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 | Midway Arcade Treasures Playstation 2 $19.99 These days, it's a fact that retro is big, and in order to cash in on this trend, games companies are releasing retro games compilations left, right and centre. This is good news for many of us as, although most of the games are available to play through emulators, there's nothing quite like owning the original material. Midway's Arcade Treasures contains 24 arcade classics, and in this review, I will outline each one and give a brief comment on each, just so you get the general idea. |
 | 720� sees you skating around the middle of a skate park on your 'board, trying to earn enough money to buy tickets to the skate park's different events. If you do well in these, you can earn more money to upgrade your equipment. Difficult to play even with an analogue stick, and when you press the button to 'kick', it seems not to work half the time. Frustrating. |
| Blaster is a much lesser known of the Williams arcade games. It's a '3D', into the screen shooter that is a bit of a mess at times, to be honest. Still, the different types of levels give it some nice variety, and it's certainly worth a shot. You'll soon find that you've been playing it for hours, and you'll enjoy it much more as time goes by. |  |
 | Bubbles is probably one of the strangest games on this pack. You control a bubble in a sink, and must move over the muck and bugs to absorb them, whilst avoiding dangerous items and large spiders. Controls quite nicely with the analogue stick, and is good fun in short bursts. |
| Defender is one of the games that needs little introduction. Save the humanoids from alien landers, and blast any other enemy ships while you're at it. Chances are they're gonna blast you though. Purists will be mortified that you can now reverse and thrust using the stick, rather than buttons. This game will kick your backside time after time, but you'll still come back to it. A legend. |  |
 Defender II, or Stargate as it's otherwise known, retains the difficulty and playability of its predecessor, whilst adding new enemies and a warp gate for added challenge and strategy. Again, the revised control method will annoy the purists. Once you get into it, you'll play it even more than Defender. | |
| Gauntlet is another all-time classic. Choose from four different characters and battle through dungeons filled with treasure, traps and terrors. Everything is there, although the fact that you can continue without spending actual money seems to take a lot of the edge away. |  |
 | Joust is one of the craziest, yet most playable arcade games you could find. Battle other knights on your flying ostrich, of all things. Collect the eggs to stop the knights from regenerating, and watch out for the pterodactyl! Insanely frenetic on later levels, but never less than fun. |
| Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest is, unsurprisingly, the sequel to Joust. More of the same, but with added enemies and features. Strangely, despite that, the game doesn't seem to be quite as much fun as the original. Simple, perhaps, is best. |  |
 | Klax is a puzzle game, where coloured tiles come down a conveyor belt, and you must catch them on a tray and drop them into your bin to make rows. Bigger rows mean more points. This is a maddeningly addictive game, but can be frustrating if you're not a puzzle fan |
| Marble Madness is another game that will bring tears of nostalgia to many eyes. Roll your marble down the course to the finish line, watching out for hazards all the way. Sadly, not having a trackball severely hampers this game, although "fast" and "slow" buttons help a little. |  |
 | Paperboy is another well known title, which perhaps is remebered a little more fondly than it deserves to be. It's not fantastic, and the controls here are awkward, with the left analogue stick being used to steer and the right stick used to control your speed. You do get used to it eventually, and it provides some decent fun, but it's not one of the best games here. |
| Rampage is the classic arcade movie monster game. Choose from one of three huge mutant beasties and smash up every city you come across, but beware of the military! It's fun to just destroy things for a short while, but ultimately is far too repetitive for extended play. |  |
 | Rampart is a cult strategy type arcade game, in which you must defend the walls of your castle. Not a game I'd ever played, and I think the translation from trackball control to gamepads spoiled it for me. I didn't enjoy it much at all, but fans will probably appreciate the ability to play it on a home system. |
| RoadBlasters is a futuristic road racer, where you must collect fuel to further your progress. Shooting cars can give you more fuel, and extra weapons can be collected too. It's a classic arcade game, but the controls on this version are horrible, and really serve to spoil the experience. The car pulls to the right at times, and pushing left or right simply points you in those directions, there's no control over how MUCH you can turn. Very disappointing. |  |
