Christmas fun with the sprogs - what to play?

[ocb]

I just fixed a laptop I used to use for MAME, got all nostalgic- and dug out a USB joystick/button panel I picked up at a local 2nd hand media/gaming shop a while back.

I decided each day during the holidays we’d play 1 or 2 games. Nothing later than mid 80s, with focus on 70s/early 80s Golden Age. One coin per game (no credit-stuffing), button board in a similar setup to the original game.

So far we’ve done:
Donkey Kong
Galaxian
Moon Cresta
Moon Patrol

Proud to say I can kick their butts on ever game

No point sticking to vertical or horizontal shooters though, and tbh I’d happily try lesser known titles if they were fun!

Considering following unless folks have better ideas?
Xevious or 1942
Dig Dug
Gyruss
Frogger
Boot Hill

Suggestions???

Trying to find interesting and a bit unusual for kids (10-15 yr olds).

If I do play some later games they’d be:
Ghost n goblins
Shinobi
Commando

Cheers!

 

[pooman2084]

Mr, Do!

Zoo Keeper

Carnival

 

[kingtreelo]

Wonderboy
BombJack

 

[John Bennett]

Paperboy was the one old game that got my son's interest.

 

[TWB]

Track & Field and Hyper Sports these can get quite competitive.

If you do play Wonderboy don't forget to enter your score HERE

 

[ChrisBEANS]

Go a bit more recent… try Snow Bros

Great fun family friendly gane

Easy to pick up, hard to master kinda stuff

 

[ocb]

Paperboy - I can’t imagine playing that on anything but dedicated cab tbh…

Carnival though - oooh that game drove me up the wall BITD…perfect

I’ve now given myself the idea to build a bottom projection bartop box thingy…I forgot how crap Boot Hill looked otherwise….would look good for SI as well tbh…

 

[funk]

Bubble Bobble always my go to!

 

[ocb]

I played Carnival yesterday on my own - kids couldn’t be persuader to get off Fortnite & Metal Gear….

It seems my hatred/frustration for the game has survived the 30 year gap since last time I played it!

 

[DanP]

When my two were younger they liked any multiplayer game we could play at the same time. Things like;

Snow Bros
Gauntlet 1&2
The Simpsons
Metal Slug

They also really liked Paperboy and Crazy Taxi, I guess something about the cartoony graphics?

Dan

 

[funk]

I remember gravitating toward paperboy when young because I could kind of relate to it, a paper round etc. was reachable.

That said, I also loved trashman on the spectrum 🤣

World of Spectrum - Trashman

Trashman (New Generation Software)

worldofspectrum.org

 

[ocb]

Last night even the wife played! They had 30 minutes to wait for Diablo on Nintendo Switch to download stuff, so I fired up Frogger in about…30 seconds

None of them had ever played Frogger before, and funny to see them getting all stressed out and excited- not in the way modern games do. Weird also to see how slow/bad their reactions are - they can’t seem to wait exactly half a second then move…anyway.

When Diablo finally loaded, my oldest (14) wanted to play Galaga. Couldn’t find the right combo of Mame + rom, so fired up Galaxian. I let him play a couple of games, he was button mashing with no aim trying to get it to fire more than one bullet a time…kids these days….

I had a go and the entire family stopped to watch…the kids were saying “wow Dad - you’re really good!”. They never see me play consoles (I can’t…never figured out how to use a gamepad/joycon/game controller thingy), so just assume I’m crap at all gaming!

Usually when the cabs are up and running in the garage, it’s never the vertical Golden Age stuff on, but later horizontal games like bubble bobble, metal slug, KoF etc