Presumably, yes, there are good arcade games. Here are a few personal faves, many of which will show my age:
Quantum is a particularly wild, particularly rare vector graphics trackball game where you try to capture sub-atomic particles. I'd post pics of the game itself, but what I found online doesn't really do much to show off it's charm, so you get the swank marquee instead.
Discs of Tron is best experienced in the arcade, particularly if you can find the huge, blacklit Environmental model. That said, it's still a lot of fun, though I dunno how well MAME can emulate the gameplay, which involves bouncing discs around and trying to knock your opponent off their perch.
Buster Bros. is a fun little action puzzle game, where big balls (thank you, AC/DC) are falling from the ceiling and you have to blast them on the way down. The catch is that the big balls split into little balls and start bouncing all over the place, with assorted barriers and whatnot in the way to make things interesting. As you can tell, I've completely given up on posting screen shots, in favor of marquee art, but at least this one is a fairly accurate representation of the gameplay.
Three Wonders isn't entirely accurate, but "Three Pretty Decent Games" just wouldn't sell as well. All three games - a platformer, a shooter, and a puzzler - benefit from nice 2D graphics, which really do help them rise above their station. In particular, Don't Pull is a great Pengo clone.
Xybots is a great game with a fairly dull marquee, thus forcing me to actually post screenshots. You run around in a 3D maze and blast things in a manner almost entirely unlike, say, Doom. The two player aspect is a hoot, if perhaps not very practical with MAME.
While looking at the X page of the
Killer List Of Videogames, I was reminded that
Xevious 3D/G is really nice update of the original.
And with
Pigskin we're back to marquee art. It's a sort of cross between a beat-em-up and football, with much more emphasis on the beating. I have fond memories of pouring quarters into Pigskin with a friend when we were in high-school. Then the bastards at the arcade took it away and replaced it with some other game. What was that...oh, yeah. Street Fighter 2. That's an okay game, but it's no Pigskin.
Not only is
Arkanoid - Revenge of Doh the ultimate variation on the Breakout concept, but you can make lots of bad Simpsons jokes while you play. I know, I know, I'm really reaching with that one.
And finally, no discussion of arcade games would be complete without...
Gals Panic. 'Nuff said.
FnordChan