Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1

"A neat if now a little redundant retro game compilation."

Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Volume.

Before I get underway with this review I think it is worth mentioning that all the games featured in this compilation can be found in Midway's Arcade Treasures 1 along with 15 other old (or “classic”) arcade games for the PS2 and possibly the X-box and the Gamecube as well. You could possibly pick that up for the same price, if not cheaper than Midway's greatest Hits for the Dreamcast. Unluckily for me I bought this just before Midways first Arcade Treasures game was released. Arcade Treasures will also contain extra bonus material such as art work, game histories and artwork that this Dreamcast compilation seems to lack, what you get here is purely a collection of 6 retro games. So there is little reason to buy this compilation now should you own one of the aforementioned systems, if you're a Dreamcast owner who refuses to look twice at any other games system, then this retro compilation is well worth checking out, particularly if retro games are your thing.

It's also worth bearing in mind that these games are essentially before my time, well technically, I would have been in nappies by the time these games were released from 1980 to 1982, a little too young to be down in the arcades inserting coins into machines, I would have been concentrating on other things at the time like learning how to walk and use a spoon and such. So these games don't bear anyway real nostalgic resonance with me. So to me these games serve more as historical record of a period in video games history that I missed, but it's all the interesting for that, it's interesting to see where video games first started and how they have progressed since then.

Since each game featured in this title is a separate entity in it's own right I'll write an individual review for each. But before I do I'll just like to mention the basic layout of the compilation. Upon on loading the game you are presented with a 2D depiction of three arcade cabinets, and by pressing left or right on the control pad you can view the other three arcade machines. A nice little touch is that sound form each of the games plays and mixes together while your viewing them, so it almost gives you the impression that you're standing in an arcade in the early eighties with a pocket full of 2 pence pieces. Once you've selected a cabinet you are given a list of options where you can adjust difficulty levels and the number of lives you begin with and such, and begin the game, in either 1 player or 2 player mode if the game supports it. That's pretty much it there's nothing more to it than that. There are only six games, and to be far I'm sure several dozen if not several hundred could easily be crammed onto a GD rom with plenty of room to spare, particularly given the lack of film footage or other such bonus material. Though to Midway's credit they have selected 6 very good if very old arcade games, that I will now go onto review individually.

Defender 8/10

Now here's an interesting game, that I've played for the very first time in this compilation. Defender while not being as renowned as games like Space Invaders or Pac-Man is from what I know a cult classic, a game that many older gamers still rave about as being one of the best games ever made. And I can understand why, since Defender though it looks horribly crude by today's standards still seems to retain a high degree of playability.

What Defender essentially is a horizontal side scrolling shooter, quite possibly the very first game of it's type and the granddaddy of a genre that would come to dominate the games industry for more than a decade.

Defender is a “vector” game, meaning the graphics are essentially drawn on the screen with lines, rather than pixels such was the case with the more familiar “Raster” games. Despite being able to produce advanced for it's time 3D effects vector style games all but died out by the mid eighties. The terrain is drawn on as a single line, the humans who you must “defend” walk around on this terrain as little white stick figures little more than blobs. And the aliens who seek to devour these hapless humans are little more than round green blobs with little green blobs for tentacles, and you pilot a small triangular purple/whitish space ship that shoots white streaks for laser beams. Though crude the simple graphics are practical enough and allow you see what is what without to much difficulty.

The basic concept of Defender is this, aliens seek to capture and consume the hapless humans stranded on the planet surface, they can also defend themselves from attack by firing the occasional white bullet at your craft, these along with the aliens themselves you must avoid contact with else your craft will explode and a life will be lost. They do this by dropping down upon the unsuspecting humans head and with a yelp (or a beep at any rate) the human is dragged upwards toward the top of the screen. Should the alien reach the top it will consume the human and become a hazy white “super alien”, these aliens no longer interested in the human prey will instead proceed to make kamikaze charges at your craft spewing white bullets at an alarming rate. Super aliens are quite nasty and difficult to deal with, so it's always best to destroy them before they consume a human and transform. There for the game involves you having to scout along the terrain (you can travel both left and right) looking for vulnerable groups of humans, and concentrate on the aliens that are trying to devour these humans. Not as easy as it sounds since your laser consists of a thin beam, so you have to line up the aliens perfectly for the kill. Things become a little more tricky once an alien has latched onto a human and begin their ascent, since blasting the alien will send the human plummeting (a high pitched scream or beep at any rate) down to the ground. If the fall is short the human may survive, if longer they will fall to their death. At this point you can quickly “catch” the falling human by piloting your ship into them, where upon they will hang attached to at the bottom of your ship, whereupon you can lower them down to the terrain unharmed for bonus points. You have to be quick though since they will fall at speed. Care also must be taken when trying to free a human from an aliens clutch, since if you under shoot just slightly you will kill whoever your trying to save, though in last second cases it's often better to kill a human rather than a allow for a alien to become a super white alien. The odd one you can handle a screen full of them you cannot. At the end of each level you are awarded points for each human left remaining alive, levels as you may well expect are pretty much the same, just with increased numbers of aliens.

