and why good ones were important to us.

Remember how pleased we were when the 5200 Qix, ColecoVision Ladybug and Spy Hunter, or the Vectrex Star Castle and Armor Attack were so good? For some years, this was especially important to fans of those games.

Before the age of MAME and other reasonably easily-accessible emulators, the home console version was all you'd get. Often, this was fine with popular games, since often the home versions were really quite good (Turbo! Frenzy! Defender! Ms. Pac-Man! Elevator Action! Donkey Kong 3 (well, maybe not too popular...).

This was, and still is, because almost all arcade games only had/have a lifespan of a few months. So if you really liked obscure games, such as Snap Jack, Cuber, Redclash, Jump Bug, Marvin's Maze, Zektor, or countless others, you could only expect to play them in the arcades for a few months, or even weeks- then, usually, they'd be gone.

Unless a good home version was made available, that is.

Unfortunately, most such games never appeared on a home system, even on the King of Obscure Games itself, the ColecoVision (Looping? Pepper 2?).

It was also why we were so disappointed when the translation wasn't really good. If this was the case, you were out of luck.