He neglects to mention that when Dragon's lair came out, it was one of the first games ever to cost $.50 to play. before that, nearly all games were a quarter. This made it all the more expensive.
Thanks, ANTI HERO! That 1550 I mentioned? It actually morphed into a 1,940-in-1 Ultracade. Granted, I don't even bother with probably 1,900 of those...but it's still cool bragging rights for a bachelor! Life is good.
My friends and I chipped in and bought the book for Dragon's Lair through our scholastic book club. Was basically the only book we read in the entire 6th grade. I could finish dragon's Lair and Space Ace.
I was down to full play through on 1 credit...yeah I was awesome back in the day...now just a sad old man that remembers hearing the voice "DRAGON'S LAIR!" and running to it like a meth freak.
When I was a kid, I will never forget the first time I saw Dragon's Lair! It was amazing! My friends and I were instantly hooked and we spent so much money trying to defeat that game. Eventually, the arcade had to purchase a second Dragon's Lair game because of the waiting lines! And in all the time playing and watching that game, I only ever saw it defeated twice! Still one of my Top 10 games ever.
Lmfao 😂🤣😅 Exactamundo. That game drove me around the bend tryin to finish that game. It's still my mission in life to find and play that game and finish it.
I must've wasted well over $5,000 in quarters lifetime on playing at the arcades and it was so much fun,too bad kids nowadays won't know what it was like lol
Krazimuffin same here, as a kid i watched the "older kids" play that awesome game, then i tried it and BAM dead...but i still to this day love Dragon's Lair AND Space Ace..lol
I hardly got anywhere with that game as a child. I'd press the stick in the direction of the flashing light, like you're supposed to, and he always died anyway. After 3 or 4 tries I never played it again.
+Jim B. too easy to be a quarter muncher. I would get to the samuraii boss with just one quarter back in the day. And TMNT cost me 1$ to finish the game last time i played it. Those Konami games were fun, but very far from being unfair in any way.
I got skilled enough to finish the original TMNT and X-Men in one credit, but Turtles In Time... damn you. Even at the easiest setting, things got ridiculously hard with as much as 8 foot soldiers attacking at once.
+Brandon Withnell hence greed in my book. If there were such a thing as a game that includes free DLC and doesn't require online+network membership, BS DLC that are just features/coding in disguise via demo/beta, split screen capabilities, ability to mod saves or the game itself, a pause menu to restart a level or adjust something, and some genre that isn't survival/FPS based(hyped and cliche) as of today; then you're out of luck unless you want to play amiibo or build a PC and play Fallout 4 or some shit and finally say "the gaming industry sucks."
When Dragon's Lair first came out I had to put a lot of quarters in the game to keep it going. But not long after I could finish the entire game on a single quarter once I got the patterns down.
Oh yes on "Ikari Warriors." (Especially since you couldn't get fire bullets or grenades right before the most difficult parts.) I was relieved when I got it on the ATARI 7800. Not only did it not cost me a quarter every time, but it was more fair. And there were a lot more opportunities to get fire bullets and grenades.
+Derpurs Machinest (Gamer88) simpsons arcade took loads of my cash, but it was one of the easier arcade games, I actually beat mr burns a few times in the simpsons game, lisa was my character, I liked the jump rope
Heavy Barrel. I adored that game so much. When the second level boss, the one with the mechanical arms on a rail one, gave me so much grief, I must have spent a small fortune on it. Of course since you can die in one hit anyways, it was already a black hole for quarters.
Back when the internet was " free " , 1992 I downloaded 605 of those old video games from a site called MAME. The files are the actual digital and analog computer footprint from those arcade games. I still have them. copied 4 times on 4 USB jump drives. Anyone interested, respond to this comment and I'll send you a copy for free since it didn't cost me anything. No. It is NOT a virus. Besides. Worried? Just use your protection software.
Great video! I'm old enough to have played all those games in the arcade. Good times. I agreed with all of your choices except Mortal Kombat. After beating it several times on day 1, we asked the store owner to turn up the difficulty. Those AI advantages are all disadvantages really. Too easy!
I remember when Dragon's Lair came out. I never even tried it. I watched everyone else (most of whom were far better gamers than I was) get destroyed in short order. It was the first 50 cent machine. I beat one Sinistar ONCE. Then I quit. That one victory probably cost me $50 in quarters! Great memories.
I can agree with most of your choices. Although I found Mortal Kombat to be pretty easy. There where quite a few games I went broke playing but that was not one of them.
Star Wars Trilogy arcade. It had inverted controls only for the lightsaber parts. and you had to follow un-inverted on-screen directional cues to boot.
Especially when some jerk arcade owner would deliberately mis-calibrate the light guns, I knew of one arcade that did seedy shit like that and worse. bastards. We all got wise to it and went to another arcade. He closed down a year later.
You mention Ghost'n Goblins for the time limit (which most arcade games had at the time, specially beat'em ups) and you skip the fact that you have to finish the game TWICE to reach the real ending? Shame on you!
Cruisin' USA, RUSH, Area 51, Carnevil, House of the dead, Mortal Kombat 2 through 4, soul caliber. That was my childhood from the mid 90's to mid 2000's. Good times
I remember when me and my brother and some other kids were "fishing" in arcades. I made a little hole in the coin, tied the coin with a thread and kept pulling it, each pull was a credit. Of course, with the gang around the machine to hide the cheat from the coin seller. Good times that never come back, the 80s.
Jesus Black Yup, keeping up with all the chaos was an acquired skill. I did significantly worse whenever there was a second player thrown into the mix on bullet hell games.
