10. NBA Jam

Released: 1993
Developer: Midway Games
Publisher: Midway Games

What's the best sports game ever to grace the inside of an arcade? If you're not a crazy person, it's an easy answer: Midway's NBA Jam, the wildest and wackiest run-and-gun showdown ever conceived for virtual parquet. It's easy; take two guys from your favorite pro team (i.e., the Lakers) and square them off against two jabronis from another team -- with no holds barred. In fact, fouling is a major part of the process! Three-pointers, insane dunks, super-slick passing, and the eternal quest to achieve that en fuego status all add up to something that's not quite basketball, but not quite anything else, either.

Throw in four-player simultaneous face-offs, an extremely over-the-top, cranked out announcer ("He's on fire!"), and players with perpetual stupid grins on their faces, and you can't help but feel you've spent a quarter on the ride of your life. While this one was ported to just about every console ever, said ports never achieved the beer-stained, frat-boy screaming madness that the original cabinet did.



9. Spy Hunter

Released: 1983
Developer: Bally Midway
Publisher: Bally Midway

It's impossible for any self-respecting nerd to hear the Peter Gunn theme and not reach for the missile trigger. In 1983, Pole Position was the state of the art in driving games, but Spy Hunter took driving in a different direction -- not a race, but an adventure. In the quintessential 1980s arcade, few machines were more coveted than the sit-down, immersive version of the game.

More a vertical shooter in the Xevious vein than a true driving game, Spy Hunter succeeds on the back of James Bond car-gadgets, relentlessly good sound design, and a unique control scheme that gives players control of machine guns, oil slicks, missiles, smoke screens, full analog driving controls, and a weapons van. Like any good spy, players have to avoid harming civilians, survive for as long as possible, and occasionally transform their sports cars into speedboats. Yes, it's that awesome.