Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade

Set in Nevada's infamous Area 51, this game takes place during an alien invasion centered at the site. You and your peers in the military group STAAR must stop this invasion at any cost. The game plays like a standard light shooter, and features lots of extras, like hidden doors that unlock extra rooms where you can recieve power-ups and play skill building games. To get to these doorways, you have to perform certain tasks like shooting out a certain window or finding secret ladders and entryways. These will lead you to the bonus area's, like the bizzare "shake your Buddah" level, where you take pot shots at the development team to increase your characters skills. The game starts with battles in the hangars of Area 51, and moves through the site until you end up in a series of caves at the end of the game for a final showdown with the aliens and thier zombie counterparts.

Step right up and send the undead packing! The 1998 shooter "CarnEvil" is your ticket to an anguished amusement park, resurrected from a cemetery thanks to an ancient curse. Sounds fun, right? Well, it's certainly a blast: Your firearm is your best friend as you battle wave after wave of bizarre creatures to try and defeat the mad ringmaster himself, Professor Ludwig von Tökkentäkker. Sharp shooters can collect weapon upgrades to mow down Tökkentäkker's minions with machine guns, flamethrowers and even acid rounds - sure to melt even the most gruesome ghouls like a triple-scoop of ice cream. CarnEvil's creative and colorful graphics run at a snappy 60 frames-per-second, so the action doesn't slow down even when you're mobbed by monsters. CarnEvil proved a huge hit when it was first released, and it's still one of the best arcade shooters ever made. Despite its success, CarnEvil never made it to home consoles - which just means you've got one more excuse to visit Ground Kontrol tonight! Rid Greely Valley of Tökkentäkker's curse - play CarnEvil today!

Known for its distinctive pastel graphics, its turbulent soundscape, and the top-notch side art, Centipede is a well-known classic for good reason, and deserves every bit of its enduring fame. The action starts slowly with a long centipede descending down the vertical playfield. Any time it hits one of the many mushrooms scattered about it, it turns around and continues towards the player, who is shooting up from the bottom of the screen. The centipede splits when fired upon, and each segment destroyed adds more mushrooms to the playfield, further complicating matters. Additional flea and spider enemies take aim on the player, who must employ speed and accuracy to last any amount of time in the increasingly fast levels. It’s worth noting that Centipede was co-developed by Dona Bailey, who was the only female software engineer at Atari at the time. The pastel and flowery scheme was a deliberate attempt to create a female audience for the game, which did work, and it was rather popular with both sexes at the time. The aforementioned side art is truly some of the best in arcade history; colorful, epic and just the right amount of garish. Centipede is every bit the arcade classic it deserves to be, and an excellent example of a well-designed trackball game.

While obviously influenced by Donkey Kong, Congo Bongo also draws from Sega's own Frogger, and arranges it all in a 3D type platformer, with a perspective similar to a game like Marble Madness. When starting the game, the player is treated to a short cinema of a mischievous monkey pranking our hero with a "hot foot." This kicks off the gameplay where a vengeful explorer must ascend a mountain ridge, dodging coconuts hurled by the gorilla foe. Congo Bongo is a playful, amusing title that was early to utilize the isometric perspective, in a time before such a scheme was more common. Fans of Donkey Kong, Frogger, and the colorful classic appeal of Sega's arcade titles should feel right at home in this wacky jungle adventure!

Jungle King is a rather innovative title from a time when side-scrolling games weren’t nearly as common as they would later become. Jungle King has an impressive soundtrack, with a song complex and melodic enough to belong in a Mega Man title. It’s definitely a memorable tune, and will set the stage for many a jungle adventure! From the barely-audible Tarzan yell that kicks off the gameplay, to the hard-earned win screen, Jungle King is a great example of early side-scrolling, and a lot of fun to play!

The world’s only 10-player arcade strategy game! Two teams, each led by a powerful Queen, face off to be the first to bring the giant snail god home, fill their hive with nectar, or execute a triple assassination of the enemy Queen.

Race your marble through maddening mazes and avoid deadly obstacles! Will you roll over the finish line just in time, or spin out of control? Marble Madness challenges the player with a fast-paced spin on platforming gameplay that's all about quick thinking and even quicker reflexes. You control a marble tasked with navigating a pseudo-3D course from an isometric perspective, giving you a birds' eye view of the action. What starts off simple with a roll and a hop soon becomes a hectic hustle to reach each level's goal in time, as each second counts towards your score and your game time - when you're out of time, it's Game Over! Roll down and play it today!