Oh you know it! I don't know if the SEGA GENESIS version is different from the arcade, but even on the SG version, you don't get your energy back at the start of each board. There's no way to get more energy. And some creatures are good at killing you with one hit. It's still annoying on the SG. But at least it doesn't cost a quarter every time.
Cliff Hanger (1983) based on Lupin III cartoon movies, was a real quarter gobbler. One of the first animation based game (like Dragons Lair), Trying to match the controls with the cartoon action was difficult, again similar to Dragons lair.
Good call on some great games that ate quarters! I knew Gauntlet was going to be a top pick! Loved that game! Also Dragon's Lair which ate two at a time! That's why I played Space Ace more since it was easier! Lol.
Sinistar was one of my favorite games growing up!! I was actually pretty good at it!! And like Galaga and Asteroids I could stick a quarter in it and play for literally hours!! The only other game I was a "monster" on was Joust!! I have been has high on Joust as level 45, and the one machine I played had my high score on it for at least two years until they got rid of the machine in the gas station where it sat!! And I had three friends of mine try to be my high score and told me it was impossible!! Another game I used to be good at was Defender!!
Dragons Lair was the first real LaserDisc game Space Ace was the second game put out by the same company. They both had animated scenes saved on a laser disc and had several outcomes for each scene depending on how you messed up or succeeded. You had about 20 different scenes in Dragon's Lair that were run through twice. Once in "normal" mode, and then once in reverse where all your left/right commands needed to be mirrored. Difficulty set by the arcade owners could make it so that there were flashes to guide you or not. If you made it through both sets of scenes, you went into the Dragon's Lair. They had two different sets of commands that were very difficult to distinguish to know what list of commands you needed to perform. If you were trying to learn the game by playing, you had a large investment of quarters ahead of you as the game was one of the first I remember that was 50c or two tokens per play. I wasn't going to pay that to learn a game, so I watched people play for a pretty long time. When I had watched several people play all the way through and bought the best player I had seen play dinner to learn how to know how to get through the Dragon's Lair scene, I played my first game of it. Made it all the way to the Dragon's Lair before I lost my first life, and finished the game on my second life of my first game. Good times.
Boy this brings me back to my childhood, but one game you forgot was Contour and Space Ace. I used to love playing the first Cadet stage of Space Ace and people used to watch me play it couldn't figure out how I did it because I would always reached the end of the game. But the problem with that is playing the Space Ace stage was really hard but in time and after a lot of quarters I beat the game.
For me it was the Original four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game in the late 80s. The variety store across from my elementary school got the machine and every lunch period we spent a fortune in allowance to finally beat Krang and Shredder. The first multi-player Simpsons arcade game in the 90s was a big quarter eater as well
That one actually can be beaten on one credit, though it’s extremely hard and I’ve yet to manage that myself. The game does, however, allow you to purchase extra lives during active gameplay (only the original coin-op has this; console ports and emulated re-releases have this feature removed for obvious reasons)
Aww, I pumped coin after coin for the Western - themed Cheyenne(1983), with the player holding a fake rifle (just to add to the verisimilitude), and its D.& D. style cousin, Crossbow. Great stuff. For old old school, add Asteroids, and Space War( both late-70's games), both using a different make of graphics called...I dunno. It started with the letter "V". And then there's Crazy Climber, Battlezoid, and Tron, which was almost as good as the movie. Anyone got any twennies? This is Australia, so we didn't have quarters, only twenty cent coins. Ohh...the memories are floodin' back...
When my local mall arcade got Dragon's Lair they put it right out in front, just inside the entrance to the arcade. They ended up having to move it back because the crowd of people watching people play the game was spilling out into the mall.
I remember being amazed by anyone who did well on that game. Which led me to defeating Dragons Lair 2 with regularity. I only did it to draw a crowd, which happened pretty common.
HA! Thanks, WatchMojo, for giving me a credit in this video - but WTF? My video of all the Dragon's Lair deaths probably breaks copyright law, as it's the video files ripped directly from my official Android game, in 720p. I was always surprised not to get a take-down notice for that one. Perhaps the publishers view it as good advertising? Dragon's Lair certainly ate a lot of my 20 cent coins in my youth, and then Space Ace, too. And Sinistar, of course. Good times.
umm Dragons Lair should be 1. It took 50 cents to replay. I remember watching people die within 30 seconds of starting up again wasting up to 5 bucks just to get through a level
Those don't really qualify as quarter suckers since you can't pay more to continue playing like a lot of these games. Allowing you to continue a game with another quarter was the downfall of arcade games. There was no longer a need to play to get better when you could just pay another quarter to continue. SmashTV (and Robotron) were *NOT* quarter suckers. If you were good you could get to the end of SmashTV on a single quarter, or clear level 255 on Robotron and get back to level 1 and continue on. Also, with a good cooperating group, you could play Gauntlet for a good long while on a single quarter.
In case you were wondering how the Mojoholics voted in our poll, see the votes and entries here: watchmojo.com/suggest/Top+10+Notorious+Quarter+Devouring+Arcade+Games Make sure to sign up and participate on future lists at www.WatchMojo.com/suggest Note that Viewer votes are just one of the hundreds of data points and variables that we look at when we create our lists, however.
Smash TV! Feck Yeah!!! BIG MONEY, BIG PRIZES, IIII LOVE IT! Ghost & Goblins was the bomb! Play it enough and you can run though it on one life. To be sure Sinistar hungers for more quarters. We all knew Gauntlet was going to be on this list because Warrior Needs Food Badly. OMG NARC! Nice list.
