As most of my friends and readers know, I’m a huge fan of classic video games; you know the ones that took a single quarter to play from the early 1980’s to early 1990’s.

Most of the video arcade games from back then actually had some entertainment value and didn’t involve being a gangster or a car thief. Amazing.

The sad thing is almost all of my favorites are virtually impossible to find in a modern arcade but thanks to projects like MAME and my personal video game collection, I can play them any time I want.

Ok, moving on to the reason for this post… last night I was talking with a few of my classic video game collecting friends about what we felt were our personal top 20 games that we actually own either the full upright or cocktail table version in our collections, so without any further delay, here is my personal top 20 list:

1. Ms. Pac-Man
2. Tempest
3. Pac-Man
4. Centipede
5. Galaga
6. Asteroids
7. Star Wars
8. Donkey Kong
9. Tron
10. Joust
11. Donkey Kong Junior
12. Robotron: 2084
13. Defender
14. Space Invaders
15. Frogger
16. Battlezone
17. Galaxian
18. Space Duel
19. Q*bert
20. Dig Dug

It’s great having my own personal arcade. Everything is set to free play. No quarters required. I’ve spent many years and 1,000’s of dollars to restore and revive my childhood memories of the local arcade.

I’m a hero to the kids in my neighborhood when the garage door is open but sometimes I have to be a bully and kick them out. I’m not a baby sitter… but it is nice to let the youth of today see what real arcade fun and entertainment is all about.

It does take up a lot of room having full size games in my garage but it’s so cool when I have friends over for a BBQ or just to hang out and remember the days of playing Galaga as a kid.

If someone would have presented an XBOX 360 for me and my friends 20 years ago, I’m pretty sure we probably would have fainted.

When you compare similar games from the mid-eighties with today’s top notch video and computer games, the difference in graphics is quite amazing.

Here’s an interesting comparison of 5 games from the 80’s with todays killer games:

Double Dribble (Nintendo, 1987) vs. NBA Live’06 (XBOX 360, 2006)

Karate Champ (Nintendo, 1986) vs. DOA 4 (XBOX 360, 2006)

Tennis (Nintendo, 1983) vs. Top Spin 2 (XBOX 360, 2006)

Rad Racer (Nintendo, 1987) vs. PGR 3 (XBOX 360, 2005)

Punch Out (Nintendo, 1987) vs Fight Night round 3 (XBOX 360, 2006)

I still love the classics. Time to blow the dust off my Nintendo. Ah, 8 bit graphics. The good old days

Here is a picture of my personal MAME cabinet.

My machine can also play thousands of emulated console games like Atari 2600, Nintendo/Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and many more.

It also plays MP3’s of all my favorite 80’s songs and some of my favorite metal songs as well. My machine rocks!!!

For detailed specifications on what my MAME machine has under the hood, visit my MAME cabinet page.