Midway Arcade Treasures

"Splat!"

The development process is one of many struggles. A lot of companies are inept with the abilities their fellow company men posses. There is one certain developer/publisher however that really knows how to work their gifts from god into a fine crafted well-tuned game. Although not one of the games featured in this collection were a sure-fire-hit most of them blew us away in the arcades, and have a set goal to do so here as well. Although not all the games prove too impress I was surprised by the depth of personality in each game. Lets delve into another fastkilr compilation review.

Midway is a powerful company surging with personality, and intellectual property that remains primarily exclusive to their games, but every once In awhile they drop a bad game. This is important to understand that every company except for Rare, and perhaps Nintendo always release bad games. The only reason those 2 don’t is because that is all they concentrate on and their gaps between games are well known for the wait, and are always worth it. With every Mario or donkey Kong game, something exciting is brought to the table, and I expect that, from Midway I would almost except the same quality but every once in a while they slack off. Well, not in the 80s they didn’t! This is a collection of a few great games, a few terrible games, and a company who needs to be much more popular than they are.

Now, we already know how well UbiSoft has established themselves particularly with the Xbox market, as the Xbox has brought it up to the top, and made it a house hold name for gamers. Well Midway is becoming the same thing, it isn’t being brought anywhere worth mentioning with the PS2 market, and certainly not the GCN market. The Xbox market is just perfect. I think this is because a lot of us Dreamcast gamers instantly converted consoles just as we would a religion trading up our VMUs for a built in memory system which would bring us unlimited fun, online play, and a slew of good games. It is also official that Retro gamers can now feel safe when fleeing to Microsoft’s big-black baby, as it has many great games which are just packs of games from the 80s. Atari has one, Intellivision has one, It was only natural that Midway would create the best collection, of some of the best arcade games ever made.

The graphics of these games are much, much greater then the Intellivision games of the same era, perhaps this might be due to the Arcade visuals, or maybe Midway just knows how to make a great game, with awesome looks. Each one of these 20 plus games are easy on the eyes, and fun to play. I did not find one game in here where I could stop playing it after around 15 minutes of addicting play. You will be glaring at the screen for hours, upon hours, and ultimately loose track of time. Its just that good. I prefer some of these games in their original arcade forms, but for the most part Midway did a great job at moving the games onto the big black baby.

What’s more rare than 20+ good games, is that it holds together neatly and without flaws. So what, if this game can not claim these unexpected merits that I begin placing on collections, it well deserves a play through. The forsaken company of serendipitous creations such as joust, and defender bring out the evil in us, you know, the stuff that keeps us glued to the screen for days and days on end. The greatest thing about this game, though, is the online scoreboard which ranks you among the best of the best, the people in the arcades you always wanted to compete against, my scores get me ranked around 20th for almost every game, I’m not that great, but I’m still good.

To finish off a tired review of a collection that is possibly the best ever I have to say that I enjoyed the experience, and there was not one point where I wanted to stop, throw in the towel and say that these old games are terrible, because…they are so much better then the games of today. There are hits such as the Jousts, and the Defenders and misses such as Toobin’, Marble Madness, and Splat! Which were all great games alone but didn’t quite come off too well on the collection.

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/04