It's amazing the switch around in the early 80's from arcade games designed to kick you off as quickly as possible - to home console games designed in the complete opposite logic.
One player to use two guns in a light gun game. Target: Terror took advantage of that with the "Justice Mode" feature. Some arcades have it at the cost of another credit. Others have it for free. You could do this in older games, too, but it would still feel like two players using each arm, and high scores would not be shared/considerate.
Gauntlet dark legacy - over 300$ of college book money down the drain. Terminator - shooter Rtype Simpsons Ninja turtles Raiden - all of them Off-road Tetris
+BBOY ASIST, TMNT is no quarter muncher, but possibly the easiest arcade game in history. I got to Craig with one quarter, beat him with another, then spent 50 cents to defeat Shredder. I was no older than 12, and i'm far from being a pro-gamer.
Before I watch this #1 Gauntlet WTF never even heard of #1 original DD I played the shit out of but DD3 c'mon now!! Had Narc and Dragon's Lair on PS3.....feel like digging it out of the garage to play them again.....ahhhh nostalgia 🕹
Ah, Dragon's Liar, what memories! It is true that I went through MANY, MANY quarters learning the game, but I did learn it. I made much of them back betting friends and strangers that I could beat the game. Fond memories of those days!
Yeah and I don't care what anyone says if you don't have a second player you are not beating this one. Got to love the fact they included credits in the god damn console games as well. :) Just out of pure spite.
Yep each game play is 0.50 cents and there 4 times in it. Total is 2$. if got overtime you have to a other 0.50 cents to continue to play. Because I always put 2$. Yeah I spend a lot coins on NBA jam, specially the TE version.
Ah yes... thanks WatchMojo for reminding me why I hate time limits on games! Having spent more quarters than I care to remember, it was still morbidly fun to revisit some of those games!
good call on Rampage..10 year old me and my buddy in the 80s decided to beat the Arcade game and we succeeded..$20 later (80 quarters)..worth noting the game is over 100 levels long...
Damn, man. Dragon's Lair and Sinistar brought back a slew of memories. Used to love going to the Arcade on Friday or Saturday night before heading out to the lake. What a trip.
Naan man, you can skill sunset riders. A quarter muncher is un skillable to some extent, time limit, short life line, snk boss syndrome, unlearnable pattern, one hit kill etc. A Quarter Muncher!
I LOVED Rampage! :) I completely forgot about Sinistar! Wow! That was an oldie!! I remember when Dragon's Lair first came out. Nobody had ever heard of a cartoon video game! The first arcade game that was 50 cents and definitely a wallet drainer!
I played all these games back in the day when Arcades were so prevalent, and one that KILLED me so many times was Sinistar! THAT was truly one of the hardest, most difficult games I ever played back then! Took many a quarter from me!!!!
That honorable mention Crime fighters, I could be that one in a quarter as a kid and I can do it on the hard difficulty to this day.. it only seems unfair cuz your life ticks down but at the end of each stage you get life back. Each stage gives you progressively more and more life back.
I"m surprise that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is not on this list. That being said I got to call BS on this list that it doesn't have one Rail gun shooter game. If anything they are probably the worst of arcade game that eats up your quarters. Games like Terminator 2 and Revolution X that seems impossible to beat with just 1 credit.
+George Villarreal I'm with you on the Rail Shooters. Those games were impossible to memorize a pattern but I disagree on a beatem up like TMNT. Myself for example, I had no problem reaching Krang on 1 coin after about a month of playing the game roughly once a day after school. You just had to remember the pattern of how the bosses worked and how the enemies would attack. Time-based games like Gauntlet , Rail shooters and spaceship/fighter shooters on the other hand...especially the last 2 genres? Good luck trying to remember how the enemies attacked.
+AllisterH Vertical and horizontal shooters are all about patterns. I used to play them to stretch my quarters. It's just skill and a bit of memorization, that's all.
Defender was just a very hard game with complex controls. A quarter eater for sure, but it wasn't "built" with money grabbing elements. Example would be The Simpsons 4 player, you were bombed with multiple enemies swinging and dropping on you, forcing you to drop more tokens or quarters to keep playing or level up. A bad one too was Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, notorious for overwhelming enemies despite having a 2 player team effort, forcing you to pay more to finish. I'm glad consoles despite microtransactions in many games still allow Freeplay for the classics.
Here's a few quarter wasters. Off-Road Fury & Time Crisis. Dragon's Lair was basically a false promise. It seemed so cool because of the animations. But it really wasn't a game--more of a CD ROM before people knew what that was. And that's why it wasn't very fun at all. Very cool to watch but not so cool to play. I nearly beat Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp. There would often be a crowd. But towards the end it really gets hard. And I was playing mostly for the crowds and not for the fun. Wish I had pushed on to the end I was so close but never quite made it all the way through.
In ghost & goblins the timer wasn't the biggest threat since the stages was not that big,rather the game in general having enemies appearing from each corner of the screen continuously.Also there was that check point in the middle of each stage that some times saved the day renewing the time.
+Mauricio Merida , The Simpsons was easy. Yes you could spend 5$ to finish it, but i would only spend one quarter to get as far as i could. My money lasted way longer that way. My best was getting to the samurai boss.
![NARC Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](/img/n.gif)
He neglects to mention that when Dragon's lair came out, it was one of the first games ever to cost $.50 to play. before that, nearly all games were a quarter. This made it all the more expensive.
neglect is a harsh word, maybe rephrase your remark to "he doesn't mention". This phrase is far less aggressive and sensationalistic.
