everyone else (most of whom were far better gamers than I was) get destroyed in short order. It was the first 50 cent machine. I beat one Sinistar ONCE. Then I quit. That one victory probably cost me $50 in quarters! Great memories.
When Dragon's Lair first came out I had to put a lot of quarters in the game to keep it going. But not long after I could finish the entire game on a single quarter once I got the patterns down.
I remember when me and my brother and some other kids were "fishing" in arcades. I made a little hole in the coin, tied the coin with a thread and kept pulling it, each pull was a credit. Of course, with the gang around the machine to hide the cheat from the coin seller. Good times that never come back, the 80s.
Especially when some jerk arcade owner would deliberately mis-calibrate the light guns, I knew of one arcade that did seedy shit like that and worse. bastards. We all got wise to it and went to another arcade. He closed down a year later.
Oh you know it! I don't know if the SEGA GENESIS version is different from the arcade, but even on the SG version, you don't get your energy back at the start of each board. There's no way to get more energy. And some creatures are good at killing you with one hit. It's still annoying on the SG. But at least it doesn't cost a quarter every time.
Those don't really qualify as quarter suckers since you can't pay more to continue playing like a lot of these games. Allowing you to continue a game with another quarter was the downfall of arcade games. There was no longer a need to play to get better when you could just pay another quarter to continue. SmashTV (and Robotron) were *NOT* quarter suckers. If you were good you could get to the end of SmashTV on a single quarter, or clear level 255 on Robotron and get back to level 1 and continue on. Also, with a good cooperating group, you could play Gauntlet for a good long while on a single quarter.
Dragons Lair was the first real LaserDisc game Space Ace was the second game put out by the same company. They both had animated scenes saved on a laser disc and had several outcomes for each scene depending on how you messed up or succeeded. You had about 20 different scenes in Dragon's Lair that were run through twice. Once in "normal" mode, and then once in reverse where all your left/right commands needed to be mirrored. Difficulty set by the arcade owners could make it so that there were flashes to guide you or not. If you made it through both sets of scenes, you went into the Dragon's Lair. They had two different sets of commands that were very difficult to distinguish to know what list of commands you needed to perform. If you were trying to learn the game by playing, you had a large investment of quarters ahead of you as the game was one of the first I remember that was 50c or two tokens per play. I wasn't going to pay that to learn a game, so I watched people play for a pretty long time. When I had watched several people play all the way through and bought the best player I had seen play dinner to learn how to know how to get through the Dragon's Lair scene, I played my first game of it. Made it all the way to the Dragon's Lair before I lost my first life, and finished the game on my second life of my first game. Good times.
umm Dragons Lair should be 1. It took 50 cents to replay. I remember watching people die within 30 seconds of starting up again wasting up to 5 bucks just to get through a level
I can agree with most of your choices. Although I found Mortal Kombat to be pretty easy. There where quite a few games I went broke playing but that was not one of them.
Great video! I'm old enough to have played all those games in the arcade. Good times. I agreed with all of your choices except Mortal Kombat. After beating it several times on day 1, we asked the store owner to turn up the difficulty. Those AI advantages are all disadvantages really. Too easy!
Star Wars Trilogy arcade. It had inverted controls only for the lightsaber parts. and you had to follow un-inverted on-screen directional cues to boot.
Yeah and I don't care what anyone says if you don't have a second player you are not beating this one. Got to love the fact they included credits in the god damn console games as well. :) Just out of pure spite.
That one actually can be beaten on one credit, though it’s extremely hard and I’ve yet to manage that myself. The game does, however, allow you to purchase extra lives during active gameplay (only the original coin-op has this; console ports and emulated re-releases have this feature removed for obvious reasons)
Sinistar was one of my favorite games growing up!! I was actually pretty good at it!! And like Galaga and Asteroids I could stick a quarter in it and play for literally hours!! The only other game I was a "monster" on was Joust!! I have been has high on Joust as level 45, and the one machine I played had my high score on it for at least two years until they got rid of the machine in the gas station where it sat!! And I had three friends of mine try to be my high score and told me it was impossible!! Another game I used to be good at was Defender!!