The idea is simple yet nonetheless highly playable and takes a fair degree of skill, reflexes and even tactics, as tackling the aliens that pose the biggest threat not only to your ship but to the humans below is essential for success. So well deserved 8/10 for this game.

Joust 9/10

Now this game is a real gem, and my favourite game in this particularly collection. In Joust your control a knight mounted on an ostrich like bird. This bird can both run a great speed or fly up into the air albeit rather awkwardly. You ride your ostrich on a static level consisting of a number of different platforms at varying elevations, and levels are packed full of opponent “knights” also riding ostrich like birds and armed with a lance. Now your opponents bids are much better flyer's than yours, and once they see you they will come flying straight at you with their lances at the ready. Your character lacks a lance so how do you deal with this opposition? Simple you have to fly up over the heads of you opponents before dropping down and bonking them onto of their heads, in a Super Mario fashion. Upon being bonked on top of the head enemy knights turn into…an egg, which can be collected for bonus points, while the bird they were riding flies harmlessly away. Should an opponent hit your knight however a life is lost, and you respawn once more on one of the platforms in the level. Controlling your ostrich takes a fair degree of skill, you can run fast but the surfaces of the level are slippery so you must be careful to go careening into an enemy or straight down into a lava pit. When attacking an opponent you must time your move just right, ascend too soon and you may find yourself coming down on thin air, ascend too late and you'll find yourself slamming into an opponent and losing a life .

The arrangement of the levels itself doesn't change as such but there's new surprises in store in latter levels, such as the bottom most platform recedes revealing the bubbling molten lava beneath, you have to be careful not to fall into, particularly when your attempting to collect a falling egg. Latter levels also see stronger faster opponents of varying colours, some of which can be climb back on to their mounts after being knocked off once or twice, and the population of enemies inhabiting a level also increases as you go up to higher levels of difficulty as you might expect. Once you clear a level of opponents you move onto the next, but there is a time constraint, should you not clear a level within a certain time limit a small (but nonetheless pretty nasty) winged dragon comes flying through the level at speed, and once it flies in on your location you will have a very difficult time avoiding it indeed , dragon will make you loose a life on contact and it can't be dispatched with a bonk to the head in the usual way.

So all in all Joust is a game of timing, reflexes and skill, as fun to play now as it was back the day in the arcade, a clear case of gameplay overpowering the simple graphics. That said given the games age the graphics aren't all that bad at all, from the knights on their mounts, to the dragon and the fiery bubbling lava below, the graphics are pretty much on a par with the latter 8 bit consoles such as the NES and Master System should you be familiar with the graphical capabilities of these systems, for a game made in the early 80s this isn't bad at all.

Joust is one of those games you keep coming back to for just “one more go” a sure sign of a good game, so this gets a very definite 9/10, had the layout of the stages changed as you progressed through the levels, or having the ability to scroll of screen and into new areas would bump this up to 10, though perhaps that would be asking a little too much for a game of this age.

Robotron 2004 5/10

Robotron is set in the near future…well ok it's set in 2004 the year I'm writing this, but don't forget that don't forget this game was made over 20 years ago. That said for a simple little shooter such as Robotron such things don't exactly matter. So what's Robotron about? Well the Earth has been invaded by the Robotron's and it's up to you to defend the hapless humans, as you do. What essentially mean is you control your character on a black screen surrounded by a number of objects enemies, objects and humans. You can move up, down left and right, and fire your weapon up, down, left and right (the DC buttons are mapped perfectly for this game). You to make sure to shoot the Robotron's and not the humans, no big deal you just won't get your 1000 bonus for each human saved, and shoot the various Robotron's that roam the levels. Some Robotron's are faster and more dangerous than others with the ability to shoot and such, the tougher the Robotron the more points you are awarded. You have to clear each level complete of all enemies before moving onto the next.

Anyone who has played the game Smash TV should have a good idea as to what Robotron 2004 is about, though of course Robotron 2004 is a very much older and cruder game than smash TV. The graphics are pretty primitive really, and in this case it does really have an impact on the gameplay, enemies and harmless all look a bit like various indistinct coloured blocks of various shapes and sizes, it isn't always clear what you should be blasting and what you shouldn't though at least there's some distinction between the humans. So it's a case of clearing the levels and moving on to the next. Since you have to kill everything anyway there is little point in playing to get a better score, the only way to do this is to save more humans but the game moves at such speed you're concentrating more on saving your own skin rather than worrying about the hapless humans that wander aimlessly through the level.