Y'all should've mentioned that not only was Dragon's Lair a rip, but it cost 50 cents - twice what most games cost at the time.
dragon's lair also required 50 cents to play compared to 25 that most arcade games cost at the time.
Same thing with Space Ace, which was also a Don Bluth animated game.
@@oriondx72 Why did you feel the need to repeat the OP's comment verbatim?
@@bink why does it bother you?
It was cos the graphics were so realistic!
the never ending Spy Hunter.
All-time favorite game. I have that cabinet, as well! I once played it (at the arcade) for 4 hours on ONE quarter!
Spy Hunter was super cool but it wasn't quarter monster.
Thanks, ANTI HERO! That 1550 I mentioned? It actually morphed into a 1,940-in-1 Ultracade. Granted, I don't even bother with probably 1,900 of those...but it's still cool bragging rights for a bachelor! Life is good.
His list is NOT complete without Spy Hunter on it!
Spy Hunter is not a "quarter devourer"; you can play for HOURS on a single credit. That's why it's my all-time fave game to this day!
Dragons Lair. Oh gosh.. who could afford to finish that game.? Great artwork for the time though.
Yeah never finished it til I got it on PS3!!
Still love DL today and i think the art work is still amazing :)
My friends and I chipped in and bought the book for Dragon's Lair through our scholastic book club. Was basically the only book we read in the entire 6th grade. I could finish dragon's Lair and Space Ace.
I got to the point where I could finish it in one play through. But it probably took 50 dollars of quarters to learn it...
I was down to full play through on 1 credit...yeah I was awesome back in the day...now just a sad old man that remembers hearing the voice "DRAGON'S LAIR!" and running to it like a meth freak.
Ghosts and Goblins was my #1 quarter gobbler. I also remember feeding a lot of quarters while playing Operation Wolf.
Oh, you know it! I don't even want to bother with that one on the Nintendo Flashback.
Even Deadpool has a beef with that game
I'm 40 yrs old. That was a great fucking list. I helped send many developers kids to college through those games.
When I was a kid, I will never forget the first time I saw Dragon's Lair! It was amazing! My friends and I were instantly hooked and we spent so much money trying to defeat that game. Eventually, the arcade had to purchase a second Dragon's Lair game because of the waiting lines! And in all the time playing and watching that game, I only ever saw it defeated twice! Still one of my Top 10 games ever.
Lmfao 😂🤣😅 Exactamundo. That game drove me around the bend tryin to finish that game. It's still my mission in life to find and play that game and finish it.
You should see Dragon's Lair part 2 it's insane. I never got all the way through but I was very close. There was often a small crowd watching me play.
it was a blatant ripoff
I must've wasted well over $5,000 in quarters lifetime on playing at the arcades and it was so much fun,too bad kids nowadays won't know what it was like lol
Spent so much money on Gauntlet, Tempest and Dragon's lair ... probably could have afforded a PHD. lol
Me too Tom. To this day, I fucking HATE Dragons Lair!
I loved watching ppl play Dragons Lair as a little kid, but I sucked at it. I reserved my quarters for other games.
Krazimuffin same here, as a kid i watched the "older kids" play that awesome game, then i tried it and BAM dead...but i still to this day love Dragon's Lair AND Space Ace..lol
Mine was cliff hanger
wynblu lol..I forgot all about that game, good call.
Spent my allowance on 1942, Arch Rivals, Area 51 and Time Crisis.
1942. Good call.
This Story Is Happy End...
A_zo0ozii lol 😊
Mua
+WiffyLight Congraturation.
nice pun watchmojo and I taught sans saod were gonna jave a bad timw
Nothing tops Big Rig's victory screen :P "You're Winner"
I played Dragon's Lair once and once only. I died within a second and said "what a stupid game!" No way I was wasting another token on that!
Me too. Except after about $80 in quarters.
I hardly got anywhere with that game as a child. I'd press the stick in the direction of the flashing light, like you're supposed to, and he always died anyway. After 3 or 4 tries I never played it again.
My weakness as a kid was The Simpsons Arcade Game. That was my shit, yo!
hell yeah
+Jim B. too easy to be a quarter muncher. I would get to the samuraii boss with just one quarter back in the day. And TMNT cost me 1$ to finish the game last time i played it. Those Konami games were fun, but very far from being unfair in any way.
i remember playing both of those games on rollerskates at the local rink! blasting through 6 player xmen with 5 other people is fun
OMG! I love The Simpsons Arcade Game! Homer is my main!
X Men, Ninja Turtles or any Capcom/Marvel game took a lot of mine
I got skilled enough to finish the original TMNT and X-Men in one credit, but Turtles In Time... damn you. Even at the easiest setting, things got ridiculously hard with as much as 8 foot soldiers attacking at once.
Facts spoken, especially Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I dropped quarters on that machine even after winning the whole game, because it was that fun
Great, microtransactions and arbitrary time limits were a thing even in days of yore.
+MagnuMagnus Yup, people seem to forget that these "new" issues are not so new. History repeats its self very often.
+MagnuMagnus microtransactions will always be a thing as long as the creators get money for it
+Brandon Withnell hence greed in my book. If there were such a thing as a game that includes free DLC and doesn't require online+network membership, BS DLC that are just features/coding in disguise via demo/beta, split screen capabilities, ability to mod saves or the game itself, a pause menu to restart a level or adjust something, and some genre that isn't survival/FPS based(hyped and cliche) as of today; then you're out of luck unless you want to play amiibo or build a PC and play Fallout 4 or some shit and finally say "the gaming industry sucks."
