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Comment by richardjdare | Hacker News Reader

I spent my teenage years copying pictures of Street Fighter II characters from C&VG magazine, I loved the art and music. However I was terrible at the game. I didn't truly enjoy a fighting game until Tekken.

I miss arcades, although I only got to visit them once a year when we went on our family holiday. Can you imagine waiting a whole year to play Outrun, Rygar or Smash TV? Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions that to an obsessive gamer like me, it was like going on a pilgrimage to see a painting that you'd previously only seen in a photocopied reproduction.

My finest gaming moments were playing Golden Axe and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker with a whole crowd of people watching.

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Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions

As a general rule, this is correct, but Rygar is a glaring exception. The arcade game was a typical mindless scroller. The home version was an epic action/RPG.

Arcade Rygar was more than just a mindless scroller. It may have seemed mindless or repetitive especially against the RPG, but all 25+ levels had unique artwork and layout, and the graphics and color were brilliant around that time as if the arcade industry made the leap between 8 to 16-bit.

Rygar had a rough learning curve but it was possible to get good enough to finish the whole game on a quarter or two.

You can imagine the disappointment when we got NES Rygar. Ported graphics and characters aside, it was one of those games that was damn near impossible without the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide or the mapping tenacity of a fanatic. Of course we played through it, but grudgingly.

Which version was that? I only played the Amstrad CPC version which was ok, but nowhere near as good as the arcade.

NES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DmaMbJfIaQ

Every time I smell plywood dust I'm transported back to the arcades of my youth.

Oh shit I have that too. Why?

> Arcade games were so superior to their home conversions

That is unless you had a Neo-Geo ;)

Or a TurboGrafix-16

With all the add ons.

I only had a base unit with the tap adapter. And then I got the express too.

I just have to reply because of that last sentence. I totally forgot that feeling until now. Each rendered frame, the side scrolling, the pixelated sprites (not rectangular, but smoothed due to the CRT). Ignorance is bliss...

The interlaced, fuzzy-in-a-very-specific-way arcade experience is a huge wave of nostalgia.

Reminds me of paddle stickers wear patterns due to SF2 moves.

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