Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1

Retro arcade gaming has been making a big comeback in the past few years with Midway, Namco, and Hasbro (who owns the Atari rights) leading the way.

Retro arcade gaming has been making a big comeback in the past few years with Midway, Namco, Konami and Hasbro (who owns the Atari rights) leading the way, but the PlayStation and PC have gotten the most of the retro-releases, the N64 hasn't seen much action in this department. But that all changes with the fresh and snappy collection of the best arcade games from Midway's past.

Arcade Revenge!
The value in this collection is really quite high: Spy Hunter, Joust, Defender, Sinistar (joy!), Robotron, and Root Beer Tapper. It's a diverse and high quality collection. Often companies will release a collection of older games with only a couple of good titles, but there isn't a dog in the mix here. In addition, there's a fun arcade trivia game to test your knowledge.

Even though the translations of the games are literally arcade perfect, they still show the wear of time. Sinistar, a largely ignored gem, was an incredible game when it came out as was Spy Hunter, but they just don't have the sound, the graphics, or even the depth of gameplay that most gamers are used to today. Animations are primitive at best, and the vector graphics used in Defender look downright bare.

Pack Attack
That said, there's still a lot of fun to be found here. Thankfully, the controls in all of the games are well done. Some retro game packs suffer from poor control translation, but all of the games here use the N64's analog and digital controls really well, and arcade fans will appreciate this attention to detail. It's not as good as using a real arcade stick, but close enough.

If you're an N64 owner who wants to get a blast from the past, this collection is definitely worth having. The gameplay isn't nearly as deep, the graphics aren't anywhere near as good, and some of the sounds are just plain awful by today's standards, but hey who cares when you're saving the universe once again?

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