Difference is now microtransactions are for equipment and in-game currency.
I remember Space Ace being a really tough game to play back in the days personally in my opinion.
When Dragon's Lair first came out I had to put a lot of quarters in the game to keep it going. But not long after I could finish the entire game on a single quarter once I got the patterns down.
I did the same for Dragons Lair 2. I only played afterward to draw a crowd.
But the game cost 50 cents.
IKARI Warriors and Heavy Barrel
Oh yes on "Ikari Warriors." (Especially since you couldn't get fire bullets or grenades right before the most difficult parts.) I was relieved when I got it on the ATARI 7800. Not only did it not cost me a quarter every time, but it was more fair. And there were a lot more opportunities to get fire bullets and grenades.
ikari warriors took some....but I could beat Heavy Barrel in one go.
Metal slug 3 should be here.....that took tons of my cash when the early days. Simpsons arcade game to
battletoads should have been on here. that aracade machine was for true arcaders
+Ricardo Hidalgo Same with Golden Axe, I spent a crap load of quarters to beat the game.
+Derpurs Machinest (Gamer88) simpsons arcade took loads of my cash, but it was one of the easier arcade games, I actually beat mr burns a few times in the simpsons game, lisa was my character, I liked the jump rope
Eh...Battletoads was on the list, so what you are going on about? If anything Golden Axe needs to be on the list.
Also ninja Gaiden
Heavy Barrel. I adored that game so much. When the second level boss, the one with the mechanical arms on a rail one, gave me so much grief, I must have spent a small fortune on it. Of course since you can die in one hit anyways, it was already a black hole for quarters.
Badass game! "HEAVY BARREL!!"
Special Thanks to our user "MikeyP" for suggesting this topic on our Interactive Suggestion Tool at www.WatchMojo.com/suggest.
Back when the internet was " free " , 1992 I downloaded 605 of those old video games from a site called MAME. The files are the actual digital and analog computer footprint from those arcade games. I still have them. copied 4 times on 4 USB jump drives. Anyone interested, respond to this comment and I'll send you a copy for free since it didn't cost me anything. No. It is NOT a virus. Besides. Worried? Just use your protection software.
You managed to download MAME 5 years before it existed, amazing.
Gonna have a bad time, huh? 💀
Great video! I'm old enough to have played all those games in the arcade. Good times. I agreed with all of your choices except Mortal Kombat. After beating it several times on day 1, we asked the store owner to turn up the difficulty. Those AI advantages are all disadvantages really. Too easy!
I remember when Dragon's Lair came out. I never even tried it. I watched everyone else (most of whom were far better gamers than I was) get destroyed in short order. It was the first 50 cent machine.
I beat one Sinistar ONCE. Then I quit. That one victory probably cost me $50 in quarters! Great memories.
I can agree with most of your choices. Although I found Mortal Kombat to be pretty easy. There where quite a few games I went broke playing but that was not one of them.
Star Wars Trilogy arcade. It had inverted controls only for the lightsaber parts. and you had to follow un-inverted on-screen directional cues to boot.
Oh boy the memories came flooding back of weekends with dad at the arcade and handfuls of quarters! Life was so much simpler than.
does the crane game count?
+Anthony John I swear those things rob me blind
+Anthony John i know
+Anthony John but i don't think that counts as an arcade game, a video game
+Raymond van den Bos true true...
+Anthony John I once ot 3 toys from 1 grab in a crane game... it was nuts XD all my sibling got a toy that day.
"The house of the dead" series and most light gun games in general are also worth mentioning.
Especially when some jerk arcade owner would deliberately mis-calibrate the light guns, I knew of one arcade that did seedy shit like that and worse. bastards.
We all got wise to it and went to another arcade. He closed down a year later.
You mention Ghost'n Goblins for the time limit (which most arcade games had at the time, specially beat'em ups) and you skip the fact that you have to finish the game TWICE to reach the real ending? Shame on you!
+bob bobq yes, but you have to put a lot of quarters again!
IKR?! He mentions the game’s time limit as if that isn’t a pretty standard feature in most platformers.
Cruisin' USA, RUSH, Area 51, Carnevil, House of the dead, Mortal Kombat 2 through 4, soul caliber. That was my childhood from the mid 90's to mid 2000's. Good times
You showed a clip of Colossus, and DIDN'T show him making the noise. You almost ruined my Christmas.
+thatonedrewguy RRRROOOOAAAAAUUUHHHHH!!!!! Hope that helps.
+The Accursed J.E. It'll do Merry Christmas
I was thinking the same thing!
I remember when me and my brother and some other kids were "fishing" in arcades. I made a little hole in the coin, tied the coin with a thread and kept pulling it, each pull was a credit. Of course, with the gang around the machine to hide the cheat from the coin seller. Good times that never come back, the 80s.
No Metal Slug ?
Classic twitch game that one.
Learn the ropes and you can survive.
A_zo0ozii nobody cares
silverblade357 it's not that hard, but it could get an honorable mention or at least 7th place
+Mr. Foxhound +silverblade357 the game was great and if you were new to any level past 4, you were dying quickly from new enemies
Jesus Black Yup, keeping up with all the chaos was an acquired skill. I did significantly worse whenever there was a second player thrown into the mix on bullet hell games.
You missed Altered Beast.
Oh you know it! I don't know if the SEGA GENESIS version is different from the arcade, but even on the SG version, you don't get your energy back at the start of each board. There's no way to get more energy. And some creatures are good at killing you with one hit. It's still annoying on the SG. But at least it doesn't cost a quarter every time.
