Vanguard
You know, there are moments in the archaeology of video gaming when you stumble into a back corner of a smoke-tinged pizza joint circa 1981 and hear the insistent, brain-massaging […]
Vindicators
I remember stumbling onto *Vindicators* in the hazy rear corner of a bowling alley arcade, flanked by a battered *Paperboy* and the ever-resentful hum of a snack machine devouring quarters […]
Virtua Fighter 2
Standing in front of a gleaming *Virtua Fighter 2* cabinet is the closest you could come, in 1994, to time travel and brawling at the same timeâa headlong dash into […]
Wacky Gator
In the low-slung, sugar-tinged hellscape of the 1990s American family arcadeâand I use âfamilyâ loosely, considering how many fathers lost themselves to the hypnotic whir of Skee-Ball ticketsâthere lurked a […]
Wizard of Oz
Somewhere over the rainbow, in the great suburban wasteland where hope goes to eat nachos and lose a little dignity, youâll find âThe Wizard of Oz Redemption Game.â Donât let […]
World’s Largest Pac-Man
The âWorldâs Largest Pac-Manâ sits hulking in the corner of your local Dave & Busterâs, a monument to American excess and that desperate urge to recapture youth by making everything, […]
WWF Wrestlemania
WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game was Midwayâs fever-dream of a world where Eddie Van Halen riffs underscored every choke slamâa world both less and more real than the ring itself. […]
X Games Snowboarder
X Games Snowboarder (Arcade, 2000): Letâs talk about a fever dream conjured in equal parts by Mountain Dew, late-â90s ESPN, and the kind of brilliant, caffeinated maniacs who believe âarcade […]
X-Men (6-Player)
The X-Men (6-Player) arcade cabinet was less an entertainment device and more a small-scale test site for Lord of the Flies, if the Lord happened to be Magneto and everyone […]
Xevious
Xevious (1982 Namco, distributed in North America by Atari) is one of those games that caught the arcade world just as it figured out how to dream in color. Slide […]