 | Robotron: 2084 is the ultimate in frenzied destruction. Save the last human family from destruction by the evil Robotrons. Blast everything in sight. This game has translated well, with the controls working pretty well on a two-stick pad. Great fun, if a little difficult (as with many Williams games!). |
| Root Beer Tapper is a unique concept. As the bartender, you must serve the thirsty patrons of your bar as quickly as possible, and clear up their mess. This is fun for about half a game, before it becomes repetitive. Making things worse is the awful music. You'd honestly be better off playing Tapper on the Commodore 64. |  |
 | Satan's Hollow is a fairly obscure shoot 'em up, best described as Phoenix in hell with extra bits (those being that you have to build a bridge to get to the next level). It's pretty forgettable stuff, although it can get a bit fast and frantic, so if you're in the mood for a quick blast it might suffice. |
| SiniStar is another cult classic, and one that fans were very concerned about due to the control method. I don't think that this has true analogue control, but I couldn't swear by that. It does play very well though, and there's a genuine panic when SiniStar appears and screams abuse at you. Great blasting fun that's still enjoyable today. |  |
 | Smash TV is the spiritual successor to Robotron: 2084, in that it plays in much the same way (two-stick control, millions of enemies to blast). This one has you as the player in a violent TV game show, which is a neat concept. It's good fun, but can't live up to Robotron. |
| Splat! Food fight! Everyone loves a food fight, right? Well, apparently not, because this game didn't do well. It's not awful by any means, but it's not going to be on many "Top 10" lists. A nice inclusion, nonetheless. |  |
 | SpyHunter is one of the all-time classic arcade games, which makes it all the more disappointing when they get the conversions wrong. In this case, all looks well, but the controls are so awkward that you actually need three hands to play the game. Surely they could have let you steer and accelerate/brake with the same stick? For me, the awkwardness makes this the most disappointing game here. |
| SuperSprint is an overhead view racing game. Pick up bonuses around the track to enhance your car, and stay ahead of the competition. Steering is pretty difficult, and the drone cars are just about perfect quite quickly, so it's probably more fun to play this game with a friend. |  |
 | Toobin' is another odd game. Race a friend down the river in your inner tube, collecting bonuses and avoiding dangers, and better still, pushing your 'friend' into trouble! This is a good laugh, but definitely much more fun for two players. It's another game that will take you a while to adjust to the controls, too. |
| Vindicators is the final game on this pack, and one of the most forgettable. Guide your tank through the levels, shooting enemies as you go. The controls are really awkward in this game, which pretty much negates any fun there might have been. |  |
| Midway's Arcade Treasures is obviously stuffed with a nice amount of games. Unfortunately, everything else about the pack is substandard. It opens with a title screen featuring a pyramid, which you go inside when you press start. The games are ancient treasures, you see? Geddit? Yeah, pretty cheesy. The menu screen is similarly poor, with each game being represented by an odd 'hieroglyphic' icon, which, when selected, displays a weird version of the game's title screen, almost like it was at the bottom of a rippling pool. The 'extras' aren't worth much either, consisting merely of old, recycled interviews and some exhaustive, but outdated text for each game. This is a shame, because if they'd spent some time even updating the text it would have helped the package tremendously. When all's said and done, you're buying this for the games, but if there are going to be extras, they should at least be good extras. Still, these are minor gripes. The control issues with some of the games are slightly larger gripes. However, after extensive play since Christmas (I reviewed a rental, I now own this), I can say that the controls ARE redefinable, although this still doesn't help much in the most extreme cases. Generally speaking, you're getting great value for money out of this package. Saving your high scores onto the memory card is great for adding replay value, as it gives you something to aim at, although BE WARNED: you MUST re-load the high scores individually BEFORE you play each game, or you will save over them. This is very frustrating! Still, I certainly recommend you buy this if any of the games give you that warm and fuzzy feeling. Besides, the better these packs do, the more likely companies are to produce more of them, and that can only be a good thing for the retro fan. MOZ  |  |
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