Seriously. It was maddening
Cliff Hanger (1983) based on Lupin III cartoon movies, was a real quarter gobbler. One of the first animation based game (like Dragons Lair), Trying to match the controls with the cartoon action was difficult, again similar to Dragons lair.
Good call on some great games that ate quarters! I knew Gauntlet was going to be a top pick! Loved that game! Also Dragon's Lair which ate two at a time! That's why I played Space Ace more since it was easier! Lol.
LOL Kids today will never know the joys of playing quarter munchers and NO your emulators or smartphone gaming don't compare.
+pinoi78 I was hooked on Pole Position because it was a sit-in game with a steering wheel, and Tron owned my wallet when it came out.
+pinoi78 Some will. People I know actually buy full-size arcade games. And loads of movie theaters still have arcades attached. Stupid post.
+pinoi78
As if playing games on quarter machine is a huge achievement in life or something ...
grow up...
+thegreatMSG Its actually was. It was the birth of video games and when arcades were awesome.
It's funny, I loved the racing games in that style, maybe that's a reason I've never gotten behind console racers (that, and I'm also lousy at them).
Sinistar was one of my favorite games growing up!! I was actually pretty good at it!! And like Galaga and Asteroids I could stick a quarter in it and play for literally hours!! The only other game I was a "monster" on was Joust!! I have been has high on Joust as level 45, and the one machine I played had my high score on it for at least two years until they got rid of the machine in the gas station where it sat!! And I had three friends of mine try to be my high score and told me it was impossible!! Another game I used to be good at was Defender!!
Dragon's Lair is as old as I am. Insanely good graphics... :-O
+Johnnythefirst - Animation in this case, not graphics^_^
they literally had cartoon animators make the game it's basically a interactive cartoon
+Johnnythefirst Then if you didn't like the knight thing they made Space Ace to get your money too!
+John Shaw And it was so good, that they made Dragon's Lair clones like Cliffhanger and Thayer's Quest. They even made a Dragon's Lair 2.
Dragons Lair was the first real LaserDisc game Space Ace was the second game put out by the same company. They both had animated scenes saved on a laser disc and had several outcomes for each scene depending on how you messed up or succeeded. You had about 20 different scenes in Dragon's Lair that were run through twice. Once in "normal" mode, and then once in reverse where all your left/right commands needed to be mirrored.
Difficulty set by the arcade owners could make it so that there were flashes to guide you or not. If you made it through both sets of scenes, you went into the Dragon's Lair. They had two different sets of commands that were very difficult to distinguish to know what list of commands you needed to perform.
If you were trying to learn the game by playing, you had a large investment of quarters ahead of you as the game was one of the first I remember that was 50c or two tokens per play. I wasn't going to pay that to learn a game, so I watched people play for a pretty long time. When I had watched several people play all the way through and bought the best player I had seen play dinner to learn how to know how to get through the Dragon's Lair scene, I played my first game of it. Made it all the way to the Dragon's Lair before I lost my first life, and finished the game on my second life of my first game.
Good times.
Boy this brings me back to my childhood, but one game you forgot was Contour and Space Ace. I used to love playing the first Cadet stage of Space Ace and people used to watch me play it couldn't figure out how I did it because I would always reached the end of the game. But the problem with that is playing the
Space Ace stage was really hard but in time and after a lot of quarters I beat the game.
“Congratulation. This story is happy end.” 😂
Needs to be up there with "All your base are belong to us" and "Fuck the duck until exploded"
Chinglish is the gift that keeps on giving.
For me it was the Original four-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game in the late 80s. The variety store across from my elementary school got the machine and every lunch period we spent a fortune in allowance to finally beat Krang and Shredder. The first multi-player Simpsons arcade game in the 90s was a big quarter eater as well
Space Harrier arcade was another one. Impossible to beat without feeding the quarter monster. "You're doing great!"
That one actually can be beaten on one credit, though it’s extremely hard and I’ve yet to manage that myself. The game does, however, allow you to purchase extra lives during active gameplay (only the original coin-op has this; console ports and emulated re-releases have this feature removed for obvious reasons)
My Arcade memories are of Cruisin' USA, Tekken 3, and Hydro
Thunder. All of which gladly took my quarters.
How did Pit Fighter not even get a single mention in this LOL
Wow i remember that. Spent alot of money playing that game. lol.
Aww, I pumped coin after coin for the Western - themed Cheyenne(1983), with the player holding a fake rifle (just to add to the verisimilitude), and its D.& D. style cousin, Crossbow. Great stuff.
For old old school, add Asteroids, and Space War( both late-70's games), both using a different make of graphics called...I dunno. It started with the letter "V". And then there's Crazy Climber, Battlezoid, and Tron, which was almost as good as the movie. Anyone got any twennies? This is Australia, so we didn't have quarters, only twenty cent coins. Ohh...the memories are floodin' back...
When my local mall arcade got Dragon's Lair they put it right out in front, just inside the entrance to the arcade. They ended up having to move it back because the crowd of people watching people play the game was spilling out into the mall.
I remember being amazed by anyone who did well on that game. Which led me to defeating Dragons Lair 2 with regularity. I only did it to draw a crowd, which happened pretty common.
Awesome list. Crime Fighters was one of my favorite games as a kid.
Defender, Joust and Tempest were mine!
Metal Slug ....and Zaxxon ... were my money magnets
Loved zaxxon
elf shot the food!
Warrior is about to die...oooowww
Save keys to open doors
That was a heroic effort
“The wizard needs food badly!”
