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by Christopher Coleman |
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You might have noticed that, over the past few years, there's been a rash of "retro" compilations available for various consoles. The phenomenon started as far back as the Genesis or Super Nintendo, with the "Williams Arcade Classics" collection - for that matter, there was a Donkey Kong compilation cart for the original Nintendo. Why, you ask? A number of reasons - because it's money for jam - converting an existing game is easier than creating an entirely new one; people have fond memories of older games and wish to play them again.. personally, I believe the main reason is because the baby Jesus cries every time you buy another generic first person shooter instead of something decent and fun. Midway Games are on the retro train, and so far have produced three rather impressive compilations for your PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube. Midway has been a very high profile arcade game developer and manufacturer over the years, producing such all time classics as "Defender", "Joust", "NARC" and "Mortal Kombat" just to name a few. In the late 1990s, Midway also acquired Atari Games, the arcade division of Atari, so Midway's classics now also include some of Atari's classics, like "Gauntlet", "Paperboy" or "Roadblasters", for example. Let's go on a journey to the good times of your quarter-wasting youth. NB: The versions I reviewed are all for the PlayStation 2.
Midway Arcade Treasures 1
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 As well as presenting for your gaming pleasure all of the below 24 titles, extras have been included, in the form of video interviews with some of the original developers of the games. These are fascinating - it's quite interesting to hear Eugene Jarvis talking about "Robotron 2084", for example. It's unfortunate that the video and sound quality isn't as good as you'd hope, but they're certainly watchable, and a welcome addition. Other extra features include scans of arcade flyers and further text details you can read via the interface. Are there problems with these games? While they all certainly look like they're close to if not exactly arcade perfect conversions, some of these games have issues with control. This is to be expected, since a number of the games used specific styles of controls in the arcade (eg a trackball for Marble Madness or the steering wheel for Spy Hunter) that are now mapped to a standard controller. If you've never played a game before, you'll never notice the difference, though, as the controls certainly aren't badly done, just different to what you might have been used to in the arcade. Attention collectors! There's a cover variation, as the title was originally released as just "Midway Arcade Treasures", but then was reissued with the front cover redesigned to match that of MAT 2 and MAT 3. The games included on the disc are: Spy Hunter SA vertically scrolling driving shooter - you're out there to clean up the roads with your machine gun and whatever extra weapons you can pick up along the way - oil slicks, clouds of smoke, etc - but watch out for the car with the spinning wheel blades. The unforgettable Peter Gunn theme will help bring back all your great memories of the game the second you start it up. Defender and Defender 2 Horizontally scrolling shooters where you must defend the humans on the planet's surface from the marauding aliens. Both Defender and Stargate (Defender 2's other name) require twitch reflexes and strong instincts to really succeed - great times, but you'll need to use The Force to get those really high scores. Gauntlet The classic top view dungeon crawler game. Surely you've heard of it? Green elf.. is about to die. Wizard shot the food. Joust and Joust 2 A couple of flap-tastic dueling games - you have to constantly hit the button to keep your mount flapping its wings, and to win a joust with an enemy, be at their height or higher - turn your foes into eggs and collect the eggs for points. Paperboy A week of paper deliveries stands between you and success. Can you make your way through the isometric 3D neighbourhood delivering papers to the right houses and avoiding the passing cars, barking dogs and out of control lawn mowers? Rampage A three player simultaneous classic from