I loved the original Robocop movie, and when I happened to stumble across the arcade game at the local mom-and-pop video store, I couldn't resist trying it out. I'm glad I did - not only was it better than the NES Robocop, it was also extremely fun. I kept going back to the video store just to play it, and I stopped in there at least once a week to play it until the day they got rid of it.

09. Kicker (aka Shao-lin's Road) - Konami - 1985

A laundromat that my parents used to go to in the early '80s had this extremely fun Konami game for a time, Kicker. My younger brother and I would play this every week. Unfortunately, we never got that far in it, and no home version of the game existed that I knew of (I recently learned that there was a home version for the Commodore 64 - thanks to Stewart Ayers for letting me know about it) - at least not until 1999, when Konami stuck it on the PSX Konami Arcade Classics disc. In fact, Kicker was one of the reasons that I wanted the disc as badly as I did.

08. Star Wars - Atari - 1983

I first encountered Star Wars at Sea World in Florida in the early '80s. I had no idea there was a Star Wars arcade game until I saw it. This game was truly like playing the movie... I felt like I was really flying an X-Wing fighter, and the fact that it used voices from the movie only helped the illusion. I found out later that there was a version of the game that had come out for the Atari 2600, but I never was able to find a copy. I've hoped for an arcade-perfect port ever since then, but to date have not gotten one...

07. Ms. Pac-Man - Namco - 1981

Ah, Ms. Pac-Man. I swear, this game and Galaga were everywhere. Convienence stores, restaurants, movie theaters, bars, pizza places - you name it, they always had to have a Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga machine - or both. In fact, after surviving a near fatal car crash in 1996 (we had gone offroad doing 70 mph, hit a patch of mud that stopped the front of the car - but not the back - dead, flipped and landed upside down in a swamp - and no, I wasn't the one driving), my friends Bob and Christina and I were taken to a rest area along the highway to wait for our ride home. They had a little arcade there, and sure enough, they had a Ms. Pac-Man machine. I was so happy to see it - at that point I was just happy that I was seeing anything - that I had to play it.

06. Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom - Atari - 1985

I loved the movie, and when I stumbled across the arcade game in the late '80s, I had to play it. Talk about fun... I absolutely loved it. I later picked up the home version of the game for the NES, only to find out that it wasn't quite like the original arcade game. I've been hoping to find an arcade perfect version of it ever since...

05. Splatterhouse - Namco - 1988

I had played the Turbografx-16 version of Splatterhouse sometime in 1990, and when I found out that it was based on an arcade game, I knew I had to find it and play it. In September of 1991 - the day after I played the SNES for the first time - Chris and I (and another friend of ours, Anthony) ended up taking a trip to the then-fairly-new Universal Studios Florida. Tucked in the back corner of one of the two arcades on the property was none other than Splatterhouse. Needless to say, I was thrilled that I found it. I spent the next forty-five minutes or so playing it, until Chris and Anthony got tired of hanging out in the arcade and wanted to go see something else. The next time I went back - several years later - the machine was gone. I've searched and searched for the arcade game ever since, but my efforts have all been in vain...

04. Galaga - Namco - 1981

Of course Galaga had to make the list. How could it not? Ever since first playing it in the early '80s (and screaming "HEY! HE STOLE MY SHIP!" when one of the Boss Galagas first used his tractor beam on me), I've loved this game. Once I found out that this was going to be a part of the Namco Museum series, I knew I had to get it.

03. Outrun - Sega - 1986

I recall first stumbling across an Outrun machine at this tiny little arcade sometime in 1988, sandwiched between a Double Dragon machine and a Rampage machine, both of which were fairly crowded. No one was playing Outrun, so I decided to give it a shot - and I'm glad I did. It's become my favorite racing game of all time.

02. Dig Dug - Namco - 1982

I recall first playing Dig Dug on a friend's Atari 2600, then finding the arcade version shortly thereafter. After popping a quarter in, I was absolutely hooked - even moreso than I had been with the 2600 version. It's been my second favorite arcade game ever since then.

01. Time Pilot - Konami - 1982

There was a Dairy Queen in Groton, Connecticut that my parents would take my younger brother and myself every other Saturday or so in the mid-'80s. I recall walking in there one time with my father and seeing what looked to be the coolest arcade game I'd ever seen sitting in the corner. There was this futuristic jet fighter blasting the hell out of these old biplanes. I watched for a few minutes... boy, did that look like fun... than asked my father for a quarter. I was denied the quarter, but the next time we came back I was prepared. I was hooked from the first play. I searched and searched for a home version for years after that (I had no idea a home port existed for the Atari 2600 until just recently), and was finally rewarded when I found out that Konami was including it on the Konami Arcade Classics PSX disc. It was at that moment that KAC became my must-have PSX game for 1999. At last I was finally able to play the arcade version of Time Pilot in the comfort of my own home (along with Kicker, Scramble and Gyruss, to name a few). I was finally able to fulfill one of my childhood dreams...