What are your current quick fix "arcade" style obsessions?

I love a nice long single player campaign full of story and progression as much as anyone, but I'm also an old school gamer and sometimes I like to turn my brain off and play a simple game for a quick fix of fun. Sometimes I turn to actual games from the arcade era, like Dragon Spirit: The New Legend, Blazing Star, or just straight up Gradius, but recently I've found myself playing a bunch of Crimsonland, a twin stick shooter @jeff has mentioned as a personal obsession of his and one that goes great in short survival mode bursts. I really love the way the survival mode in that game builds to absolutely unmanageable levels and the way you get to build out your perks and weapon combos along the way, in a much quicker and more compressed cycle than something like a Roguelite.

I'm sure that if this conversation gets going people will mention Roguelites, and that's fine of course, you do you, but what I'm actually looking for are the games that operate more on an arcade timescale and mechanical complexity level. Something that you can play for 5-10 minutes and feel like you've gotten a quarter or two's worth of action in, and something where you start fresh from each playthrough without the now typical Roguelite progression system. I know that there are other old school gamers on this board who like actual arcade games or arcade style games still but they don't get talked about a ton here, possibly because they feel kind of disposable and too simple to discuss. Suggestions are always welcome, though, and the great things about these kinds of games is that they are extremely low commitment. You don't have to wait for the first 2 hours of tutorial to be over for them to get good. They're good from the jump!

So...what's good for you right now?

Rarely a month goes by where I don't at least put a few minutes into The Last Blade.

I'm a big fan of fighting games in general, and right now I have Soul Calibur VI, Killer Instinct, and Slice Dice and Rice in my recently played list on Steam.

On Switch, Pacman 99 keeps distracting me from finishing Breath of the Wild.

@judaspete: It's crazy how many awesome fighting games are widely available these days. I also like booting up random fighters from time to time for a quick fix. Tekken 7 is great but those NeoGeo bangers are everywhere and Samurai Shodown will always be welcome.

It's crazy how Pac-Man keeps reinventing itself. Pacman CE, Pacman 256. now Pacman 99 (which is canonically a prequel to 256, with 157 games separating them). I can't think of any game from that era with basic mechanics that have held up that well.

Steredenn: Binary stars is my go-to for quick shooter action. It's gorgeous, challenging, and has a banging soundtrack. Tesla Force is another one that scratches that itch.

I've also been diving back into the Capcom Beat 'em up bundle, and most of the games in it are still worth playing.

I made the mistake of starting up Ikaruga last week, and now I can't stop thinking about it.

I don't know if it counts but i just started playing Dungeon Fighter Online as a podcast game, and while it's kinda difficult to control it is just an advanced beat em up, so i'm enjoying being able to quickly pop into that and blow up some sprites.
The graphics and the kinda janky looking MMO implementations make me nostalgic for early f2p games.

@laughingman: Steredenn is great! I never beat it but I picked away at it for quite a while and I still go back on occasion. It's amazing how well it works as a shooter. The Capcom Beat 'Em Ups Bundle is also a great time. I just wish there was a Konami equivalent but the licensing would be tricky and Konami clearly doesn't care anymore.

@cikame: Nothing screams 90s arcade more than a beat 'em up. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about; games that fill the arcade void in these days where almost everything is played at home.

In the summer and fall nothing hits quite like a couple Conquest-mode games of MLB The Show. Outside of that, though, the closest games I currently have installed that might fit the bill are probably playing Civ VI on the hardest difficulty at Epic game speed until a barbarian tribe inevitably wipes me out or running a couple random encounters in Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut at Lethal+ New Game+ difficulty before remembering there's nothing quite like forgetting the controls to a video game you once felt in compete control of.

At this point in my life I interact with a lot of video games this way. I've played so much Hades and Mario Kart and Halo this year because it's so easy to just pop in and out of it. I actually beat the Max Payne trilogy for the second time just playing in 30-60 minute bursts. Take a game like Persona 5 for example, I love that game to pieces. I would easily consider it one of the best games I've played in the last five years but it's taken me....well, about five years just to put 70 or 80 hours in because I feel like for me to play a game like that and be satisfied with a session, I have to put in 90 minutes bare minimum.

I replay Violent Storm on my Raspberry Pi or MAME PC somewhat often, if only to listen to the kickin' soundtrack.

I'm playing a lot of Super Auto Pets