Wizard shot the potion.
HA! Thanks, WatchMojo, for giving me a credit in this video - but WTF? My video of all the Dragon's Lair deaths probably breaks copyright law, as it's the video files ripped directly from my official Android game, in 720p. I was always surprised not to get a take-down notice for that one. Perhaps the publishers view it as good advertising?
Dragon's Lair certainly ate a lot of my 20 cent coins in my youth, and then Space Ace, too. And Sinistar, of course. Good times.
Galaga,joust,and NBA jam
Bosconian, Bump "N Jump, Rolling Thunder, The Ninjawarriors and R-Type were my quarter eating NEMESIS.
umm Dragons Lair should be 1. It took 50 cents to replay. I remember watching people die within 30 seconds of starting up again wasting up to 5 bucks just to get through a level
Maverick Exactly
TMNT was a great one that devoured your quarters and Tron was another as well as Punch Out . . . loved all those games. - great vid.
Where are *Defender* and *Robotron 2084*?
+LaVey Charkus Veros ^These
got those games on midway orgins more easy because you can play with a a lot of lives lol
+LaVey Charkus Veros Smash TV is a variation of Robotron 2084, but you're right, it should be up there instead of Smash TV, because it was the first.
Those don't really qualify as quarter suckers since you can't pay more to continue playing like a lot of these games. Allowing you to continue a game with another quarter was the downfall of arcade games. There was no longer a need to play to get better when you could just pay another quarter to continue.
SmashTV (and Robotron) were *NOT* quarter suckers. If you were good you could get to the end of SmashTV on a single quarter, or clear level 255 on Robotron and get back to level 1 and continue on. Also, with a good cooperating group, you could play Gauntlet for a good long while on a single quarter.
Not to mention Gorf. Gorf even bragged about "devouring quarters "
In case you were wondering how the Mojoholics voted in our poll, see the votes and entries here:
watchmojo.com/suggest/Top+10+Notorious+Quarter+Devouring+Arcade+Games
Make sure to sign up and participate on future lists at www.WatchMojo.com/suggest
Note that Viewer votes are just one of the hundreds of data points and variables that we look at when we create our lists, however.
Don't forget about rally x is the frustrating arcade game too. New rally x is a improvement.
I still contend that Valadon/Stern's BAGMAN (1982) was among the most difficult, and should be mentioned here.
John Bidochka I LOVED BAGMAN. That's a blast from the past.
First time I’ve heard the mojo intro with earbuds...that was trippy!
Merry Christmas everyone! :)
Merry Christmas 2u as well Hun
Marry Xmas to u to and a happy new years
+PublicEnemy-1 you too!
+PublicEnemy-1 Merry Christmas to you too!
+PublicEnemy-1 Merry Christmas.
Great list! What a trip down memory lane!
Smash TV! Feck Yeah!!! BIG MONEY, BIG PRIZES, IIII LOVE IT! Ghost & Goblins was the bomb! Play it enough and you can run though it on one life. To be sure Sinistar hungers for more quarters. We all knew Gauntlet was going to be on this list because Warrior Needs Food Badly. OMG NARC! Nice list.
It's amazing the switch around in the early 80's from arcade games designed to kick you off as quickly as possible - to home console games designed in the complete opposite logic.
Bad Dudes guzzled my money like it was cool back in the day
Great List, brings back a lot of memories, thank you
don't shoot the food...
Tim Kramar "The Elf shot the food." (Stupid elf!) "The Valkyrie... is about to die." (Holy shit, I am??)
Did anyone ever question the quality of food sitting around a dirty dungeon, touched by monsters, and how long it had been sitting out? Lol
One player to use two guns in a light gun game. Target: Terror took advantage of that with the "Justice Mode" feature. Some arcades have it at the cost of another credit. Others have it for free. You could do this in older games, too, but it would still feel like two players using each arm, and high scores would not be shared/considerate.
X-Men should've been #2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade game should be been #1
#2 Gauntlet...I played one time for almost 6 hours on one quarter and made it to level 178. Good times!
Gauntlet dark legacy - over 300$ of college book money down the drain.
Terminator - shooter
Rtype
Simpsons
Ninja turtles
Raiden - all of them
Off-road
Tetris
+BBOY ASIST, TMNT is no quarter muncher, but possibly the easiest arcade game in history. I got to Craig with one quarter, beat him with another, then spent 50 cents to defeat Shredder. I was no older than 12, and i'm far from being a pro-gamer.
TMNT is initially pretty hard! Plus I remember them charging 2 quarters!
Great vid piece guys played many of those games and gave much of my wealth to those machines haha thank you!!!!
I'd have put dragon's lair at the top
yea 50 cents a play
I still play many of these on the snes versions. great video guys
Before I watch this #1 Gauntlet
WTF never even heard of #1 original DD I played the shit out of but DD3 c'mon now!!
Had Narc and Dragon's Lair on PS3.....feel like digging it out of the garage to play them again.....ahhhh nostalgia 🕹
Ah, Dragon's Liar, what memories! It is true that I went through MANY, MANY quarters learning the game, but I did learn it. I made much of them back betting friends and strangers that I could beat the game. Fond memories of those days!
What are we going to bet that Time Crisis isn't on this list even though it blatently should be.
+Adam Anouer ik right?
Yeah and I don't care what anyone says if you don't have a second player you are not beating this one. Got to love the fact they included credits in the god damn console games as well. :) Just out of pure spite.
I spent $10 10 years ago beating the whole of the third game solo. Best arcade experience I've ever had
You are completely Fucking right about that.
