NES The First Real Home Arcade
Though other systems had offered some arcade titles, when I grabbed my NES in 85 I went cartridge crazy. From Dig Dug to Defender II, Super Sprint to Spy Hunter, Gauntlet to Ghosts and Goblins, I couldn't keep up with all the quarter munchers I could bring home. It is hard to express the pleasure that came from finishing a game like Xevious at home, after being thwarted by the arcade version over many stoned trips to the pinball halls. NES was the console that poured the foundation for all future systems, and made the Reagan/Thatcher years a lot easier to endure. The Fifties had real cars, The Sixties had real rock music, The Seventies had real drugs, and The Eighties had real games. When Atari stumbled, Nintendo saved the day.

Personally I went with the master system (as its what my parents bought me) but I was lucky enough back then to have a mate who had the NES and we spent many many hours playing Blades Of Steel :)

If my memory is intact, I bought a NES just to play Nemesis and Salamander ( they might have gone by their other names at the time). Strange to recall that really good arcade ports were all that attracted me to the older machines, pre-MAME and pre any info on arcade games at all when i come to think of it.

Nemesis was Gradius and Salamander might have been Life Force. I think.

One of the stranger things is the way the NES/Famicom went back into the arcades... as the PlayChoice10 machine, where players put in money to earn extra playing time...