Vintage being the key word, implies that to answer this question you had to have blown a substantial amount of quarters (or tokens) on video arcade games in the early 80's.
I believe I mentioned in previous blog posts that back in the early 80's my older brother worked for Putt-Putt. This Putt-Putt had a huge room of arcade games and every evening he would empty each one and restock the "token" machine (it took your money and gave you special tokens to play the games with - instead of quarters). He would fill a bag with $50 - $80 in tokens and give it to me and I'd drag my friends down for a day of free video gaming. With all that free gaming you'd think that I'd be the holder of some world record, but I never spent the time analyzing the intricate timings and formulating patterns - I just had fun.
My favorite games were Tempest, Astroids, Death Race 2000 (which, by the way, was banned because of it's "violence" - it was just stick figures that you'd run over with your stick-car for pete's sake!), and of course, Donkey Kong.
My husband loves Donkey Kong too and when we saw one for sale in the local classifieds about 10 years ago, we bought it. Two weeks ago, (after four moves around Mid TN, up to Pennsylvania and back to Mid TN - dropped down an entire flight of basement steps, and having been stored outside in a shed for the past 5 years), we decided to pull it out, plug it in and see if it would blow up. We were all shocked to find that it actually worked. The screen had some bad fading and jittered a little, but it was playable. After some internet searching my hubby found a place where he could get replacement parts and being an electronic technician, he worked his magic and got it working like new again - but better than new.
There's an upgrade that a guy created from the original, that has three new levels, it's Donkey Kong 2 (D2K). You can switch between the original Donkey Kong and the D2K, and it remembers the high scores after it's been unplugged, and he added an option for "free play" where you don't have to pump quarters into it (or flip the switch), just push one or two player and your off!
So for the past week we've been trying to kill each others high scores. I've found that I'm sorely lacking in my old hand/eye coordination and my scores have been embarrassing to say the least (and no longer make it to the top 5). Adding to the competition is my daughters boyfriend. He's stoked the competitive fires and currently holds the high score - I doubt that will last for long though.
Of course, we all watched "King of Kong, a Fist Full of Quarters". It's funny and entertaining documentary and I can't believe that by the end, I thought it a pretty good movie.
Back to the topic ... what's your favorite vintage video arcade game?