+Adam Anouer I didn't think Time Crisis was that hard.
Dragon's Lair had the added "bonus" of costing 50 cents to play when most other arcade games were still only a quarter.
Super Sprint and Revolution X!!!
Good video. Many, MANY quarters and tokens.
Good list.
NBA jam
It was $1 per quarter where I lived so $4 for a single game.
Yep each game play is 0.50 cents and there 4 times in it. Total is 2$. if got overtime you have to a other 0.50 cents to continue to play. Because I always put 2$. Yeah I spend a lot coins on NBA jam, specially the TE version.
I’m surprised this was not number 1
Also the fact that if you played on the same machine you could save your progress as you tried to beat every other team at least once.
Ah yes... thanks WatchMojo for reminding me why I hate time limits on games! Having spent more quarters than I care to remember, it was still morbidly fun to revisit some of those games!
One of the greatest moments of my high school life was when I beat Dragon's Lair on one token!
You lie
@@birdorienteering Nope. No lie. 1986 at Dennis' Place For Games on the north side of Chicago. I remember it well!
good call on Rampage..10 year old me and my buddy in the 80s decided to beat the Arcade game and we succeeded..$20 later (80 quarters)..worth noting the game is over 100 levels long...
Damn, man. Dragon's Lair and Sinistar brought back a slew of memories. Used to love going to the Arcade on Friday or Saturday night before heading out to the lake. What a trip.
No Sunset Riders?
+leandrob1983 that game was really hard
+Felipe Castillo What about Golden Axe?
beatable but i don't know if golden axe was a arcade machine thats not hard.
Truxton???
Naan man, you can skill sunset riders. A quarter muncher is un skillable to some extent, time limit, short life line, snk boss syndrome, unlearnable pattern, one hit kill etc. A Quarter Muncher!
I LOVED Rampage! :) I completely forgot about Sinistar! Wow! That was an oldie!! I remember when Dragon's Lair first came out. Nobody had ever heard of a cartoon video game! The first arcade game that was 50 cents and definitely a wallet drainer!
Warrior needs food badly.
Green Wizard shot the food
Lol.... one of the best games ever !!!
I played all these games back in the day when Arcades were so prevalent, and one that KILLED me so many times was Sinistar! THAT was truly one of the hardest, most difficult games I ever played back then! Took many a quarter from me!!!!
What about Kevin Costner's Waterworld?
Please deposit 40 quarters
LOL I get that reference!
“What a rip!”
That honorable mention Crime fighters, I could be that one in a quarter as a kid and I can do it on the hard difficulty to this day.. it only seems unfair cuz your life ticks down but at the end of each stage you get life back. Each stage gives you progressively more and more life back.
I"m surprise that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is not on this list. That being said I got to call BS on this list that it doesn't have one Rail gun shooter game. If anything they are probably the worst of arcade game that eats up your quarters. Games like Terminator 2 and Revolution X that seems impossible to beat with just 1 credit.
+George Villarreal , i agree about the railgun shooters like T2. TMNT was the easiest arcade game in history.
+George Villarreal
I'm with you on the Rail Shooters. Those games were impossible to memorize a pattern but I disagree on a beatem up like TMNT. Myself for example, I had no problem reaching Krang on 1 coin after about a month of playing the game roughly once a day after school.
You just had to remember the pattern of how the bosses worked and how the enemies would attack.
Time-based games like Gauntlet , Rail shooters and spaceship/fighter shooters on the other hand...especially the last 2 genres? Good luck trying to remember how the enemies attacked.
+AllisterH Vertical and horizontal shooters are all about patterns. I used to play them to stretch my quarters. It's just skill and a bit of memorization, that's all.
Tempest was a huge quarter eater for me. Loved that game. Tunnel Hunt. Battle Zone. Dragon's Lair.
No Defender???
Defender was just a very hard game with complex controls. A quarter eater for sure, but it wasn't "built" with money grabbing elements. Example would be The Simpsons 4 player, you were bombed with multiple enemies swinging and dropping on you, forcing you to drop more tokens or quarters to keep playing or level up. A bad one too was Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, notorious for overwhelming enemies despite having a 2 player team effort, forcing you to pay more to finish. I'm glad consoles despite microtransactions in many games still allow Freeplay for the classics.
can't forget about Cabal and even Wrestlefest...both were fun and took lots of my quarters
I spill all my pocket money playing gauntlet with friends
Here's a few quarter wasters. Off-Road Fury & Time Crisis. Dragon's Lair was basically a false promise. It seemed so cool because of the animations. But it really wasn't a game--more of a CD ROM before people knew what that was. And that's why it wasn't very fun at all. Very cool to watch but not so cool to play. I nearly beat Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp. There would often be a crowd. But towards the end it really gets hard. And I was playing mostly for the crowds and not for the fun. Wish I had pushed on to the end I was so close but never quite made it all the way through.
They put Dragon's Lair on her but never mentioned SPACE ACE
And the other myriad of time-event games.
space has bout the same toughness but felt like it was a lot shorter.
In ghost & goblins the timer wasn't the biggest threat since the stages was not that big,rather the game in general having enemies appearing from each corner of the screen continuously.Also there was that check point in the middle of each stage that some times saved the day renewing the time.
The simpsons took a lot of my money when I was a child
+Mauricio Merida , The Simpsons was easy. Yes you could spend 5$ to finish it, but i would only spend one quarter to get as far as i could. My money lasted way longer that way. My best was getting to the samurai boss.
I liked the dream sequence