10 Best Co-Op Arcade Games

The word arcade is a funny one; it technically refers to a series of structural arches over a passage, usually built with the intent of housing shops. It’s funny because that sounds a lot fancier than the grease-stained, quarter-devouring, kindergarten rave that we grew up loving.

Regardless, our arcades are cooler. They have games, and beneath the spectacle of those massive, dusty cabinets were a mess of perfect pixels that usually pitted young players against each other, but on the rare occasion, let us join forces against mighty foes. In case you’re craving some of that 8-bit nostalgia, here are some of the best arcade games that gave us a chance to battle alongside our friends.

Updated March 14, 2022, by Cameron Roy Hall: While modern arcades are hidden in the dark recesses of your local mall, the games themselves have found new life in console ports and computer ROMs. And, sure, there are newer, fancier cabinets for some old standards, but who among us is brave (or rich) enough to enter a Dave And Busters? So we look back to the cabinet heyday, where quarters were the only relevant currency. Now that the scene is set, here's another retro look at some of the best arcade games that let you play alongside your friends.

15 Sunset Riders

Released in 1991, Sunset Riders is an Old West-themed side-scrolling shooter game, with four colorful, playable cowboys; Steve, Billy, Bob, and Cormano. Depending on the cabinet you found, Sunset Riders' cooperative functionality varied between either two or four concurrent players.

The game came packaged with exactly the same amount of plot as any wild, wild west movie ever released in America. But it did win a few points with its hilariously bright aesthetic, and by providing impressionable youths with fully automatic revolvers/endless digital ammo, and by letting us parkour across a stampeding herd of angry longhorns.

14 Bubble Bobble

Released in 1986, Bubble Bobble claims to be a two-player platforming arcade game, although the term fever dream feels more appropriate. The game sees players controlling (copyright safe) chibi versions of Yoshi that catch opponents in bubbles before popping them into pure oblivion.

Oh, you're curious about the plot? We're so glad that you asked because Bubble Bobble totally has one of those. According to the lore, Baron Von Blubba has kidnapped the nameless girlfriends of Bubby and Bobby and transformed the two human men into Bubble Dragons (under the names of Bub and Bob) and demanded that they use their new scaly forms to conquer the Cave Of Monsters in order to save their partners. Like we said earlier... fever dream.

13 Ninja Baseball Bat Man

Four Player Mode on Ninja Baseball Bat Man

Released in 1993, Ninja Baseball Bat Man is a string of words we never thought we'd say out loud in that exact order. Once the whiplash of the title wears off, the charm sets in because NBBM visually reads like a forgotten entry into the Mega Man canon. Players can control Captain Jose, Twinbats Ryno, Stick Straw, or Beanball Roger on their quest to retrieve six stolen baseball items.

It's a beat-em-up, when you break it down, with up to four-person multiplayer, and each team member operating a different character with their own unique fighting style. By the way, these characters are totally robots, but the game didn't feel like that information was as important to the theme as the ninja or baseball bats, but we felt that mentioning it helped explain our earlier Mega Man reference.

12 Rampage

Released in 1986, Rampage is a Kaiju-themed beat-em-up where the player beats up buildings and the obstacles in place are the entire military power of the United States of America. There are three playable monsters to choose from; George (a giant ape), Lizzie (a giant lizard), and Ralph (a giant werewolf).

Rampage is unique to this list in that it's the only game therein where the maximum number of potential players is three, which feels wrong somehow. How many arcade cabinets come with controllers in non-multiples of two?

11 Buster Bros.

Buster Bros take on balloons in front of Big Ben

Released in 1989, Buster Bros. (or Pang, or Pomping World, because who cares about consistency?) is a single/two-player shooter game where you control a nameless explorer in a Steve Irwin cosplay and use excessive weaponry to shoot bouncing balloons and wildlife near globally famous monuments.

The gameplay loop of Buster Bros./Pang/Pomping World is incredibly simple, with the only real change between levels being the background, but that simplicity makes it easy to dive headfirst into, which is the trade secret behind every addictive arcade game.

10 Contra

Released in 1987, Contra is a near-plot-less run-and-gun third-person shooter game that tested the limits of our pocket change by being mercilessly difficult. In retrospect, this might have been intentional, as it drove us to think that maybe cooperative mode, which required another quarter, would be easier.

This, of course, was only marginally true, as “easy” is not a term that ever meshed with the Rambo/Duke Nukem hybrid. But it did mean we got to suffer next to our friends instead of alone, and that honestly feels like the makings of a lifelong memory.

