BOONG-GA BOONG-GA / SPANK 'EM

No, I haven't actually played it. Serbia was unfortunately done with arcades around '98-'99 and it's a real shame we didn't get to play any that came out since.

I don't see anything extreme about this game. Each nation has its own set of stupid rules they go by. Here in Serbia we go about kissing other people's rears just like the Japanese do, and so it was only natural they did something about it without putting their careers and families in jeopardy. There's a universal, unisex rear dressed in jeans sticking out of the arcade you physically hit and inflict some humiliating pain on the characters in the game. Facial expressions of the characters being spanked are ludicrous, and I guess it feels good to let go of the frustration thinking one spanking might inflict some serious damage to those you hate. Con artists, child molesters, gangsters, mother-in-laws, gold diggers of both sexes should all be paying for your sweat equity not rising, though  they could have done without featuring prostitutes and ex-girlfriends (ex-boyfriends  and male prostitutes should have been there as well). Spank 'Em is revolutionary in a sense that it bringsall the insecurities and frustrations and anger (and sick drives) into the open and allows you to vent it, transforming it into  something else. When I was a kid I was advised to picture people I was scared of as babies pooping their nappies. This game performs a similar function, and I applaud the creators of the game for realising how groundbreaking it was .

PAPERBOY

They don't make them like they used to. Ok, not true, but still - 80s and 90s are replete with oddities that made your usual genre of preference a unique gaming experience. Paperboy does exactly what it says on the tin, and not only will it cater to those Generation Xers who knew exactly what it meant to flip a burger or deliver newspapers to "learn to appreciate the value of money" and afford a new 8bit or 16bit gaming system, but it will also appeal to Millenials, and not just to those Millenials who  search for gaming document of days gone by.

The premise is simple- a paperboy has to deliver his round and throw papers to as many houses of subscribers without being bit by dogs, or hit by a myriad of moving objects, cars, carts, raving neigbours, breakdancers, toys  etc. With some time needed to get acquainted with controls and the scrolling, it plays well and you slowly grow to like evading death traps while trying to keep Daily Sun's readers happy. Even if you do get fired , you get fired to an awesome soundtrack playing in the back.

One can easily of a counterpart from the 90s it inspired. Less death and less guns , though.

And, uhm, don't play the Commodore 64 version , it's really bad.

DRAGON'S LAIR

Before Dragon's Lair a truly cinematic gaming experience could have only taken place in the imagination if the player while they were mentally traversing magical kingdoms inside the confines of textual adventures.The game appeared almost a decade before interactive movies would become a thing  (and would fall from grace soon afterwards) and heralded the genre in the best way possible . I'm not really sure what kind of processing power a laser disc could have provided an arcade cabinet with , but my personal impression at the time was one of sheer awe. In the years when cheap animation reigned supreme on TV (MOTU,Tarzan etc). the emergence of a game that was visually even more appealing than the series was a huge thing. At that time the animated series wasn't being broadcast anywhere in Yugoslavia, so imagine my surprise when I first laid eyes on the game. Who could resist playing out a cartoon, being at the same time entertained and annoyed with a myriad of excellent ways to die. Nowadays people say the game is nothing more than a series of movie sequences you become an able director of after spending a fortune on your trial-and-error learning curve. Memorising steps to  victory wasn't something that was unknown to 80s gaming anyway (one can easily evoke  memories of titles that taunt the player in a number of largely similar  ways). so a credit should be given where it's due , and this game surely deserves the credit and pomp it got.  Whining about coins lost in the local arcade isn't the way to go about writing a  game review.

KUNG FU MASTER

Whether a particular movie served as inspiration for this legendary game or the whole  king fu action movie genre lent its cliches to it, there could be no doubt that Kung Fun Master changed the face of gaming and set some basic standards for side-scrolling beat-em-ups for good.
Lee is a classic kung fu hero who allows the player  to immerse themselves in a genuine kung fu experience as portrayed on big screens of the time. He displays a deliberately limited number of moves (3 kicks, 2 punches and 1 stiff jump) that require restraint, precision and patience and some getting accustomed to the game's rhythm in a player to fully appreciate it. Many contemporary kung fu/karate movie cliches crept in as well -The Caucasian girlfriend of a Caucasian fighter feeling neglected and left out due to his daily routines; a fight scene where many attackers kidnap the girl despite fighter's effort; a mysterious impotent man named after a letter who's  probably a bit too much into muscles and muscular physique and autoeroticism for  someone trying to play the role of an alpha-male; fighting inside a temple with one floor too many where fighters are literally swept off the floor; villains laughing for no reason; energy-draining Holders and little people who know kung fu; fire-breathing dragons released out of cracked spheres and poisonous snakes coming out of pots; butterflies sucking you dry and female kung fu bosses (evil disguised as beauty); enemy jams the fighter has to free himself from that are entertaining on the eyes. Add an excellent backing track,  impressive fx and graphics for a 1984 game to it all and you can easily understand why the experience of playing it in the arcade was truly magical. This  game scores high on playability and replay value with the kids of today that have tried it, and it only goes to show how good the game was.

