New collector needs advice

[Lord Thag]

Hi all. I just started collecting these little gems after a trip down memory lane detoured to ebay and wound up with me getting the Pacman and DK coleco arcade tabletops. Since then I've picked up kingman, Defender, Pac man 2 (in transit), Scramble, (bandai) Galaxian, Alien Chase, and coleco DKjr. I've got five or six Game and Watch units as well.

Here's the deal. My family was living off of dirt and protein rich bugs 'back in the day' so all I could do was drool at Toys r Us. I've never played most of these games. I'm very much enjoying the ones I've picked up, but I have no idea what is worth picking up. I don't really care about rarity so much as gameplay.

Any recommendation on what to pick up next? Thanks!
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Playin' the world, one game at a time...

[Neil UK]

Welcome to the Forum . It's great to hear from another collector who actually likes playing their games as well as collecting them. From the list of games you already have, it seems like you are not a great sports game fan which is lucky as I'm not either so I'm not too hot on their gameplay.

Of the games I have, I can recommend CGL Frogger and Amidar plus Parker Brothers Q-bert (not so easy to get) as good conversions of the Arcade machines and very playable. If you like driving games my favourite is Kenner Long Beach Grand Prix (quite hard to get), as I love trying to shave another second off my best time, and I think there are 27 different permutations of race length and difficulty setting of which to beat your best time!

I spent more time playing my Parker Brothers Split Second (6 quick basic games but still fun) as a kid, trying to shave a 10th or 2 off my best times, than any other game except possibly Grandstand Astro Wars (great little shooter and hard to beat especially on level 4) and CGL's Galaxy Invader, but you will probably find this one (white) too easy. The 10,000 (orange) game is much harder to beat! Avoid the middle yellow one as it is way too easy.

If you fancy taking your little grey cells as well as your reflexes, you cant beat games such as Waddingtons Wizard (1979 ot 87 version) which plays the same as Simon but has 3 extra games, or Toytronic's Encore!/Gotcha! or Kingsford Match Me versions which have 8 random lights to remember.

These are a few of my favourites in terms of gameplay but there are lots of other very playable games I haven't usedfor a long time that don't spring to mind at the moment. Coleco Galaxian and Tomy Tron are also worth a try.

If you fancy comparing your best scores / times of any of your games I have my best scores of many of my games written down in my little black book. I was thinking of suggesting to Rik (who runs the Forum/Museum) about starting a section in the Forum to record peoples best scores, (possibly after photographic confirmation), to give the people like us who actually play their games some targets to aim at

Whatever games you buy in the future I hope you enjoy them,

All the best,

Neil.

[spacemonsterviras]

[mario101]

You HAVE to have Mattel Foot Ball, its a classic. (sorry if you already have it, it's my first day and well, i bet you don't care. sorry