9 Final Fight

Released in 1989, Final Fight is what happens when Street Fighter isn’t chained to a single screen. Players would take their chosen character through a series of brawls, connected by a little light walking and a few shattered doors.

Final Fight’s comically over-dramatized male power fantasy doubles when you switch to cooperative mode, where one of you uses your big muscles to punch everything, and the other swings around a lethal pipe they found lying on the ground. Look, we can rag on it for being ridiculous, but it's also incredibly fun.

8 Gauntlet

Released in 1985, Gauntlet is a top-down dungeon crawler that lets you slaughter hoards of Evil Dead extras with the fastest bow this side of Middle Earth. If archery isn’t your thing, there are other characters, too. They're all broadly based on DnD archetypes, like the Barbarian and the Valkyrie.

Gauntlet pops up on most lists like this for its clean aesthetic, functional simplicity, and sheer awesomeness that’s only multiplied by trashing the dungeon with anywhere between one-to-three friends, depending on the cabinet you played on.

7 Escape From The Planet Of Robot Monsters

Escape From The Planet Of Robot Monsters arcade cabinet screen shot

Released in 1989, Escape From The Planet Of Robot Monsters is essentially the blueprint for every sci-fi movie ever. Not only that, but the aesthetic and humor teeter on the edge of conventional reason, begging the question “was this intended to be campy?”

The answer to that is... unclear, but the results were undeniably brilliant. The game nails its pseudo-3D visuals and frantic animations, although the slightly skewed camera tends to confuse the controls. The cooperative mode changes little aside from the level of absurdity blasting across the screen

6 X-Men

Released in 1992, X-Men was one of the first playable superhero experiences available. With comic-accurate sprites and the potential for up to four consecutive players, the mutant brawler functioned similarly to Final Fight, but with cooler boss fights. Pyro and The Blob? More of that, please.

Watching footage of a full roster of four members playing X-Men at once is honestly one of the most beautifully chaotic things imaginable. It turns what was once a potential challenge into a hilariously one-sided (hero-appropriate) massacre.

5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Released in 1989, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is another potentially four-person (because it would be sacrilegious if it were anything else) superhero brawler. The music for this one is rock solid, considering they have the actual theme song to work with.

The TMNT arcade cabinet game goes above and beyond by desperately striving for a plot line, which was portrayed with not just rapid-fire exposition, but also a few static cutscenes. Like X-Men, this one gets major points for letting you and your friends play through your favorite Saturday morning cartoons.

4 Joust

Released in 1982, Joust is one of the most visually simplistic games on this list, but the sparse pixels are more than enough to make us want our own weaponized ostriches. Mounted and dangerous, the goal of Joust is to collect eggs and defeat waves of enemies, both of which acquire points for the player.

In cooperative mode, the objective is the same, and technically both players are on the same team, but the game slyly keeps separate point tallies for each person, just in case things were starting to get a little too friendly.

3 Time Soldiers

Time Soldiers arcade cabinet screen shot

Released in 1987, Time Soldiers is a multiplayer top-down shooter/bullet hell with a camera fixed on moving a track. Waves of enemy troops fall beneath your deadly fire, and by “waves of enemy troops” we mean everything from cavemen and dinosaurs to robots and armed militia.

You see, unlike most media about time manipulation, this particular arcade game ignores the usual rules of keeping a low profile when exploring a different era. Apparently, observing foreign times isn’t as easy of a sell as killing a T-Rex with a giant laser. Go figure, right?

2 The Simpsons

The Simpsons family running after Maggie and Smithers in the original Simpsons Arcade Game.

Released in 1991, The Simpsons arcade game didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Like several popular titles before it, The Simpsons is a side-scrolling multiplayer brawler, where up to four players could simultaneously go toe-to-toe with swarms of… the entire population of Springfield.

In true form, The Simpsons leans into the absurdity of having the suburban family fight on the streets with comical animations and just the right amount of fourth-wall breaking. More so than other brawlers, though, it feels like there’s an absurd number of things occurring on the screen at every moment, almost as if the developers knew that any lull could make players question their life choices.

1 Mario Bros.

Released in 1983, Marios Bros may not be the most popular Mario arcade cabinet, at least not in comparison to a certain barrel throwing game, but it’s the most prominent one with a cooperative mode. With a single screen for both players to fight off waves of Koopa Troopas and Goombas for points (coins), and the edges of said screen functioning on Pac-Man rules, Mario Bros is really just a prettier Joust.

But that’s how most arcade titles work; stick to the formula, even if the pixels get changed up. And while the lack of ostriches is heartbreaking, there’s admittedly precious little that isn’t cooler with a Nintendo skin variant.

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