Robotron 2004 is again one of those games that is greatly revered in some circles, much in the same way as Defender, though it doesn't quite do it for me I'm afraid. I see it as a fairly basic arcade shooter, good for it's time I imagine, and it's fast and easy to control, but other otherwise it doesn't leave a lasting impression on me. When playing this I'm wondering why I'm not loading up my copy of Cannon Spike instead, a game of a similar concept with all the flash 3D graphics and features of a modern blaster. Though by no means would I say it was a bad game, it's just one of those games that hasn't aged as well as some so that's why I'll give Robotron 2004 a 5/10.

Bubbles 7/10

This is a nice if simple little game. In it you control…a bubble in a sink. You move the bubble around the sink (and you can‘t use the analogue pad which is a shame) collecting little bits of…stuff for want of a better word, I don't know exactly what those things are, little bubbles perhaps?, amoebas? Bits of sink scum? I don't know. But whatever they are it's your job to suck them up along with the tiny little spiders and other small creeping things absorbing them into your bubble. As you absorb more…stuff your bubble grows in size, as it gets bigger a huge grinning face begins to emerge on your bubble. When your bubble is gets to gigantic proportions the look on it's face says it all, it's as though it's saying “look at me I'm huge.” It is necessary to get the bubble big enough to get down the plug hole and onto the next level (or sink), don't ask me how that works. If by the end of a level your bubble is not big enough you loose a life and have to start over again.

Though of course it's not just a case of collecting stuff to get bigger, there things in that sink that pose a real threat to your bubble, no matter how big it becomes. First there are the little scrubbing brushes, these scrub away at the all the bits of stuff in the sink effectively stealing away what you could be absorbing, though they tend not to move too much from the area they start at. These brushes will make you loose a life on contact if your bubble is small to medium in size. Though if you have a large or gigantic bubble you can knock these guys around the sink at will, though they can only be disposed of if you knock them down the plug hole (you earn bonus points if manage to do this). Something else that you'll see emerge from the plug is a little old lady with a brush who moves at a fairly brisk pace sweeping up all the…bits of stuff you could be absorbing yourself to make your bubble grow big and strong, so it's best to absorb the old woman as quickly as possible to prevent this. Also if your bubble is big enough you can take hold of her broom, which comes in handy for the most dangerous denizens of the sink, the giant spiders. The giant spiders are huge monstrous beasts that emerge from the plug hole (as spiders do) these have to be avoided at all costs, since contact with them will result in the loss of a life no matter how big your bubble. If your bubble has the old woman's broom you can however ram this into a giant spider, swatting it for extra bonus points. As levels progress the numbers of enemies such as scrubbing brushes and giant spiders increase, there are different types of…stuff to collect and static obstacles as razor blades left laying around the sink, which must be avoided. Control of the bubble is pretty difficult as it has a tendency to slip around, but you would expect a bubble in a sink to do that. The slippery controls have to be factored into the equation when playing this game, it makes it a great deal more challenging than it would otherwise be.

The graphics are quite nice for such an old game as well, you can see what everything is well enough, and everything looks neat and colourful, not an eyesore by any means. Again I would compare this game to something you may see on a NES, for anyone familiar with this system.

Bubbles is a bizarre game and there's only so much sloshing around in a sink collecting and avoiding things you can do before boredom sets in. But in short doses this is still a pretty neat game and a fun novelty, so this will get a 7/10.

Defender II 5/10

Well this is the sequel to the much renowned and pretty decent side scrolling shooter Defender. I have to wonder what in the heck the point of this game was though because it's the exact same game just with an extra few unnecessary things thrown in. I guess the sequel would have wowed people at the time in much the same way a sequel to a big name game would now. Though more than 20 years on these so called enhancements just don't hold any real weight. In way it would be like a gamer 20 years from now playing Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2, they may think they're just playing the exact same game, and perhaps they would be right. It goes to show that even back in the day companies weren't opposed to bashing out a pretty samey sequel to a popular game in the pursuit of profit, playing it safe by making a sequel that doesn't diverge from it's predecessor in any great way, save from a few tweaks and extras here and there.