Yep each game play is 0.50 cents and there 4 times in it. Total is 2$. if got overtime you have to a other 0.50 cents to continue to play. Because I always put 2$. Yeah I spend a lot coins on NBA jam, specially the TE version.
Cruisin' USA, RUSH, Area 51, Carnevil, House of the dead, Mortal Kombat 2 through 4, soul caliber. That was my childhood from the mid 90's to mid 2000's. Good times
When my local mall arcade got Dragon's Lair they put it right out in front, just inside the entrance to the arcade. They ended up having to move it back because the crowd of people watching people play the game was spilling out into the mall.
I remember being amazed by anyone who did well on that game. Which led me to defeating Dragons Lair 2 with regularity. I only did it to draw a crowd, which happened pretty common.
Gauntlet dark legacy - over 300$ of college book money down the drain. Terminator - shooter Rtype Simpsons Ninja turtles Raiden - all of them Off-road Tetris
+BBOY ASIST, TMNT is no quarter muncher, but possibly the easiest arcade game in history. I got to Craig with one quarter, beat him with another, then spent 50 cents to defeat Shredder. I was no older than 12, and i'm far from being a pro-gamer.
Cliff Hanger (1983) based on Lupin III cartoon movies, was a real quarter gobbler. One of the first animation based game (like Dragons Lair), Trying to match the controls with the cartoon action was difficult, again similar to Dragons lair.
Smash TV! Feck Yeah!!! BIG MONEY, BIG PRIZES, IIII LOVE IT! Ghost & Goblins was the bomb! Play it enough and you can run though it on one life. To be sure Sinistar hungers for more quarters. We all knew Gauntlet was going to be on this list because Warrior Needs Food Badly. OMG NARC! Nice list.
Defender was just a very hard game with complex controls. A quarter eater for sure, but it wasn't "built" with money grabbing elements. Example would be The Simpsons 4 player, you were bombed with multiple enemies swinging and dropping on you, forcing you to drop more tokens or quarters to keep playing or level up. A bad one too was Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, notorious for overwhelming enemies despite having a 2 player team effort, forcing you to pay more to finish. I'm glad consoles despite microtransactions in many games still allow Freeplay for the classics.
Good call on some great games that ate quarters! I knew Gauntlet was going to be a top pick! Loved that game! Also Dragon's Lair which ate two at a time! That's why I played Space Ace more since it was easier! Lol.
I"m surprise that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is not on this list. That being said I got to call BS on this list that it doesn't have one Rail gun shooter game. If anything they are probably the worst of arcade game that eats up your quarters. Games like Terminator 2 and Revolution X that seems impossible to beat with just 1 credit.
+George Villarreal I'm with you on the Rail Shooters. Those games were impossible to memorize a pattern but I disagree on a beatem up like TMNT. Myself for example, I had no problem reaching Krang on 1 coin after about a month of playing the game roughly once a day after school. You just had to remember the pattern of how the bosses worked and how the enemies would attack. Time-based games like Gauntlet , Rail shooters and spaceship/fighter shooters on the other hand...especially the last 2 genres? Good luck trying to remember how the enemies attacked.
+AllisterH Vertical and horizontal shooters are all about patterns. I used to play them to stretch my quarters. It's just skill and a bit of memorization, that's all.
Boy this brings me back to my childhood, but one game you forgot was Contour and Space Ace. I used to love playing the first Cadet stage of Space Ace and people used to watch me play it couldn't figure out how I did it because I would always reached the end of the game. But the problem with that is playing the Space Ace stage was really hard but in time and after a lot of quarters I beat the game.
Naan man, you can skill sunset riders. A quarter muncher is un skillable to some extent, time limit, short life line, snk boss syndrome, unlearnable pattern, one hit kill etc. A Quarter Muncher!
