I do not wish to pretend that this list of Top 5 MAME ROMs is anything but a personal list of favorites, but I do believe that many of you are going to find something for their tastes in this list and something that will either remind you of the old days or show you how fun arcades were once.
1. Final Fight
Final Fight is my favorite video game of all times, including PC titles, PS titles and every other video game that you can think of. It is the purest and the simplest representative of the scrolling beat ‘em up games that were available on arcade machines. It puts you in the shoes of one of three fighters on a vigilante mission of saving Jessica, daughter of Hagar, girlfriend of Cody and a good friend of Guy, which are the three playable characters. The game leads you through the Metro City as you fight the Mad Gear gang and save Jessica. Pure ass-kicking fun.
2. Street Fighter II
For me, Street Fighter II has everything a fighting MAME ROM game should have. Once again. I was looking for purity of fighting games and it is best represented in SF II. There are no monsters (Blanka arguably) and there are not too many moves that make it all seem like something unreal. Mostly, it is about guys (and a girl) handing out and taking punches. It is about fighting for the different reasons and about being the last one standing up. It has superb gameplay with subtle nuances which make every fight a unique one, especially when played against another person.
3. Metal Slug
I am talking about the original Metal Slug, not the many alien, monkey alien and whatnot sequels. The first Metal Slug might just be the most interesting game ever made with such an action feeling to it that it is more exciting than anything that has ever come out in the following decades on any platform. You are an Allied soldier fighting through battalions of Germans in order to get to the final boss. It has seen too many sequels which are quite similar in gameplay, but which introduce all kinds of different, silly characters, enemies and plots that it loses its main appeal.
4. Zed Blade
Zed Blade is a shoot em up game. In it, you are a pilot of a “space” fighter and you need to fight your way through myriad other spacecrafts, bosses and other kinds of different enemies in order to save the world, basically. You may not think of it as anything special, but believe me when I tell you that Zed Blade returns everything you give to it with interest. It is a game with a gameplay which is difficult, but not impossible and which really puts your reflexes and your brain to a test.
5. Pac-Man
Well, it’s simply Pac-Man.