When Warner Bros. acquired much of Midway’s assets after
their bankruptcy, the publisher didn’t waste much time on making use of its
back catalog. Much like what Midway did in previous generations; Warner Bros.
puts out yet another arcade classic compilation. This collection of games is
one we’ve seen many times over, and it’s puzzling on why every Midway arcade
game wasn’t thrown onto the disc, considering the amount of data a disc could
hold. This is far from a “definitive” collection, and half the games on here
would hardly be considered a classic.
Defender 1&2, Joust 1&2, Championship and Super
Sprint, Smash TV, Total Carnage, Marble Madness, Spy Hunter 1&2, APB, 720,
Arch Rivals, Pit Fighter, Xybots, Xenophobe, Vindicators Part II, Gauntlet
1&2, Bubbles, Robotron 2084, Satan’s Hollow, Sinistar, Root Beer Tapper,
Super Off Road, Cyberball 2072, Toobin’, Rampart, Wizard Of Wor, and Rampage.
Sounds like a good number of games, but many of these are
too short (like Marble Madness), severely crappy (like Pit Fighter and Wizard
Of Wor), or just lack depth (pretty much every other game on the disc). These
games were meant to be played for 25 cents at a time, and were never meant to
have any real form of longevity. So those 30 games burn off rather quickly.
Also, where the hell are other key Midway games from other collections like Paperboy,
KLAX, Road Blasters, STUN Runner, San Francisco Rush and Rush 2049, Hydro
Thunder, and the Mortal Kombat trilogy? Yeah, the MK games were released
online, but I highly doubt WB would hesitate to double dip. Again, WB and
Backbone could have easily thrown in another 30-40 games on the disc.
In case if you haven’t noticed, the vast majority of these
games are not developed by Midway. Much of these were from when Midway acquired
Atari Games back in the 1990s, and just happen to be part of Midway’s catalog.
If this were to be a true Midway collection, again, all the MK games would be
there, as well as the Thunder series, the Cruisn’ series (although those were
co-produced by Nintendo), Area 51 and so forth. So again, for those looking for
a true history of Midway arcade games, dream on.
The only real boons of this collection are achievements and
HD upscaling. The HD actually sort of hurts the look of these games, as they
come off as rough in the default settings. When these games were made, they
were designed for lower resolution monitors. Putting a game from 1983 in 720p
just doesn’t come off looking well. There are some smoothing options, but it
will either make the game look blurry or deformed. There are online
leaderboards, but to date the largest number of players I found for a particular
game was barely above 2,000. That kind of says something about the games sales
after being on the shelf for 2 months.
I do enjoy classic game collections, but they have to
include games I actually want to play. If Warner Bros. were smart and inclined
to do another collection, it would be best to collect EVERY Midway arcade
racing game onto one disc. Much of those games hold a decent amount of replay
value to consider worth purchasing. But this collection will leave arcade gaming
enthusiasts cold. There’s nothing new to see here, and it’s obvious that Warner
Bros. is just trying to make a quick buck off of their acquisition of Midway
Games. Even if you’ve never owned one of the Midway Arcade Treasure collections
from the last generation of consoles, this collection really isn’t worth more
than $10.
RATING: C-
Warner Bros. could give us something better than this.
Xbox 360 version reviewed. Also available on PlayStation 3.
Developed by Backbone Entertainment, Published By WB Games
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