The most popular coin-op conversion games

Back in 1984, Zaxxon was the future. Isometric graphics? Whoa. Shadow effects? Mind blown. But mostly, it was a game about flying a chunky spaceship through a heavily fortified spa...

Paperboy was one of (if not THE) arcade hit of 1985. It was developed by Atari for the arcades and later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988. More conversion were made for quite...

In Gauntlet, four brave souls (or just you with an overworked space bar) hack, slash, and gobble food like medieval Pac-Men. This 1986 dungeon crawler is basically a family reunion...

Marble Madness is an abandoned isometric action game designed by Mark Cerny and originally published by Atari as a successful and iconic arcade game. It was later converted for man...

Rampart is what happens when someone mashes Tetris, tower defense, and medieval warfare into a single frantic loop. You rebuild crumbling castle walls using oddly shaped bricks, th...

Pit Fighter is an arcade-style fighting game that was originally released in arcades in 1990 by Atari Games. It was later ported to various home gaming platforms, including DOS, th...

If you’ve ever wanted to fly a jet fighter at Mach “Oh no, I crashed again,” After Burner is the game for you. This 1989 DOS classic straps you into an F-14 and l...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

Doh is back, and he’s mad - presumably because no one understood what he was in the first place. Arkanoid 2 takes the original formula and dials everything up: more levels, m...

Also known as Puzzle Bobble, this bubble-popping classic stars those cute dragons from Bubble Bobble, now in competitive puzzle mode. Match three colors, clear the screen, panic as...

Raiden is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and first released in arcades in 1990 and later for many home computers and consoles. Raiden fol...

Taito’s Puzznic (1990) takes the idea of matching tiles and injects a surprising amount of strategy. You slide blocks to align pairs, but each move requires forethought&mdash...

Altered Beast is a classic side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Sega. It was originally released in arcades in 1988 and later ported to various home co...

In APB (1989), you’re a cop in a little squad car with a huge attitude problem. Your job? Pull over criminals, avoid donuts, and try not to smash into every tree, wall, and p...

Q*bert is a classic arcade game that was created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee and was released by Gottlieb in 1982. The main goal of Qbert is to change the color of every...

R-Type is a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up developed and published by Irem in 1987. The game quickly gained popularity for its challenging gameplay and impressive graphics at ...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothin...

If Saturday-morning cartoons and B-movies fused into a pixelated arcade blast, you’d get Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. This action shooter throws you onto a d...

Space Harrier is a 3rd-person view rail-shooter developed by Sega in 1985. Space Harrier was a hit in the arcades, and later it was converted for a number of platforms, including D...

Blasteroids is a video game developed and released by Atari, Inc. in 1987. It's a sequel to the classic arcade game Asteroids, which was released in 1979. In Blasteroids, players c...

Blades of Steel is hockey the way it was meant to be. Fast, brutal, and occasionally resembling a bar fight on ice. The game lets you punch other players mid-match and the announce...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

Action Fighter (1989, DOS) is Sega’s way of saying, “Why choose between car chases and aerial dogfights when you can have both?” You start in a motorcycle, grab s...

From the creators of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace (1989, DOS) is a gloriously over-the-top animated adventure where timing is everything — literally. You play Ace, a muscle...