BUBBLE BOBBLE

My sisters loved playing this classic, my dad loved it , hell, I even  got my mom to play it once - and she hated video games.What was so enticing about this title? Was it the fact that it was one of the few genuine 2-player experiences from the 80s that did it for this classic? Aside from trapping enemies in a bubble and popping them and jumping platforms, the two B brothers must have offered something je ne sais quoi  to earn the status of a classic. It must have been the head-spinning and the cuteness that did it for all of us.The cute factor and the world that displayed this cuteness worked just as well in the arcade or an amusement park or on my friends NES whenever I would play it - there was always somebody asking to join me in my Baburu Boburu adventures. And yes - the iconic game soundtrack was heaven!

For all that it’s a great game inspired by a merely good one, Bubble Bobble was not, in itself, hugely influential—with the possible exception of the magnificent sequel Rainbow Islands. Between them, perhaps, they simply managed to perfect the formula. RS

QIX

One of those games quickly achieving cult status that you both hate (for being too damn hard to play in an arcade full of people yelling around you) and love (because it breaks new grounds).
You're a drawing marker (though I like to think of it more in terms of a futuristic vehicle as seen from way, way up) marking area by area of a rectangle screen with the aim of claiming  at least 60 percent of the rectangle, all the while avoiding direct contact with the Sparx who thread the same paths you did and claiming an area without it being touched by a mysterous entity the game was named after.

It's a fun and exciting play, so I guess its quick decline in popularity has to do with somewhat abstract graphics that didn't clearly indicate what you were seeing on the screen. Being a game ma(r)ker has always been hard. To me this is as essential in the history of gaming as Tetris, Pang, Block Out and other like-minded games. Try it for yourselves on any of the browsing game sites with classics nd you'll see how great it is.

SPACE HARRIER

God bless the 80s and its technical restrictions when it comes to video games, for Space Harrier with its surrealist surroundings wouldn't have been made. The game was ported to a plethora of systems and  I played the game quite frequently on 4 of them and enjoyed each and every version of it. Whether I played the 16bit arcade version or the clunky 8bit C64 version with the mesmerizing sid soundtrack, the experience of playing the game was simultaneously joyful and bizarre. First I feared the fact that I would let it suck me into its world whenever I played it and I feared this game just as I feared early animes as a kid (whether it was framerate, the goriness of it  or something else, I don't know). There was also something beautifully unsettling about flying through a long-gone civilization's urban landscape and killing mammoth cyclops and  the extinct civilization's defence systems in the form of  giant heads and flying shapes, and I couldn't help but feel like a usurper disturbing the peace of the deceased. No explanation was given to the nature of Harrier's mission(s), no storylines, nothing, and I would often  get this feeling of being a bad guy. When I revisited the game in college I had a completely different perception of the game , but the taikan (body sensation) remained. I still feel strange playing this title.

Space Harrier was the first successful rail shooter ever made.

1-2 SWIITCH

There's been much negative hype about the newest Nintendo console , but it only seems to add to the never-ending dissatisfaction of the fraction of gamers worldwide that simply don't enjoy a more "Japanese" entertainment product. By Japanese I'm thinking quirky and unique, disregarding European and American humour, preferences and cultural  norms. 1-2 SWITCH condensed the rich experiences of the Japanese arcade world and came up with a concept that is more accessible to the Western audiences. 18 remarkably simple and fun-to-play mini-games - milking the cow, quick draw, sword fight, wizard fight, runway - are just an introduction to  a new system and the concept behind it, making controllers and the console itself part of the game (holding and rocking a baby console :) ) and looking far more graceful than the tennis games of the previous Nintendo paradigm. I would love it if they switched from a controller to a holographic glove (yes, the original glove was glitchy as hell but I loved it) one day making the experience even greater, but this is as good an experience as it gets. 

Hard-core gamers will naturally ditch this console and its conept for a more "immersive" experience  found elsewhere, but us casual gamers can only give kudos to the new Nintendo system for trying to reinvent themselves. If you hated the mini-games titles back in the 80s you'll hate this one as well.Or you can try the new Zelda game for Nintendo Switch , it's looking wonderful. Or not. 

BLOCK OUT

Tetris was a success with every kid I knew, and so was Duotris on the c64 , but when I saw this game in the amusement park that came to my hometown  I was completely blown away by it!Having spent a few days playing this title for hours on end, I decided to buy a Commodore64 version of it, and although it was quite a decent conversion I got back to playing the arcade version. The elegance behind the original Tetris game was so simply unique that the only way to upgrade it in a way was to make a 3d version of it, and the results were impressive.There's a decent colour palette that doesn't get in the way of  playing the game, and a firm sense of depth while moving your tertominoes about.The giant head that challenges you and decides whether you live on or die gives you an impression you are actually solving your packing problems on a holodeck of some kind.
Though nothing beats its original predecessor, this title is highly addictive and rewarding. Whether this game helped me with my geometry lessons and indeed enhanced my spatial intelligence or not is completely irrelevant. It was and still is unique and fun to play.