the arcades - as one of three monsters, you have to travel from town to town destroying all the buildings and stomping, bashing or destroying as much of the army trying to kill you as you can. Watch out for bonus items hidden in the buildings, and chow down on the puny humans for energy. Marble Madness This game will definitely challenge your dexterity - a 3D isometric maze where you have a tight time limit to roll a marble from one end of a maze to the other, without smashing it, rolling it off the side of the maze, or getting it attacked by one of the various beasties out to get you. Robotron 2084 An all time classic created by Eugene Jarvis of Defender fame - one joystick for movement, one joystick for the direction you're firing. Save the nuclear family from wave after wave of evil robots out to destroy humanity. Get good enough at this game, and you could reach nirvana.. it's definitely a Zen thing. Smash TV A more modern update of the Robotron 2084 game set around the theme of a killer game show. Improvements include amusing boss fights and various useful powerups, not to mention hilarious speech from the emcee. Big money! Big prizes! I love it! Bubbles A cute game set in a sink where you have to collect bubbles and avoid the spider. They had imaginations back in the day, yes they did. Roadblasters Drive through the wasteland shooting your enemies, collecting fuel and desperately fighting your way from one checkpoint to the next. A classic from the Atari Games stable. Blaster Worst NHL game ever. Rampart A fun game with elements of Tetris and the old Atari game Warlords - each player takes turns building their castle, defending it and attacking their enemies. Definitely more fun with more than one human player. Sinistar An underrated classic - probably because of its high difficulty level. You have to fly around in your spaceship mining asteroids for Sinibombs and avoiding the warrior and worker drones before the Sinistar is completed - when he is, watch out . . . try and bomb him before he eats you. A great game that'll take practice to get good at, and with some entertaining speech. Run, coward! 720 Degrees The grandfather of all the various Tony Hawk's games, 720 involves you skating around town doing as many tricks as possible to earn points to get into various skate parks to win prize money, allowing you to build your character up and avoid the killer bees that chase you if you're too long about things. A fun game with a great soundtrack. Super Sprint A top view single screen racing game with up to four players, and various tracks to chase each other around. Collect the golden spanners to power up your car between races. Toobin' An interesting concept for a vertical scroller - you're river rafting in an inner tube, and have to avoid various obstacles and throw empty pop cans at various targets. Klax A fun puzzler - various coloured tiles come scrolling down at you, and you have to stack them in various orders to create Klaxes, which give you varying amounts of points. Easy to get into, and challenging to get higher scores, although perhaps not as universally appealing as Tetris. Splat! A very limited release game that works on similar hardware to Robotron or Joust, and designed by John Newcomer (who designed Joust). It's a kind of food fight version of Robotron - catch the falling food and use it to throw at other characters in the game. Satan's Hollow Despite the rather cool name, this is a relatively simple shooter reminiscent of Phoenix or Galaxian.. one wrinkle is that you have a very limited shield you can use to avoid being dive bombed or shot. Vindicators A top view tank game - invade one enemy territory after another, destroying bunkers and enemy tanks. Entertaining enough, but certainly nothing special. Root Beer Tapper You play a soda jerk who has to work his way up and down various bars throwing cold mugs of root beer at people before they slide all the way up to your end of the bar. You also have to catch all the empty mugs that are thrown back at you. A very fun game that gets frantic fast. Trivia time: The original arcade game was initially called just "Tapper", and had advertising for Budweiser in it - but the game was later modified to change the player from a bartender to a soda jerk, hence "Root Beer Tapper". Perhaps advertising beer to children in arcades wasn't such a brilliant idea?
