I just caught up with this thread, and watched the video.
My vote goes to the Commodore 64, followed by the Atari VCS.
The ColecoVision could have done better, it looks and sounds good; but the gameplay is slow, which makes it lose some of that high-energy arcade feel. You also can tell that the game engine slows down as the screen fills up with baddies--even the music slows down! (And the flicker! Oh, the flicker!)
The Atari VCS, strange enough, manages to retain all the fast-pace and frantic excitement of the arcade, even with the cheesiest graphics. I can imagine 8 year-old me playing it back in the day, and it would have made me feel completely satisfied in the port, and the envy of others. (For the record, I never had a VCS, which colours my perception of it, but some games really impressed me very much. This would have been one of them.)
The Apple ][ looks pretty good, but it is much too flickery and a bit slow paced.
Some of the others were so lethargic, or had sounds so annoying, that I think I would have thrown the joystick at the TV after playing it for just a couple of minutes.
One thing I missed in the video was the Intellivision version. Of course, there was never an official one, but Space Patrol replicates much of the elements of the original arcade, including the high-speed frantic action, music, and smooth parallax scrolling.
Good efforts all around!
dZ.
