Midway Arcade Treasures
Everything old is new again, just reshipped in a budget packing – a must own.
Tags: Midway Arcade Treasures Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 31st, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Midway Arcade Treasures (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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These games are not arcade perfect – they’re better. Part of playing arcade games “back in the day” was the experience, something that you just won’t get here. You can actually turn on the lights and see further than 2 feet in front of you, eliminating the cavern-like atmosphere. Granted, you could leave your lights off. You don’t have a balding overweight 38 year old that lives on a diet of Doritos in his parent’s basement handing out 5 tokens for every Dollar. You could, but that would be creepy. You don’t’ have a bunch of 12 year-old boys skipping school to hang out. Here again, you could, but that would be just wrong.
Midway Arcade Treasures is one of those titles that should be picked up by every gamer just for the historical value alone. There are enough old arcade games that there is bound to be something for everybody, but really, the history lesson here is a major part of the appeal.
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Not only do gamers get an insight into what games were like 20 years ago, but the extra features make this collection stand out. There are “sell sheets” for many of the cabinets, as well as video interviews with the programmers behind some of the games. Unfortunately, not all of the games have the same archival records.
What is puzzling, is that some of these games are Atari, not Bally/Midway games. This is something that could have been talked about in the archival bits, but not so. Did Midway buy the rights to certain Atari games at some point? I don’t remember the original arcade version of Gauntlet being an Atari cabinet, but then I’ve been known to be wrong before. I do know that Paperboy was an Atari game, but that’s in here…
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Regardless of that, there are games missing. Spy Hunter 2 is not here, and I would swear that there was a Robotron game before Robotron 2084.
Certain games are also best when played with an arcade stick, but others require a control pad, since there aren’t any that allow for two joysticks. It’s kind of weird, you would expect arcade style controllers to have two joysticks nowadays.
Barring the odd missives of missing games and sporadic arcade controller support,, Midway Arcade Treasures is still a must-own title. I’m not going to bother with analyzing the graphics and audio here. It doesn’t make sense to. These games are 20 years old, and to hold them up to the same standards of today is an exercise in futility. These are old arcade games that have helped fuel the industry and make it what it is today.
I was going to list each game and then write a paragraph about the game’s place in history, and how it plays now, but decided ultimately, that you’re probably tired of listening to an old-school aficionado babble on by this time. I will however, list the games. Most are 1 or 2 player games, unless otherwise noted.
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720
Blaster
Bubbles
Defender
Defender II
Gauntlet (up to 4 players)
Joust
Joust 2
Klax
Marble Madness
Paperboy
Rampage (up to 3 players)
Rampart (up to 3 players)
Roadblasters
Robotron: 2084
Root Beer Tapper
Satan’s Hollow
Sinistar
Smash TV
Splat!
SpyHunter
Super Sprint (up to 3 players)
Toobin’
Vindicators
Sure, some of these games don’t hold up well. That’s not the point. Many of these titles actually do hold up after all these years as fun games to play.
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The Xbox version includes scoreboards via Xbox LIVE, to allow players to post their high scores for others to see – just like in the real arcade days of yore, only this time the world is an arcade. It’s kind of odd that actual online gameplay isn’t included. It would have been worth the extra time and money.
As it is, Midway Arcade Treasures is a great collection, and a wonderful starting point. There are plenty of other treasures for Midway to unearth. Here’s hoping this isn’t the only collection from the publisher that made the move away from arcades – there’s a rich history there that should be honored and remembered, warts and all.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Full multiplayer for the games that had it when the original cabinets came out. + Classic old school gameplay, a history lesson that's fun. |
9.1 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Some games are missing. - The historical archives are glaringly incomplete. - Where's the online play? |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Get this, regardless of format. Get it now. | |
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Tags: Midway Arcade Treasures
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 31st, 2003 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
