What is attract mode?

What month I talked about screen burn and how arcade manufacturers started to add attract modes to their games to help prevent this, however, that wasn't the primary function of an attract mode. As the name suggest, attract mode was to attract players. Pretty obvious, huh?

Usually attract modes would alternate between a demonstration of the game, the highscores, profiles of the characters or vehicles and the story of the game (if indeed there was a story). They often said "Game Over" or "Insert Coin(s)" and were sometimes silent, although usually that was controlled by a dip switch.

Now, I like to include videos in my posts where I can find them, so imagine my delight when I discovered a someone on YouTube calling themselves Narox has uploaded a series of 41 videos on Capcom attract modes, including such classics as Captain Commando, Three Wonders, Dark Stalkers and loads from the Street Fighter series. If you don't know what attract screens look like, you will after this:

Can I be honest? I like just leaving this video series playing in the background. Ahhh, nostalgia. 

MTW