Share Your Favorite, Lesser-known Arcade Gems

[Lyle_JP]

Nitro-Ball
A sports/space/run&gun/pinball/manic shooter. What??

[matt109]

Here is a great 2 player scrolling shooter: Ordyne. There was an arcade cabinet of this in the Student Union, when I was at University. Many pounds spent on this and Outrun...

[pjft]

@matt109 wow, this looks really fun. Didn't know about it, will have to check it out!

I recently found a racing game that I had never heard of on the Neo Geo, but is loads of fun. "1000 Miglia", I believe. It plays well on FBA. Maybe it's a famous one, so I apologize if that's the case, but I had no idea of it and it's just plain fun. I saw videos of another one called "Over Top" and it seems to be very similar, so if any of you know one of them, you will know what to expect of the other.

[sirhenrythe5th]

@pjft 1000 Miles Rally is a Kaneko Game, maybe you mean Neo Drift Out for the NeoGeo made by Visco? 😊

[pjft]

@sirhenrythe5th it's the Kaneko game indeed, though I thought it ran on the Neo Geo. I might just have assumed that because it's on FBA, but I See now that I am wrong :)

Thanks for the correction!

[sirhenrythe5th]

@pjft pas de probleme 😊. There exists also a second part with the innovative name "Great 1000 Miles Rally 2". It is also for the Kaneko Super Nova System, so it will run on FBA for sure.

If you like these isometric racing-games in general (i do ☺) i can also recommend "Drift Out", "Drift Out 94: the Hard Order" and the NeoGeo-Games "Neo Drift Out", "Over the Top" and "Trash Rally"

[pjft]

@sirhenrythe5th thank you for the recommendations, I'll look into those! I likely have some of them already but will check:)

What emulator do you recommend for those? FBA? Mame 2003? No preference?

Have a great weekend!

[sirhenrythe5th]

@pjft i am using FBA for all the NeoGeo-Games and AdvanceMame 3.4 for all the other Arcade-Games. I would not say that everybody should do so!, but it is the best choice for me 😊.

• i wanted a seperate menu-item for NeoGeo in Emulationstation.
• AdvanceMame got a great performance-boost since it was optimized for Rpi starting with AdvanceMame 3.x.
• AdvanceMame supports samples for a handful of great Toaplan-Games which stay silent with the other Mame-Ports for Rpi
• Supports some CPS-III Games at full Speed
• has great options including the best Scanlines (imo ☺)
  ...

Have a great weekend too! 👍😎

[Omnija]

@sirhenrythe5th I created my own sections for NeoGeo and CP Systems (1/2/3), and then what ever didn't fit with those are mame or fba depending on which emulator is used to run them.

Lucky and Wild
Fun coop driver/shooter game..

Kaitei Saisensou (In The Hunt)
Play as a submarine and pretty much destroy everything you see.

Dark Seal
Sort of like a guantlet game.

Demon Front
Wicked metal slug like game but with a unique twist (Familia)

[pjft]

@sirhenrythe5th thanks for the tip! I usually stay within the libretro cores because of the ease of controls, but given such strong endorsement I may try it out later!

Any particular CPS-3 games you're running there that you'd recommend? I think I play sf3 with decent performance on the libretro cores, but truth be told can't promise I paid that much attention.

@Omnija what are you using for Lucky and Wild? Does it play full speed for you?

Thanks all!

[edm203]

Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa. It's like Sunset Rider, but with cows. Oh, and after lvl 1, you get to pick the next stage. Also 4 players.

[AlexMurphy]

@edm203 Ha! This is brilliant. Never "herd" of it before. Thanks!

[AlexMurphy]

@edm203 Great flyer too.

[buddyscott]

@AlexMurphy it was a good cartoon too.(from what i can vaguely remember) I remember watching it on saturday mornings when i was a wee little lad.

[Omnija]

@pjft Yes it runs at full speed with mame2003

[AlexMurphy]

@buddyscott I don't remember it. However, I am 40.

[buddyscott]

@AlexMurphy you would of been 16 when it was airing. may be why you didnt watch it. i was around 8 and im 32.

[pjft]

@Omnija For some reason I was running it on MAME2010, I believe because of the aiming controls.

That being said, I tried AdvMAME-3.x (I had 3.2 installed at the moment, haven't yet updated) but wow, it seems to have fantastic performance! Even games that I was unable to run in other emulators with any reasonable performance (System 24 games like CrackDown, Bonanza Bros or Gain Ground) run as smooth as butter!

Thank you very much for the nudge, I will research a bit more and see what other games I should be running there. I had some troubles getting the PS3 controller to work in it, especially in regards to saving the settings, but I'll do some further research.

Thanks - and you can take Bonanza Bros as a recommendation for a favorite lesser-known game!

[Darksavior]

@pjft I had the complete opposite experience when I tried it last night. To my surprise, it's not a libretro emulator so that already put me off. No 1080p output, no crtpi shader, no easy configurable pad. I only tried Arabian Fight (system32) and it was considerably slower than mame2003. I was looking for an emulator that might get me fullspeed in that on my pi2 but it looks like I need a pi3. That and I had a real fun time trying to get the damn rom to load because it hates my ES cfg usb rom location for some reason. Even pointing to it in the .rc file got me nowhere. It was an adventure I don't wish to try again, heh..

Moo Mesa, Arabian Fight, and most of these obscure games I ONLY encountered at arcades on my visit to Mexico. I never saw them in an arcade here in the US.

[pjft]

@Darksavior Yeah, the experience wasn't in any way pleasant so far in terms of setting up, but the games I tried so far seemed to perform well. It doesn't have the crtpi shader, but there are a few scanline overlays that do the trick for me at least! I try to use only libretro emulators - the exceptions have been Daphne and DosBox for Sensible World of Soccer. That being said, if I manage to get a proper, easy setup for the controls and visuals, I will likely use it for a handful of games I had struggled to get to work at full speed (or even at all) in MAME 2003 or 2010 where needed.

I'm on a Pi3, though, so that may have had an impact on the outcome.