For me it was the Original four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game in the late 80s. The variety store across from my elementary school got the machine and every lunch period we spent a fortune in allowance to finally beat Krang and Shredder. The first multi-player Simpsons arcade game in the 90s was a big quarter eater as well
Before I watch this #1 Gauntlet WTF never even heard of #1 original DD I played the shit out of but DD3 c'mon now!! Had Narc and Dragon's Lair on PS3.....feel like digging it out of the garage to play them again.....ahhhh nostalgia 🕹
It's amazing the switch around in the early 80's from arcade games designed to kick you off as quickly as possible - to home console games designed in the complete opposite logic.
+Mauricio Merida , The Simpsons was easy. Yes you could spend 5$ to finish it, but i would only spend one quarter to get as far as i could. My money lasted way longer that way. My best was getting to the samurai boss.
I played all these games back in the day when Arcades were so prevalent, and one that KILLED me so many times was Sinistar! THAT was truly one of the hardest, most difficult games I ever played back then! Took many a quarter from me!!!!
Ah, Dragon's Liar, what memories! It is true that I went through MANY, MANY quarters learning the game, but I did learn it. I made much of them back betting friends and strangers that I could beat the game. Fond memories of those days!
I CAN NAME TONS OF GAMES THAT U DUMP QUARTERS ON LIKE BAD DUDES, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, OUTRUN AND FINAL FIGHT TO NAME SOME BUT ROBOTRON HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE ONE I SPENT TONS OF QUARTERS ON TRYING TO GET THE HIGH SCORE. THAT GAME TRIES ITS BEST TO HAND U UR ASS!!!!!!!
Cj Armour when I was 14 Robotron was my jam. I could literally play one quarter (20c piece in Australia) until the machine would crash. Then the arcade would start a game for free for me. I was the guy who had his initials on the entire leader board! Loved that game. Is it available for consoles? I’ve never found it.
Games that ate my allowance~ Donkey Kong Jr, Tempest, Astroids, Moon Patrol, Defender, Scramble, Kangaroo, Dig Dug, Marble Madness, Joust, Zaxxon, Star Wars (trench run), Pole Position, Gyruss, Galaga, Battle Zone, hell pretty much all of them!
That honorable mention Crime fighters, I could be that one in a quarter as a kid and I can do it on the hard difficulty to this day.. it only seems unfair cuz your life ticks down but at the end of each stage you get life back. Each stage gives you progressively more and more life back.
Ah yes... thanks WatchMojo for reminding me why I hate time limits on games! Having spent more quarters than I care to remember, it was still morbidly fun to revisit some of those games!
Aww, I pumped coin after coin for the Western - themed Cheyenne(1983), with the player holding a fake rifle (just to add to the verisimilitude), and its D.& D. style cousin, Crossbow. Great stuff. For old old school, add Asteroids, and Space War( both late-70's games), both using a different make of graphics called...I dunno. It started with the letter "V". And then there's Crazy Climber, Battlezoid, and Tron, which was almost as good as the movie. Anyone got any twennies? This is Australia, so we didn't have quarters, only twenty cent coins. Ohh...the memories are floodin' back...
Back when the internet was " free " , 1992 I downloaded 605 of those old video games from a site called MAME. The files are the actual digital and analog computer footprint from those arcade games. I still have them. copied 4 times on 4 USB jump drives. Anyone interested, respond to this comment and I'll send you a copy for free since it didn't cost me anything. No. It is NOT a virus. Besides. Worried? Just use your protection software.
HA! Thanks, WatchMojo, for giving me a credit in this video - but WTF? My video of all the Dragon's Lair deaths probably breaks copyright law, as it's the video files ripped directly from my official Android game, in 720p. I was always surprised not to get a take-down notice for that one. Perhaps the publishers view it as good advertising? Dragon's Lair certainly ate a lot of my 20 cent coins in my youth, and then Space Ace, too. And Sinistar, of course. Good times.
good call on Rampage..10 year old me and my buddy in the 80s decided to beat the Arcade game and we succeeded..$20 later (80 quarters)..worth noting the game is over 100 levels long...