Midway Arcade Treasures 2
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 Similarly to the first title, Midway Arcade Treasures 2 also includes some entertaining and informative interview clips, including some interesting behind the scenes information on the making of Mortal Kombat 3, and an incredibly amusing promotional video for Mortal Kombat 2 that was meant to be sent out to arcade owners. Why is Mortal Kombat 1 missing? The current theory is that it was kept out to be a special extra in "Mortal Kombat: Deception", but who really knows - it could've been aliens or the CIA. The comments for the first compilation still apply here - some controls have had to be adapted for home console controller use. Unfortunately, it must be pointed out that Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 aren't perfect conversions - there are some issues with frame rates and inaccurate sound. If you're a Kombat fanatic, don't be surprised if you end up a little disappointed. However, they're still an improvement on the original 16 or 32 bit conversions for your Super Nintendo or Saturn, for example, if that matters to you. Games included in this volume are: Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 Two fighting games that are part of a franchise which has courted a lot of controversy over the years. Spine ripping goodness, but don't be surprised if they're not quite as technically proficient or involved as something like Soul Calibur III. No doubt fond memories will carry you through at least a few matches. Gauntlet 2 The sequel to the dungeon crawler on MAT 1. Gauntlet 2 includes such features as dragons to fight, the ability for multiple players to play the same class, and the "It" monster. Whoever's "it" gets chased by all the creatures until he or she tags another player. A lot of good times can be had here, believe me. Spy Hunter 2 A disappointingly poor split screen sequel. The action has changed from top view to behind-the-car view, and this isn't a change for the better, between the ugly graphics, the finicky controls and the poor game play. If I were you, I wouldn't even bother. Xybots Originally conceived as a 3D sequel to Gauntlet, this futuristic maze blaster involves you running through corridors hunting robots and collecting pickups. NARC An ultra violent anti-drugs scrolling shooter created by Eugene Jarvis. I've no idea whether or not it was meant to be taken seriously back then, but it's very difficult to take it seriously now - fortunately the game play is still a lot of fun. APB APB is a terrific cartoony top view scrolling driving game where you have to spend each day meeting your quota of arresting speeders, litterers and various criminals assigned to you by the Chief. If you succeed in catching one of these criminals, there's an incredibly amusing interrogation sequence which gets you bonus points. A fun game, well worth your time. Cyberball 2072 The father of all futuristic robot football games. How many futuristic robot football games have there been, anyway? More than two? Timber Another interesting concept - a log cutting game. I don't know about you, but I certainly miss the originality and willingness to try new concepts that we game players used to benefit from in the old days. Total Carnage Another update to the Robotron/Smash TV style of game play, this time set in a Gulf War-esque environment. Still fun, but getting away from the ubiquity of the original Pit Fighter The first fighter to involve digitized graphics, but unfortunately not very fun to play. I remember playing this once and spending the rest of my money on the Ghouls and Ghosts machine next to it, way back in the day. Wizard of Wor An older maze based arcade game - kill the other wizard before he kills you. Simplistic fun. Xenophobe An interesting three player split screen game where you're out to clear spaceships of their alien infestation. Fun in multiplayer, but ultimately of limited appeal. Primal Rage More one on one fighting, but this time with dinosaurs! A bit silly, but I'm willing to admit the ability to eat the human spectators is rather amusing, and the claymation based graphics are definitely sexy for the time. Arch Rivals A no rules basketball brawler that serves as a spiritual predecessor to the NBA Jam series. Rampage World Tour An updated sequel to Rampage with better graphics and not enough innovation in game play to hold your interest for long. Kozmik Krooz'r An interesting, if primitive, shooter with a cute alien character to control. The original arcade cabinet had a small yellow plastic spaceship rotating that was reflected onto the screen, and the monitor was tilted slightly to give an illusion of depth. The same character also features in Wacko. Championship Sprint More of an expansion than a sequel to Super Sprint, this features different tracks to the original, but doesn't change the game play experience very much. Hard Drivin' A historically important but not overly playable 3D polygonal racer. Don't expect this to be as fun as something like Ridge Racer, Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo, and you might get a little entertainment out of it, but don't be surprised if you just think "wow, this is crap, isn't it?" Wacko No, this isn't the official Michael Jackson arcade game - that honour fell to Sega's Moonwalker. Wacko stars the alien from Kozmik Krooz'r, but this time it's puzzle-ish shooting. An intriguing concept, if nothing else.
