By "mastered", I mean pretty much play at will for ridiculous amounts of time with no challenge left. I have only mastered two: Asteroids and Space Invaders.

Street Fighter II: Champion Edition*
Double Dragon
Splash!
The Punisher*
Alien vs. Predator*


* Could finish (or atleast get to the last boss) in 1 quarter

I was hopeless at all arcade games...I mastered many console games, however, like Mario, Donkey Kong.etc.

Old-school:  Asteroids (1980)

New-school:  AfterBurner (Sega, 1987).  Game has a finite lifespan of 20-30 minutes, but I regularly finished the game on a single credit.  Nothing like the sit-in version with the moving cockpit-style cabinet, and four speakers all cranked loud enough to drown out an entire arcade with one of the best game soundtracks of all time.

i dont know if this counts..."sky jump" pinball machine!

Old school: Can't say I 'mastered' any, I loved playing Pac-Man and the Atari games like Frogger, Circus Atari, Kaboom, etc.

Space Harrier... if you beat the game, you could start over with however many men you could had left. :)

Mat Mania... got so good at this game that the only way I would lose is get bored and quit or fall asleep.

I was the "Zaxxon" champ! Must have played that thing for days on end...

I had "Battlezone" mastered.  A friend of mine pretty much did the same thing with "Centipede."

TRON

Don't know how well I "mastered" the game. . .  but Centipede was my game of choice.  I still look for it when I take my kids to places with video games.  Then they get mad because I use all the tokens.

I was hopeless at all arcade games...I mastered many console games, however, like Mario, Donkey Kong.etc.


I was pretty hopeless as well, the only one good at sort of, was Pac-Man.

Phoenix

Asteroids and Star Wars

I played those for hours on end. I got really good at em. I felt like I was going fall over when I got done playing!  I loved the voices on Star Wars, thought it was cool, and it was. What I remember most was trying to make it though with 4 or more shields left!

--
Dave.

By "mastered", I mean pretty much play at will for ridiculous amounts of time with no challenge left. I have only mastered two: Asteroids and Space Invaders.


Double Dragon I could beat on one quarter, and Operation Wolf I could too if the settings were right (and the laser dropped; earlier versions didn't have this power up).

1942 I also was good at, and for a while Ms Pac-Man.

I don't think it ever made the arcade, but I've played Yars Revenge to the point that my hands physically locked to the old, ergonomically incorrect Atari joystick (about 6 hours straight, no pause), without losing a life.

Not sure if Super Mario Bros was in the arcade, but I've beaten the console version in 9 minutes flat.

EDIT: I just remembered the game into which I dumped more quarters than all other combined: Gauntlet. Did that game even have a stupid ending?

not just speaking of arcade games, but was there an ending or a way to actually "beat" games like PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Qbert, Frogger, and Zaxxon?  Or would they just go on forever?

not just speaking of arcade games, but was there an ending or a way to actually "beat" games like PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Qbert, Frogger, and Zaxxon?  Or would they just go on forever?


I once watched a guy  "set-up" Centipede in such a way that the little centipede could only come down through the middle of the game and he just stood there and shot it them all lined up.  He finally turned to some kid and said - Hey want to take over.  It was cool how he had set it up.  No telling how long the game went on for.

I once watched a guy  "set-up" Centipede in such a way that the little centipede could only come down through the middle of the game and he just stood there and shot it them all lined up.   He finally turned to some kid and said - Hey want to take over.  It was cool how he had set it up.  No telling how long the game went on for.


I could do that once in awhile on the arcade game.  All the time on the Atari 2600 version.

I never really mastered any arcade games, but was pretty good at the following:

Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man (I scored 70,000 last week on a Ms. Pac-Man machine at a bowling alley that had the speed chip in it)
Galaga
Pole Position
Punch-Out!!
M.A.C.H. 3
Zookeeper