So how is Defender II different from the first? Well it doesn't really it's practically identical, which is a bit of a waste since Midway could have put an entirely new different game on here in it's place. Still all the original game-play of the original is here so it's by no-means a bad game. Just that now you have a terrain divided up into variously different coloured zones, and by going to a warp point (a square box) you can jump between different coloured areas. There are also various other types of aliens, appearing as different coloured blocks and blobs you have to contend with now as well as the standard green aliens that you must protect the surface dwelling humans from. But I don't think all these extra things really do a great deal to enhance the game much at all, they're a slight annoyance if anything. The surface also seems to have a few volcanoes dotted around which out various bits of debris you must avoid, and the explosion effects seem to have been improved, just slightly. But otherwise Defender II is identical to it's predecessor. Still a decent game but it offer nothing new to this compilation, which is why I'm giving it a 5/10.

Sinistar 6/10

I played this game briefly on an emulator one time and I was somewhat impressed by what I saw, though for some reason this game doesn't really hold it's own quite so well compared to other games in this compilation, but it's a still a decent blaster.

Sinistar revolves around this giant space entity/monster known as Sinister “I am Sinistar." A friendly little sod who will come screaming toward your little ship at speed and consuming you whole in blink of an eye. “Run coward”. Sinistar is a nasty piece of work all in all, and immune to your puny little gun, and can only be harmed by a special kind of homing missile, and these must be constantly pumped into the beast, each hit taking away a tiny little chunk from his armoured shell. Once Sinistar's armoured shell has been completely removed you can go in for the killing blow “RAAAAAGGGHHH!!” Unfortunately you only begin a level with one or two of these missiles, but fortunately the Sinistar takes time to be built by the worker drones before he comes to life “Beware I live.” And come go looking for his meal, I.e. you “I hunger” so you have time to build up your supply of missiles but more on that latter.

Now anyone who has ever played the old Atari game Asteroids will be at home with here, since Sinistar plays in much the same way. You control a small triangular ship in an asteroid field, though unlike Asteroids the this field stretches beyond the one static screen, you can explore a much a wider area moving in any direction you wish, your ship is always at the centre of screen and your surroundings scroll around you as you move, pretty advanced stuff for it's time. You can view the whole play area via radar at the top of your screen, this you must pay particular once the Sinistar has been fully constructed and is on the loose after your ship. Sinistar himself shows up gigantic and unnervingly fast blip.

Now aside from yourself and the Sinistar play area is populated by little red worker drones, which mine the asteroids and build the Sinistar and the metallic attack drones that come armed with a rotating gun turret. The asteroids that can be found littered throughout the area though harmless to your vessel serve a purpose, for it is these that contain the raw materials needed to construct a homing missile capable of harming the Sinistar, they also contain the materials needed for the worker drones to construct the Sinistar. To obtain these minerals for yourself you must move in close and begin blasting at them with your gun. As an asteroid is blasted the raw material is freed in the form of little gold nuggets, for each nugget collected you get one missile, though you must collect these quickly before the worker drones can collect them for themselves. It's also worth pointing out that the amount of raw material available varies with each asteroid, some may not contain anything at all. Though it's tempting to keep blasting away at one gigantic asteroid continuously you have to factor the attack drones into the equation, though slow they pose a significant threat to your ship should you stay stationary for too long, so often it's best to collect the minerals you need and move on to the next asteroid quickly, before the attack drones surround your craft.

So the basic idea of Sinistar is that it's a race against time, you must collect as many missiles as you can before the Sinistar awakes and comes looking for you. And even if you are armed with enough missiles to destroy the sinister you still have your work cut out for you. For the missiles to have any effect you must move in close, else the worker drones will protect their master by intercepting your missile, and given the Sinistar's speed this is a pretty risky thing to do.

As you can probably tell Sinistar is one tough game, they don't make them quite this tough anymore and I can understand why, many gamers would now be put off a game with this level of difficulty. Though in this compilation you can adjust the difficulty level and lives so it actually possible to destroy the Sinistar, or at least rough him up a bit. Though upon his demise you taken straight to the next stage to do the exact same thing again, only with a greater number of worker and attack drones and a Sinistar that takes less time to fully construct. Though I feel destroying just the one Sinistar is more than enough for one day.

Other things I'd like to mention about Sinistar are the superb for it's time graphics (these graphics are at least 5 years ahead of their time if not more) the unbelievably good synthesised voice of Sinistar himself (of which I gave a few exerts of speech earlier), most synthesised speech in games during this period or even latter was inaudible at worst or sound something akin to Stephen Hawking at best. Sinistar actually has a genuine real voice. The control of your ship is also mapped to your controllers analogue stick which helps a great deal I believe.

So in a nut shell Sinistar is a highly advanced game for it's time though it's ultra high levels of difficulty and repetitiveness hold it back from being a truly great game, which is why I'm giving it a 6/10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/04