When it comes to lore, people tend to think of role-playing games or adventure games. However, there was a time in the 1980s called the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games, and a decent selection of those games had storylines, a setting, a plot, and characters.
It's true that most arcade games didn't have much lore, being simple shooting or sports games. As consoles brought these beloved stand-up arcade games home, designers saw an opportunity to add more storyline and depth to their titles, and lore improved even as the Golden Age of arcade games came to an end.
6 Street Fighter 2
There were fighting games that came before the Street Fighter franchise, but none of them had complex characters or a backstory. The first game in the franchise focused almost exclusively on the characters, but the sequel included a storyline with higher stakes, not only for the protagonist but also for the bad guy's plan to take over the planet.
The villainous M. Bison runs the equally shady Shadaloo organization, and he has a plan for world domination, starting with recruiting the world's best fighters by using an international fighting tournament. Ryu, the main character, has dedicated his life to perfecting his Shotokan Karate skills when he is lured to the tournament looking for a new kind of challenge.
5 Mortal Kombat
The plot and storyline are inspired by Bruce Lee's iconic film, Enter The Dragon, which revolves around a few elite fighters that are invited to a hidden island estate. The lore of this arcade game brings in the supernatural and fantasy elements by bringing gods, parallel dimensions, and magical powers into the mix. The evil wizard Shang Sun and his forces can't gain access to the realm of Earth until they win ten of the Mortal Kombat tournaments in a row, and only a small group of heroic fighters can stop them.
It wasn't just a coincidence that this was one of the first video games that became a movie. Mortal Kombat was chosen because it had some of the most lore to work with when it came to early video games. The fact that this was also one of the most popular fighting games ever also helped when it came to marketing.
4 Donkey Kong
These days, the face of Mario is the icon that means "video game" and it all started with Donkey Kong. This was the first time gamers saw Mario and Kong, his mortal enemy, doing battle at a construction site for a damsel in distress. At the time, her name was Pauline, and her only line of dialogue was "Help!"
The appeal of Donkey Kong came from the storyline that unfolded as the levels progressed, and it was one of the only games at the time to have such a feature. The backstory was inspired by Beauty and the Beast and King Kong, and although DK was cast as the villain his story was always a sympathetic one and foreshadowed his arc as a hero in future games.
3 Dragon's Lair
Everyone remembers Dragonslayer as that game in the arcade that looked like an animated movie. This was a Don Bluth production on the design end and published by the aptly named Cinematronics. It had the lore to match a knightly legend, even if it wasn't exactly the most creative or complex story ever written, and there's a lot of deliberate satire involved which wouldn't work in a movie but fits well in a video game.
The protagonist, who is actually named Dirk the Daring, has to storm an enchanted castle to rescue his lady love, Princess Daphne, from a dragon. That's all there is to it, but it was enough to spawn a whole franchise that's still active. Netflix approved a live-action movie version in 2020, with an eye on Ryan Reynolds in the lead role.
2 TRON
The movie TRON was about the inner workings of a computer, and a big part of that was a video game, so when stand-up arcade games started to appear they used the same characters and lore and even built on them. The player controls TRON, the main character, but like most stand-up games a two-player mode was also available.
The TRON franchise includes several video games, and the arcade version was released in 1982, the same year the movie was released. It included versions of the games that were featured in the movie, including the infamous speeder bikes and discus scenes. There was a sequel, Discs of TRON, which wasn't as popular, and after that era, games that were a part of this franchise went straight to home consoles.
1 Polybius
Polybius is in a class by itself when it comes to arcade games with lore, because the game itself is the lore. Rumors spread in suburbs and shopping malls of kids falling sick, disappearing, or even dying after playing a game with no known producer or trademark, known only as Polybius. Legend had it that the government, or some other secretive entity, was monitoring the people who played the game as some kind of social test or experiment.
The existence of the old-school stand-up version has never been confirmed, but the game has been the subject of a popular urban legend circulating in arcades and gaming culture since the early 1980s. It's inspired real games in the 21st century for consoles and PCs, and these are simple 2D shooters without any lore themselves.