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Midway Arcade Treasures
Released on: Xbox, PS2, Nintendo Gamecube and P.C.
Played on: Xbox
Release date: 2003
Midway Arcade Treasures is a compilation of 24 retro arcade games from the 80s and early 90s. And you know what? It's great fun. I mean, I don't pretend that all of these games are solid gold - and they're all arcade games, designed for short blasts rather than long-term play. So I played all of them in my hours worth of playtime. And here's a game-by-game breakdown of the results.
720° - An isometric skateboard game which is fun, if slightly awkward to control. Fun, fast and funky - very 80s, but good fun nonetheless. - 7/10
Blaster - Now this is trippy. It's as if someone built an obstacle course of neon Lego blocks and then propelled you at three-hundred and fifty-three thousand miles per hour towards them, knowing that you're going to crash and burn. But it's such fun anyway. - 7/10
Bubbles - You control a water droplet around a sink picking up gum and fighting off spiders. Yes, this game is as awesome as it sounds. Very little longevity but fun 3 minute chunks. - 6/10
Defender / Defender II aka StarGate - It's hard to say bad things about a game that is considered to be an absolute classic, and I will state now, that this version is a lot better than the one I reviewed back in Game 1. It is entertaining, but it's still just nothing special to me - and the sequel is just more of exactly the same - except this time, it has portals. - 5/10
Gauntlet - I feel I didn't give Gauntlet a good chance, as I enjoyed the 3 minutes of it I played. OK, so it may throw more bad guys at you than the patented zombie-fling 3000 ("Flinging zombies at your enemies for more than thirty years), but it was an enjoyable top-down hack and slasher, and it may well see me try it out again at some point soon. - 7/10
Joust / Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest - Just like Defender and it's sequel, Joust is a famous game, and one that I've already encountered on the tiny screen of the Game Boy in playthrough Game 1. Sadly, like Defender, it's a game who's reputation sadly outshines it. It's hard to control, it's a bit bizarre and slightly dull. Sorry Joust. - 4/10
Klax - A puzzle game! And an addictive one at that. It's a classic "match-3" style game, which becomes ridiculously fun and involving. I had a copy of this on the PC when I was young, and I'd completely forgotten about it until today. And it's so awesome! I'm definitely going back to this when I have more time. - 9/10
Marble Madness - It's quite simply fun. Controlling a marble around a course. Yes, the isometric 3D and touchy controls mean that you quite often fall off the edge when you don't mean to, but it's still a lot of fun - I came back to this one more than once in my playthrough! - 7.5/10
Paperboy - I love this game. Always have, always will. It kind of reminds me of doing my own paper round as a teenager (although I didn't just fling papers at people's front doors. Well, not always anyway - obviously it depended on my mood at the time.) Again, like Marble Madness, the controls are slightly flaky, but it's still an entertaining play - 8/10
Rampage - A game that doesn't quite live up to it's concept. You can play as a giant King Kong-style ape! You can smash up buildings! You can pummel soldiers who are shooting at you! Except, the controls are really rather wonky and the collision detection is rather off, so in fact you spend most of the time walking/jumping/punching at random and hoping. Shame really... - 5/10
Rampart - As dull as watching beige paint dry. Seriously dull. Granted, I have very little patience with strategy games at the best of times, and this just held no interest for me whatsoever. - 1/10
RoadBlasters - Now this is deceptively fun. As I stated earlier, I had been disappointed that I wasn't able to play Outrun 2 on this playthrough, and while RoadBlasters is no Outrun, it's still a very entertaining arcade-style racer where you have to keep picking up fuel to keep going. Plus, your car has guns, which is always fun. - 7/10
Robotron: 2084 - A classic that truly lives up to it's reputation. I hadn't played Robotron for many, many years, but on firing it up, I re-discovered everything I loved about it. Granted, it's very basic, visually, and that can cause a little confusion, but it's still one of the most energetic yet claustrophobic shoot-em-ups ever. And it's great. - 8/10
Root Beer Tapper - This is a bizarre game - where you have to keep refilling everyone's glasses and make sure at no point does one hit the floor. It's a good idea, but sadly I was very bad at it, and it didn't grip me enough to have another go. - 5/10
Satan's Hollow - Unmemmorable, un-exciting. No more to say - 1/10
Sinistar - Another shoot-em-up, but again, this one is quite fun. Bouncing around in a spaceship shooting at a whole bunch of enemies. Unlike Defender, you can at least see what's going on and identify bullets as they are fired, so that rates it a little higher for me. - 6/10
Smash TV - One of the best games of the bunch for me. A quasi-sequel to Robotron, it takes all of the good bits of that game and applies some lovely looking graphics to it. Don't get me wrong, there's not a lot in the way of variety, but who needs variety when you have guns that fire grenades, and multi-bullets and you can just mow down people in a hail of gore... wow. I sound disturbed, don't I. Never mind, it's all fun! Although, as Neety pointed out, "If this is a gameshow in the future, who are all the people who volunteer to run in and instantly get shot down by bullets?" - 9/10
SPLAT! - This is the most bizarre game in the bunch. And considering others of them have included filling peoples pint glasses, guiding a droplet around a sink and the neon insanity of Blaster, that says a lot. Basically on this game, you have to catch pies and throw them at your enemies. If an enemy hits you, your head falls off, and you have to chase around to catch it. Yes, I'm not making this up, it's totally true... - 3/10
Spy Hunter - A vertical scrolling driving game where you shoot other cars. It turns out that you're trying to shoot a spy off the road, but I just killed a lot of civillians and then blew up. - 3/10
Super Sprint - A top-down fun driving game, that I am awful at. Really bad. Which is a shame, because I enjoyed playing it - I just couldn't win anything. - 6/10
Toobin' - Now this was a real disappointment. Toobin' was one of the reasons I bought Midway Arcade Treasures 1 (I had a choice between 1, 2 or 3), and I did so because I used to have a version of it on the PC, which I remember loving. Having played it again, with it's awkward controls, I am left to wonder whether the version I had used an entirely different control mechanism, or if my younger self was just deluded. It's supposed to be a fun time racing down a river on a rubber tube, but sadly, it's just bloody frustrating. - 2/10
Vindicators - Sadly, my experience with this game was as follows. Drive a tank around, and then die. - 1/10
So, I know that this has been a huge blog, and I thank you for sticking with it (unless you skipped over all of the middle and have just jumped to this final paragraph, in which case, shame on you! Go back and read it properly!). Overall, Midway Arcade Treasures was a real blast, and whilst I do have three or four obvious favourites (Klax, Paperboy, Smash TV, Robotron), I also got to enjoy games I had never played before (Blaster, 720°, RoadBlasters) and try out a whole bunch of games, the type of which you rarely see nowadays, due to the lack of arcades. I miss arcades. Anyone want to lend me the money to establish one in Bournemouth?
Rating - 8/10
Time Played - 1 Hour 10 Minutes (I had to, to get one go on each game!)
Will I play it again? - Some of it, definitely.
Next time on Brawny's Great Playthrough, it's back to some 2D platforming! Stay tuned...
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