"Tiger butchers some great arcade classics"

Even though Arcade Classics is one of the better games made for the Game.com, Tiger still managed to butcher three of the five games dubbed arcade classics and put into this cartridge. It is quite a shame, because of the four or five games I own for various systems that include “arcade classics” this is the one I find that the games are really fit to be called classics, but unfortunately, Tiger just butchered what was once enjoyable games.

In any of the games you can play one player or two players by linking two systems. For each game you can change the number of lives, at what point you get an extra life, and the difficulty level. Picking your games is one of the better parts of this game. There are five arcade cabinets side by side with the name of the game on them. Nice touch.

The first game is Defender. A wonderfully classic game that defines shooters. Butchered! First off the environment is terribly drawn; there are a few pointed hills and some poorly drawn aliens and humans. The game play of this game is just way off from the arcade game. There are far too many humans and far too many aliens who are far too aggressive in the earlier levels. In this game, you could also simply just hold down your fire button and get a constant stream of fire without penalty. And because of the Game.com's low graphical capabilities, everything is a blur when flying quickly in your ship, which makes this game one of the worst to play on this compilation cartridge.

The next game on this cartridge is Joust. Another memorable arcade game. I felt however, that because of the slower pace of this game, this one was done much better than Defender. The game play and controls are pretty solid in this game and this proves to be one of the more fun games to play on this cartridge. The graphics didn't really interfere with the game play, but they still weren't very good. There were a few good sound effects, and even though they were sparse and not very well done, they were still much better than most other Game.com games.

Next up is Defender II. Besides for a few minor graphical tweaks that really have nothing to do with the game play, this game was identical to Defender. The game play was just as horrible and so was just about everything else. This game was very frustrating and also affected dearly by the graphics. This is another great game butchered by Tiger. That's two for three!

Fourth is Sinistar. Sinistar is probably not as memorable as the other games in this compilation, but nonetheless this game still had good game play in the arcade. In this version, the game play is still pretty solid. Once again, seeing how this is a slower paced game than the Defender series, the terrible animation on the Game.com system was rendered harmless in this game. The controls were a little shaky in this game and take a little while to get used to, but overall this game was pretty well done. Nothing to should about however, since it was pretty boring.

Finally there is Robotron. Robotron is one of my favorite classic arcade games, and I hate Tiger for disgracing it like this. First off, your player moves far, far too fast. It's not like it's even tolerable how fast he moves. He moves probably two to three times faster than the lasers that he will shoot. There is also no rapid fire in this game. WHAT THE HELL! You can only fire one shot at a time and since the buttons on the Game.com are so terrible, it's really hard to get multiple shots off quickly. And I don't know what the heck is wrong with this game, but for some reason I can't shoot on angles, or for that matter, shoot in any direction other than left. And let me tell you, shooting in directions like up, down, and right are really essential to this game. The robots are also very similar in appearance to the people you are trying to rescue. So I have no idea who a human is or who a robot is. I don't know what the heck was going through Tiger's heads when they added this game and programmed it, but I don't think all was right in the Tiger labs that day.

Had a game called Arcade Classics with these five wonderful arcade games been on virtually any other system that even gave a hoot about their games, this cartridge would have been one of the premier collections of classic games. However, it was in Tiger's hands to make this game and boy did they butcher it. The only reason I am giving this game a three, which I feel is very generous right now, is because they still did a decent job on Joust and Sinistar, however, it's not enough to get my recommendation on purchasing this game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/06