Arcade cabinets: you know them, you love them,and your probably hope to one day throw one in the corner of your home. Few things tie a room together like an arcade’s never-ending rage and button-mashing.
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While it’s fun to dream about owning a cabinet of your very own, plenty of people remember the good old days of wasting an obscene amount of quarters tryingto beat a cheap boss. It was an era where cool and difficulty were the only things that mattered, and getting the highest score possible or knowing all the secrets of a game made you the dorkiest little ruler of the arcade.
10Broforce
This game would be a hit from the character selection alone. It would sound like a lie, some kid telling you about a game where you can play as Rambo, The Terminator, and Robocop all in the same game. But it’s not a lie, it’s just Broforce.
The game could be terrible (it’s actually quite good), but the promise of playing as those characters is more than enough to draw people in. The classic uber-manly style of the game is the exact kind of arcade action everyone wanted, making Broforce a timeless game fit for any generation.
9MultiVersus
If you putthe excellent arcade fighter MultiVersusinto an arcade, it would become that one machine everyone crowded around. Curb stomping Bugs Bunny with Batman has never been so right, and adding Shaggy into the mix really just makes the game a can’t-miss experience.
Imagine all the rumors about unlocking Ultra-Instinct Shaggy, or being able to play as LeBron James’ one true rival, Super Saiyan Michael Jordan. The stories would write themselves, but let’s all be honest, now we all want Super Saiyan Michael Jordan inMultiversus. Or, at the very least, to be able to actually play MultiVersus again…
8Untitled Goose Game
To be fair, a game where you playas a hilariously bothersome goosemay not have been all that cool, but the novelty would have drawn people in. It’s not every day someone can play as a goose with all the mischievous energy of Bart Simpson, so people may end up trying to make as many people as possible have a cow.
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Throwing on some kind of short timer for play sessions inUntitled Goose Gamewould keep people coming back for more, even if that one kid would just end up hogging the machine the whole day. There’s never a bad time to learn to not mess with a deceptively terrifying goose.
7Heavy Rain
Anyone who played arcade classics like Dragon’s Lair would loveHeavy Rainon Arcade. With a slight bump up in difficulty and streamlining of gameplay, Heavy Rain could become the ultimate quarter-waster. Imagine that Ethan driving section on the arcade, no one would come out a winner.
Sure, we may have to sacrificethe hilarious press X to Jason moment, but a small price must be paid. This game would allow that one kid who always lied about what happened in a game to actually have a plausible story. Maybe their uncle who works at Nintendo really was right about a secret ending where the Origami Killer was actually the friends we made along the way.
6LittleBigPlanet 3
Considering so much can be done in a title likeLittleBigPlanet 3, it’s a no-brainer that it would have been a hit in any era. The thing is, no one would ever make it through any kind of cooperative levels, as we all know arcades would purely make this a versus experience.
Forget trying to make it to the end of a level, each player would be fighting to make sure they are the only one who actually can make it to that final goal. Tricking players into their own demise so that you’re able to be the ruler of the arcade sounds exactly like what would end up going down.
5The Messenger
If there’s one thing I know about the arcade generation, it’s that ninjas were in. Forget anything else about the excellent throwback game that isThe Messenger. All this game needs is to show off that there is a ninja involved and it’s bound to be breaking arcade records.
Everyone would beexcited about a new Ninja Gaiden, not realizing that this game is so much more. That’s without mentioning that novelties like time travel were immediately cool back then as well. Realistically, this game sells itself with the promise of time-traveling ninjas. I can’t think of anything more painfully nineties than that.
4The Witness
Anyone who’s played The Witness and has the desire to excel at everything they do will know how aggravating of an experience the excellent game can be. It’s for that reason that it translates perfectly to arcades. It may not be full of action, but it will have people angrily shaking the entire cabinet.
If you only had so many chances to fail, The Witness would probably be the most challenging arcade experience out there. Forget any kind of social life, your life would be parked right in front of that arcade machine trying not to use up the entirety of your last allowance.
3Undertale
An RPG likeUndertalemay seem like an odd choice for an arcade, but with some streamlining and added difficulty, everyone would be fighting over what the right way to play the game is. The worst part is that Sans absolutely would have been a nineties mascot and everyone would have ceaselessly quoted his cheesy jokes.
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It’s the perfect kind of game for classic rumors too because how many people are going to believe that the real enemy is a silly little flower? Although, once the game got to that point, it’s possible that some parents might have found the boss a bit demonic, so on second thought, the game ABSOLUTELY would have been a huge hit in the arcade era.
2Shovel Knight
Shovel Knightisn’t exactly the cool kind of hero that would have thrived back during the arcade generation, but that’s okay, because that would mean that only the truly cool kids would know about this awesome game. Saving the world with a shovel? What’s next, A plumber saving a princess? Wait a minute…
This game would definitely be a hit, but the younger kids would probably skip it because shovels are lame, only to be drawn back to the machine by all the bigger kids absolutely moshing tothe killer soundtrack that Shovel Knight has.
1Dark Souls
I can’t even imagine how funny it would be to be wandering through an arcade and stopping to watch some random kid die to the Asylum Demon over and over. We all know it would happen, some kid who swears they’re amazing at games just losing quarter after quarter to the first boss.
Realistically, the arcade could just be fighting the game’s many bosses, creating the hardest arcade game ever. you may’t tell me that aDark Soulsarcade cabinet with “Prepare To Die” written across the top in over-the-top nineties arcade style wouldn’t bring everyone in to immediately scream in frustration.
