When I was young, some friends of the family went out one day and purchased a Gauntlet II arcade machine, which, at the time, was a move inconceivable to my developing gamer’s mind. All of a sudden, the living room of these family friends’ house was like a little slice of heaven; not only could I play Gauntlet II for free, I could keep hitting the coin slot to play as long as I could possibly want (or at least until my parents told me it was time to leave). Over the years, however, I saw that machine collect dust, and then eventually move to the garage, until it disappeared one day, never to be seen again. Even at that young age, I had enough of an appreciation of what a classic that game was to be shocked that it was tossed out like an apple core or an E.T. cartridge.
A sad story, to be sure. All was not lost, however, when I discovered that Midway was to release a compilation of some of its classic arcade games for today’s consoles. While Gauntlet II would not be included, its predecessor, along with 23 other games remembered fondly from my youth, would be mine to play over and over again, for the more than reasonable price of $20. Even in this wallet-draining time of year, that was a deal I simply couldn’t pass up, for the sake of the little gamer inside me.
Midway Arcade Treasures is that compilation, encompassing most of Midway, Bally and Williams’ most popular (and some less-than popular) arcade hits of the 80s and early 90s. Specifically, the games included are: Spy Hunter, Defender, Defender II, Gauntlet, Joust, Joust 2, Paperboy, Rampage, Robotron 2084, Smash TV, Bubbles, RoadBlasters, Blaster, Rampart, Sinistar, Super Sprint, Marble Madness, 720, Toobin’, Klax, Splat!, Satan’s Hollow, Vindicators, and Root Beer Tapper. In addition to the games themselves, Midway has included history features on the game, including blurbs about the games, trivia games, and video interviews with the games’ designers.
Needless to say, the collection is easily the best and most comprehensive found in one of these types of compilations, which often include, at most, six or eight games. While there are a few duds included (Splat!, a food fight game with twin-stick control, was never released, and for good reason, and Satan’s Hollow is a thinly veiled Galaga clone, for instance), most of the games are just as much fun today as they were fifteen or twenty years ago. Full multiplayer support is also included, though a Multitap is required for more than two players to play Gauntlet, Rampage, Rampart, or Super Sprint.
Of course, getting into the games could be easier. A menu with obscure hieroglyphics and miniature representations of the games’ opening screens is all you have to go on in order to choose a game to play. Now, the games are arranged in alphabetical order, so it’s not impossible to navigate by any means, but it really isn’t so much to ask to just display the name of the game on the screen somewhere. With 24 games, it’s tedious to have to wait for the game’s opening animation to reveal the name of the game.
Actually playing the games can be a mixed bag, depending on the game’s control scheme. When the game in question uses a joystick, or even better, twin sticks, then Midway Arcade Treasures excels in reproducing the arcade experience. Smash TV, in particular, has seen a number of home conversions (including the old NES version which simulated twin sticks by using two gamepads held vertically), but the PS2’s dual shock controller seems like it was built specifically with Smash TV in mind.
However, when Treasures attempts to emulate other control schemes, like analog steering wheels or, worse yet, trackballs, it fares quite a bit worse. I would go so far to say that Rampart, easily one of the games I was most anticipating in this collection, was rendered nearly unplayable due to the terrible trackball emulation. Marble Madness’ trackball emulation was so bad, in fact, that I couldn’t even enter my initials properly for my not-so-impressive high score. Steering control is slightly better, but complicated as a result of usage of the right analog stick as a gas pedal, which is generally counter-intuitive. The analog stick is also not nearly as sensitive as an analog wheel might be, which is obvious after five minutes of attempting to whip around a track in Super Sprint, and crashing into the walls repeatedly.
One other thing that can put a damper on the fun is that you have unlimited coins with which to continue, as though you had unlocked the coin box and could press the little lever inside as much as you want. For most games, this doesn’t make a difference one way or the other, but for the games in which you can continue from where you last died, notably Gauntlet and Smash TV, this has a severely detrimental effect on replay value. Smash TV was fun to play through once with unlimited continues, simply for the novelty value of actually being able to see the ending. Gauntlet, however, with the ability to simply press triangle to add 750 health (and, obviously, to keep pressing the button until you have too much health for the game to display properly), becomes pointless in a hurry. After all, with unlimited health, you’ll never hear the announcer say, “Yellow wizard needs food badly.” And isn’t the announcer the whole reason for playing Gauntlet in the first place?
The graphics also take a hit in a couple of games, which can spoil the experience. Smash TV, in particular, exhibits horrendous slowdown and flicker which gets worse as the game progresses. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that hardware that can run games like Jak II and Ratchet and Clank flawlessly can’t handle a fifteen-year old game. For most of the games, this isn’t an issue, but when slowdown rears its ugly head, it’s downright painful.
The game’s sound, where applicable, is faithfully recreated. While Sinistar’s yells of, “Beware! I live!” and, “Run, coward!” may not be as chilling today as it was in the early 80s, when it was the first game with voice synthesis, it still sounds excellent, as do all the games. The volume level is inconsistent between games, which is more of a minor annoyance than anything else, but something that’s noticeable enough to be worth mentioning. Other than that, though, everything sounds nice, or at least as nice as it did in the arcades originally, which is all one can ask for.
The historical content is fairly interesting if you have a nose for video gaming history, and while some games have less information than others, they all have something to offer. The video itself, however, ranges from VHS quality to low-quality MPEG, which is kind of surprising given that the disc is a DVD, and one expects DVD-quality video as a result. Much of the footage is apparently lifted from Midway’s older compilations, and was just transported to this disc as-is. That just smacks of laziness, in my opinion, because the DVD content could have been the best part of this package, but the video is so bad a times that it’s nearly unwatchable, and there is really no reason that Midway couldn’t have just re-encoded the video so that it played at real DVD quality.
It should be noted that the compilation is rated Teen, mostly as a result of Smash TV, though the thinly veiled alcohol consumption in [Root Beer] Tapper may not be suitable for some children, either. (Of course, I remember playing the real thing on my Commodore 64 when I was younger, complete with Budweiser logo on the back wall, and I turned out just fine…) The rest of the games are fairly tame, though some way for parents to lock away some of the games and leave the rest unlocked would have been appreciated, since there are enough good, kid-friendly games in this collection that it seems a shame to keep them all away from the younger set because of a couple of more graphic titles.
Overall, while Midway Arcade Treasures is a worthwhile purchase, I can’t give it the glowing recommendation that I really hoped I would be able to. Some of the games control so poorly that they’re unplayable, there are glitches and some lazy emulation, and the DVD content is disappointing, to say the least. That said, if you’re willing to look past its faults (which is easier to do given the $20 price tag), there are some gems to be found here. Personally, just for an accurate representation of Sinistar, the purchase was worth my money. While Midway Arcade Treasures may not be made up completely of fool’s gold, the package doesn’t sparkle as brightly as one would expect it to.