Midway Arcade Treasures 3
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 Good news for racing fans - this compilation has a theme. All the "retro-racing classics" you can handle, provided nine are too many and seven aren't enough. The games are getting pretty modern here for the most part - hell, Hydro Thunder and Rush 2049 had conversions produced for the Sega Dreamcast, would you believe? One particular disappointment with this collection is the lack of video interviews ala the previous two and a general thinness in the extras, but you can't have it all. Most of the games on Midway Arcade Treasures 3 are significantly more modern than their counterparts in the first two volumes, but are still fairly close conversions compared to the arcade originals. Hydro Thunder may be a possible exception to this, but it's still very playable, and an improvement on the PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast conversions which sold for full price by themselves back in the day. Also, it should be noted that STUN Runner tends to suffer from frame rate issues which impact negatively on game play in some stages. Those titles in full: Rush: The Rock A sequel/expansion to the arcade hit, San Francisco Rush. This is a fun romp of a racer, set in San Francisco, with all sorts of air time to catch, shortcuts, twists and turns and even hidden extras to collect. Hydro Thunder Another very popular game in the arcades (and converted to the previous generation of consoles, including N64, PlayStation 1 and Sega Dreamcast), this is a speedboat racer involving excellent graphics, a nice sense of speed, a variety of courses and some interesting jumps and boost abilities to play with. Super Off Road Originally "Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's" Super Off Road, but presumably changed for this compilation due to the cost of renewing the rights; this is another top view racer in the Super Sprint mold, but with nice graphics and an offroad/rally theme.. watch out for jumps and potholes on the various tracks. Badlands It's another variant on Super Sprint! Badlands is set in a bleak, post apocalyptic environment, but still has the same basic game play as Super Sprint, Championship Sprint, et al. The one big change here, however, is weapons. Being able to shoot the other guy certainly adds a lot of fun to this kind of top down racer. Race Drivin' A kind of expansion to the original Hard Drivin', this adds new cars and tracks to the game. STUN Runner A kind of spiritual relation to high speed racers like F-Zero or the Wipeout series, this is a futuristic high speed racer with the addition of collecting stars, dodging or shooting other vehicles on the track, and trying to drive over speedups for extra boost. San Francisco Rush 2049 A futuristic sequel to SF Rush and Rush The Rock, you get nicer graphics, higher speeds, duels and all sorts of new features. It's easily understandable why this game was so popular in a lot of arcades. Off Road Thunder: Mud, Sweat and Gears Working off the Hydro Thunder engine, this is a more standard rally/offroad racing game that plays similarly in a lot of ways to Hydro Thunder. For some reason, the graphics seem a little worse than Hydro Thunder, but the fun's still there. BONUS! An extra not mentioned on the packaging is a set of extra tracks for the Super Off Road game - presumably it was a ROM swap for the original board, as it doesn't really change the game play otherwise.
While Midway Arcade Treasures 3 has only been out for a few months, the other two volumes have been available for some time. It's likely that all three are available for pretty low prices - they were launched as budget titles in the first place. The most I've paid for any of them is $AUS25 new for MAT 3 - the others cost me $AUS20 each. If they're that cheap in Australia, they're bound to be even less somewhere like the US or England, for example. Economies of scale, you see. If you can't decide which to get, it really depends on which of the arcade games you enjoyed the most in the past - if I had to choose only one, I'd probably stick to the first volume. There are a lot of hours of fun to be had out of Gauntlet, Smash TV and Sinistar alone. Really, though, do yourself a favour and get all three - trust me. Keep in mind the other compilations that are available on the market - there's a Taito compilation (remember Bubble Bobble? Rastan? Space Gun?), a Capcom compilation (remember Commando? MERCS? Strider?), a couple Sonic the Hedgehog game compilations, Activision Classics (remember Pitfall? Space Shuttle? Kaboom?), Atari Anthology (remember your friend the Atari 2600?) .. the sky's the limit. Swing a cat, and you're bound to hit a couple. Let's not even talk about the various compilations that came out for PlayStation 1 - like, say, the Namco Museum series. Also, should I mention the Konami compilation for Game Boy Advance? (titles like Rush 'N Attack, Gradius, Track and Field . . . ) Go forth and investigate for yourself - it's pretty likely that a lot of your favorite arcade games as a kid are now available in one compilation or another.
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