That's an awesome arcade! Those old Spy Hunter cabinets used to be really sweet. I think my favorite arcade games of all time though are the sit in Star Wars and the sit in Roadblaster. I really like arcade games you sit inside of.
Timeline Arcade Visit
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 On 10/11/2021 at 03:09 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
On Friday my friend and I took a trip to York, PA to go to Timeline Arcade. York is about 2 hours west of where I am. I only know this town because it's the hometown of the band Live who had some hit songs in the 90s like "Lightning Strikes". The arcade is right in the center of town near the courthouse. I accidently forgot to photograph the facade, but I got a lot of shots of the arcade cabinets and pinball machines I played.
Spy Hunter
I confirmed for myself that this is the only way to play this game. Console ports are just dreadful compared to the cabinet. With the cabinet you have supreme control of your car using the pedal, gear shift and steering column. Bumping enemy cars off the road is so satisfying. I only wish my real car would turn into a boat whenever I needed it too like in this game.
Coors Light Bowling by Capcom
This is my friend Mark playing this cabinet that was in one of our hometown pizza shops when we were kids. Both he and I played the heck out it back then afternoons after middle school. It uses a simple roller-ball controler like Marble Madness or Missile Command.
NBA Jam
Mark and I played head to head and it was super, trash-talkin' fun. I tried to use the current pro basketball style of shooting only 3-pointers. It didn't work so well. The odds built into the game, based on 90s pro play, were likely against me. Now players can hit 3s like free-throws. 2v2 basketball is great for an arcade game.
Sky Shark
I was so pleased to see this game, even without the top panel art, I used to play it at a pizza shop when I was in college in New York (huh! York, New York? What does it mean? haha). I recently found out that Toaplan developed this game which was called Flying Shark in Europe and Japan. Romstar published it in North America. It's an excellent vertically scrolling shooter and tough. I love the graphics too. The airplanes and tanks remind me of plastic models I used to make as a kid.
Battle Shark
I thought this was a 70s game I used to play but it came out in '89 by Taito. I guess that was Sea Wolf but Battle Shark is very similar. What's extra cool about it is that the periscope shakes, and a glass crack appears on the screen like in Battlezone when you get hit by a torpedo.
Golden Axe
I'm not sure I ever played the arcade cabinet before. I mostly played it on Genesis. I find the cabinet version somewhat easier to play. Joysticks seem to give you a little better control, I think. It still hate getting knocked off a cool dragon after I mount it. It happens a little bit too easily for my liking. I still like playing this game though.
Gauntlet Legends
I've only played this on N64 and Dreamcast, if I remember rightly. It's fun but I couldn't die and kept playing for a long while. I finally just stopped. I'm not sure why free-play gave me infinite lives. Usually you can still die and get a continue screen. Strange. Oh, yeah, everything was on free-play. You just pay an hourly fee for the whole arcade.
Pin Bot
I've played this before and many times digitally. I used techniques I learned on the digital version. I'm definitely a better player for it. I would say the game's pace is a little bit slower, seemingly, than the digital version. I guess it's easier to hit the ball harder with a controler on the digital version. I tended to underhit on the real table.
Black Knight
The real table has a killer metal soundtrack I don't remember hearing on the digital version. Maybe they didn't want to licence the music from whomever did it? The sound really adds to the experience making the real table a lot of fun. Metalocalypse would love it.
Donkey Kong Jr.
I always liked DK jr. more than original DK. I guess I like climbing vines more than running up ramps.
Timeline arcade had many other cabinets, pinball tables, and other amusement machines. These are just the ones I played. My friend Mark played other things like the Star Wars arcade games.
I noticed that Timeline Arcade has several sofas with consoles in front of them. One set up had old CRT TVs with Atari, NES, SNES and Genesis consoles hooked up. Another had Xbox One and PS4 (I think. Maybe it was series X and PS5 but I didn't look closely). For one short second I thought about logging in to Xbox with my account just for fun but I didn't. I was there for the old cabinets. Soon we'd return and play console stuff later, which is the subject of my next blog.
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