It’s a natural fit for the exciting races of Mario Kart to end up in the arcade. Mario Kart game play makes so much sense for the arcade; it’s a wonder why we didn’t see a sit down version sooner! In any case, when Namco Bandai and Nintendo finally teamed up to release a Mario Kart game for the arcades, it immediately became one of the best racers to hit the scene. While folks are familiar with Nintendo’s kart racing series on home consoles, the action translates perfectly to a competitive, immersive and most of all fun racing experience in the arcade! Players choose from 13 racers, which include a lot of the classic Nintendo characters and also a few from Namco’s stable, like Ms. Pac-Man and Blinky the ghost. Each track has several power-ups scattered throughout the level, with varying effects. Boost your speed with a Dash Mushroom or a Thunder Cloud (but be careful to pass it on before lightning strikes!), strike your opponents with a Green Shell or a Needle Bomb, or trip them up with a Banana Peel! And if you’re lucky enough to find a Star, it’s easy riding while you’re invulnerable to any attack. The player can also take their picture with Mario Kart GP 2’s on-board camera, and display it onscreen while racing! The classic Mario Kart game play is intact here, with the heavy item use and course interaction. Each of the game’s 16 racetracks is a colorful, themed experience, showcasing myriad Mario locations. Some of the favorites return such as a Boo’s Mansion course, WaLuigi Stadium, and the dreaded Rainbow Road. Each level is accompanied by commentary relevant to the action, which simulates a live broadcast of the race. This is the second edition of an arcade Mario Kart racer and only improved on the first! Sitting down with a friend to compete in tried-and-true kart racing is an awesome arcade experience, and not one to be missed!

Maximum Force was released in 1997 and features a picture-perfect B-movie action theme and was a successful follow-up to Area 51. Grab a light gun and take on waves of terrorists! Packed with Easter eggs, there are several of them in each of the game’s three vast levels, giving you a reason to do more than just dispense justice!

Players run and gun through a classic jungle war setting, rescuing POWs and upgrading weapons along the way. The ability to jump in a tank (the titular Metal Slug) is an awesome addition to the action!

The military from the original Metal Slug and the martians from the 2nd team up for another wacky installment, this one a true favorite among fans. Introduced here are a host of new vehicles, some updated weapons, and a system of branching paths that really adds to the replay value. Each path has its own difficulty level, and coming back to try them all is a great way to take on the variety found in Metal Slug 3.

The military from the original Metal Slug and the martians from the 2nd team up for another wacky installment, this one a true favorite among fans. Introduced here are a host of new vehicles, some updated weapons, and a system of branching paths that really adds to the replay value. Each path has its own difficulty level, and coming back to try them all is a great way to take on the variety found in Metal Slug 3.

Metal Slug 5 pits the heroes against the Ptolemaic Army, who have stolen a disc containing secrets of the Metal Slug project. You can take them on with three new vehicles, including the Slug Gunner, a mech-like vehicle that can even punch enemies in close-combat or transform into a tank! The tone of Metal Slug 5 is less humorous than the rest of the series, with an emphasis on challenging gameplay. But don't worry - even when you're facing a steady stream of bullets, try the new slide-dash maneuver, allowing you to travel under many projectiles while shooting in a move that would make John Woo proud.

Metal Slug 5 pits the heroes against the Ptolemaic Army, who have stolen a disc containing secrets of the Metal Slug project. You can take them on with three new vehicles, including the Slug Gunner, a mech-like vehicle that can even punch enemies in close-combat or transform into a tank! The tone of Metal Slug 5 is less humorous than the rest of the series, with an emphasis on challenging gameplay. But don't worry - even when you're facing a steady stream of bullets, try the new slide-dash maneuver, allowing you to travel under many projectiles while shooting in a move that would make John Woo proud.

Metal Slug 2 was a good game, but far from perfect, suffering from some slowdown issues (that admittedly can give you a chance to breathe while the screen is full of enemies and action). Metal Slug X is a remake of 2 that fixed these problems, and upgraded that good title into a truly great one. Here, we're introduced to a science-fiction influenced theme, along with a few new weapon upgrades and a ramped-up difficulty. Also introduced in this title are special status effects a player can be afflicted with – certain items will afflict the player with the detrimental “mummy” or “fat” modes!

