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Games
Arcade Fire: Top 10 90's Arcade Games
From Mortal Kombat to Street Fighter, Daytona and NBA Jam, the games you were dropping coins in the cabinet to play.
Written by Suzanne Locke - UAE
3 min readPublished on
If the Eighties were about Pacman and Donkey Kong, the Nineties brought fighting, wrestling and racing to the amusement arcades…

1. Street Fighter II

Insert Coin.... Round 1, Fight!
Insert Coin.... Round 1, Fight!© www.streetfighter.com
Capcom’s Street Fighter came out in 1987 but its 1991 sequel really set the bar for fighting games, with its eight characters and combo control buttons. And of course gave Jean-Claude Van Damme and little Kylie Minogue a spin-off movie.

2. Mortal Kombat series

Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat© Midway
“So real it hurts”, five arcade games flew out of the Midway stable in quick succession from ’92 - ’97 – cue high punches, low punches, high kicks, low kicks and blocks. Known for its gore and the particularly gruesome finishing Fatality moves. Also spun off into a fantasy martial arts movie, directed by Paul WS Anderson.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time© World of Longplays
Cowabunga, dude! First released in 1989, the game was nevertheless played well into the nineties, along with its sequel Turtles In Time, as ‘turtly’ rad fans played the four turtles (often all together with the four-player option) and pitted themselves against the evil Shredder.

4. NBA Jam

NBA Jam
NBA Jam© Midway/EA
Coining the phrase Boomshakalaka, NBA Jam used both real team names and digital likenesses of famous basketball players – although not Michael Jordan, who owned his own naming rights. Shaquille O’Neal starred in the arcade game, playing for the Orlando Magic, but was removed from later home Sega versions when he ‘did a Jordan’.

5. The Simpsons

Homer on a mission!
Homer on a mission!© www.simpsonsworld.com
Four players got to turn into Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa as they fought their way to the kidnapped Maggie. Moe’s Tavern, Springfield nuclear power plant and nasty Mr Burns featured, along with Marge’s vacuum player (?!).

6. Daytona USA

Daytona USA
Daytona USA© Sega
Players got to settle into proper racing seats as they selected raced real-life foes hunched over their own steering wheels in up to seven other parallel cabinets, as the Race Leader sign flashed proudly over the leading stock car driver. Re-released in 2010 as Sega Racing Classic.

7. WWF WrestleMania

A screenshot from WWF Wrestlefest the game.
WWF Wrestlefest© Technos Japan
“It’s got brawls!” shouted the game’s poster, featuring Bret Hart as one of the eight WWF fighters in this wrestling game that took inspiration from both Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam.

8. Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park SNES
Jurassic Park SNES© [unknown]
Another Sega series set on a movie set, this time the Isla Nublar, Jurassic Park came out in 1994 and you could chase your velociraptors from the ‘comfort’ of a moving Jeep seat. Celebrating the latest Jurassic World, Jurassic Park Arcade makes a triumphant return in 2015.

9. Crazy Taxi

Crazy Taxi
Crazy Taxi© Sega
A latecomer to the decade, the game went on to become one of the bestsellers on the Sega Dreamcast. Taxi drivers are on the clock and racing around the city as fast as possible (sound familiar?), doing stunts for tips.

10. Virtual Fighter/ Tekken

Tekken
Tekken© [unknown]
Sega’s ’93 3D fighting game had chunky fighters, with Lego-style hands and enormous triangular feet, and just three simple moves. Namco’s Tekken - which came out a year later - was directed by the same poached designers, and allowed the player to control each of the fighter's four limbs independently.
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