This comprises 1986-1992. These were my college years. My arcade gaming was minimal but the few arcade machines I played made a lasting impression. 

                                                                  1986

This year brings to mind no strong arcade memories. Perhaps I avoided them like I did television. I was dead set against tv watching while at school. I think I'd burned out on it in high school.

                                                                  1987

Two games come instantly to mind this year: Sky Shark (also known as Flying Shark) and 1943: Battle of Midway. 

I found a Sky Shark machine at a pizza shop in my small college town. It became a regular visit any time I had a break. My room mate and I would play this and then head over to the coffee shop and play chess over lox and bagels. Good times. Sky Shark was another vertically scrolling shooter like Xevious but with various World War elements. You pilot a bi-plane over a battlefield and drop bombs on tanks and shoot down other planes. It was tough but I really loved the graphics. Here's the cabinet:

Those graphics were colorful and well detailed. I've always loved airplane design. 

Next was a similar game, 1943: Battle of Midway by Capcom. This, another vertical scrolling shooter, was the sequel to 1942 from 1984. You're over the sea most of the time in this one. I remember it because my friend Mark and I would play it two-player when I came home from school. Here it is:

You shot down planes and bombed ships. You used powerups to get through the hail of flak and not run out of gas. I just learned there are cheat codes for each level. Hold the fire button down or point the joystick in the right direction at the beginning of the level, and you get your plane fully upgraded with weapons. I never knew that. 

                                                                   1992

Now that was about it for me and new arcade machines except for one in 1992, X-Men. This cabinet was built for six-player action much like the original four-player Gauntlet cabinet. It was a side-scrolling brawler. You pick one of the six X-Men: Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler and Dazzler to go fight Magneto.

It's a massive cabinet and maybe one of the last I played for a long while.

Later, through console collections of arcade games, I was introduced to a lot of games I missed. Stuff like: 1979s Lunar Rescue, an interesting combination of gameplay seen in Lunar Lander, Space Invaders and Asteroids; the Twin Bee series of cute-em-ups, a genre which is pure eye candy; and Capcom's Quiz & Dragons, an interesting mash up of a RPG and a trivia question-and-answer game. Also, Xbox Live's Game Room introduced me to a lot of Konami arcade games I never knew about like Strategy X and Finalizer.

My next thing to do is go to FunSpot in New Hampshire and see and play all these cabinets again. I'll get there sometime. 

And that's the arcades. Next up, my experience with home computer gaming.