The smash arcade basketball series NBA Jam eventually became NBA Hangtime and finally NBA Showtime, which is noteworthy for its NBC branding and its addition of 3D graphics. Showtime is essentially the same kind of game as the original Jam, with a few minor tweaks. A basic foul system was introduced for Showtime that includes a free throw penalty opportunity. Each team has an expanded roster, with several NBA greats to choose from at both the start and the halftime of each game!

NFL Blitz 2000 Gold was the last version of Blitz to get a proper arcade release. This means that all of the additional secrets, tricks and animations from the series made it in to this fully updated and refined version of the game. The rowdy and stripped down football rules are in full effect here, for the best Blitz experience available in the arcade!

Point Blank is a different kind of gun game: It’s silly, colorful, inventive and unique! Instead of a cops-and-robbers or zombies-must-die bloodbath, Point Blank employs a wide variety of mini games that genuinely require some dedicated sharpshooting. The game moves quickly, and one or two players get a lot of different goals, rules and targets to blast in a frenzy of creative action. Game modes include accuracy duels, hair-trigger speed shooting, memory challenges and more. Point Blank thrives on variation, and no two games are exactly alike! All of this adds up to a shooting experience that is wildly entertaining, rather competitive, and refreshingly simple. Despite its simple appearance, Point Blank is nothing if not challenging, and it takes a while of playing seriously to get good at it. It’s a rewarding challenge, with a carnival of gunplay that's worth every credit!

Drive to survive and blast away anything in your path with Atari Games' 1987 combat racer, RoadBlasters! You're a nameless road warrior piloting a futuristic vehicle, competing in a life-or-death race across the vast reaches of the post-apocalypse. Put your foot to the floor and your finger on the trigger, because your opponents don't just want to cross the finish line - they want to finish you, too! Can you steer your way to victory in the ultimate race, or will you end up in the rear view mirror? Cruise down to Ground Kontrol and find out!

There’s a lot to like in this awesome cabinet for both fans of Terminator 2 the film, and gun games in general. The action here is fully automatic, and the two simultaneous players yield twin uzis at the recessed screen. Wave after wave of skeletal terminators come at the players, and are best taken out with a rewardingly effective headshot. The uzi weapons do overheat, though – so keep an eye on the powerups scattered throughout. These include the coolant to keep your gun operating, shotgun shells, grenade launchers, and various weapon upgrades. The Terminator 2 arcade game is a great throwback to when that film caused a big splash in not just the theater, but the arcade and the home console scene as well.

The inexplicably titled Tetris Grandmaster 3: Terror-Instinct is the latest in a series of Japanese tournament style Tetris arcade games. While there are many modern iterations of Tetris in play today, the Grandmaster series takes the competitive aspect to a whole new level, and commands the true skill of a high level twitch player. The result is an incredibly fast, hyped up Tetris game with the blazing speed and high skills found in the Japanese arcade scene. It doesn’t take long to get used to this new, crazy fast type of Tetris, and suddenly your old school game will feel antiquated and slow. That’s a good thing though, as a good round of Tetris Grandmaster is a rush intense enough to make this classic feel like a whole new game!

Namco broke ground and really innovated with the original Time Crisis. Though there have been gun games as long as there have been arcades, the ideas in Time Crisis really introduced some new, entertaining elements to just plain shooting at stuff. As implied in the name, the player is under a bit of time constraint, as a countdown timer makes everything a hurry. More time can be earned by clearing checkpoints and accomplishing missions quickly. But the real trademark to Time Crisis gameplay is the foot pedal at the base of the cabinet. With it, players can duck behind cover or hide behind corners to avoid enemy fire, choosing when to jump out and shoot. Time Crisis II introduced two player game play, with a cooperative mode so friends can enjoy the bullet-ridden mayhem! The aesthetic of the Time Crisis series is notoriously cheesy, but embraced among fans. The action movie tropes at play here are quite deliberate, and well-suited to the theme. Time Crisis II sees a pair of secret agents firing away in an effort to stop an evil corporation from launching a military satellite. For an action game, it’s rather plot heavy, and the players are treated to cinematic cutscenes and rough dialogue. Time Crisis II is one of the best arcade shooters ever released, and we’re proud to finally add this massive cabinet to our lineup. Take a break and play it today, and bring a friend – with two players, it’s even better!