Back To The Portable Future
Arcade is the main word in this gaming compilation, with variety coming a close second. Now, I don't know if you guys out there with a PSP know this, but *this passage has been edited for legal reasons* and I told the cops that it was like that when I got there.
Anyway, this is a review about Midway Arcade on the PSP. This game, or games should I say, consist of a number of interesting old school (1980-1990's) arcade games, each of which I've given a short review - so let's not dilly dally:
720 – 1986: 1 player. This skating game (not exactly Tony Hawk) is pretty cool for its age, where you have to skate around with only four different directions at your disposal to hit jump ramps, half pipes and complete crazy moves. You can pick up skating gear at a skate shop depending on how much money you have and if you run out of time, lots of random events, such as tornadoes, weird cars and dust bowls come to kill you. Very nostalgic, very poignant, very simple, and pretty boring.
Arch Rivals – 1987: 2 player [with local wireless]. This is one of my favorite games on this arcade treasures UMD. Easily makes it into my top 12 list. It's a basketball game where you have 2 players on each team, and you can punch people to get the ball. Full contact basketball! Mr T. would be chuffed.
You choose your character, and start playing, and run up and down the court constantly, punching in every direction until you get the ball. And then when you get the ball amidst all the violence, you take a shot at the hoop. This is great for playing over wireless against a friend -- heaps of fun!
Championship Sprint – 1986: 2 player [with local wireless]. Even I know this game! And I've been in cryogenic stasis since Sputnik broke the mesosphere, but I see it around sometimes in cheap caravan parks etc... The game is probably my 2nd favorite of this bunch, with the aim of the game to race around a 2D track racing against three other cars.
If you win your races you get credits, if you get enough credits you can buy cool stuff, such as helicopter repair, turbocharger upgrades, better tyres etc... It's okay for playing two player games, but can get boring after a while. If you enjoyed playing this game back in 1986 though, you'll probably blow your daks.
Cyberball 2072 – 1988: 2 player [with local wireless]. Like most of the games on here, I've never heard of it (again with cryo), it's an American football type game played with humans in robot armour. The graphics are better than most games, but still make me nauseous. I don't know much about American football, all I know is that you have to make it to the other end and get a 'touchdown'. So all I do is pass and pass and set random field strategies until I get there. I guess it would be a good game for the enthusiast, and can be cool with long running plays and good passes.
Defender – 1980: 1 player. Defender is a spaceship game where you have to move along in a free roaming area (2D) and shoot re-spawning aliens all day. Your spacecraft is fitted with three bombs which can instantly kill any alien within the screen. I didn't find it particularly attractive, but my gaming standards are impeccably high - but hey, if you like this kind of stuff 'twitch' gaming, you'll enjoy this 26-year-old offering.
Gauntlet – 1985: 4 player [with local wireless]. This is an RPG game where you're a warrior and you have to go around killing all different kinds of monsters like ghouls, ogres, magicians and so on. You must kill the monster spawning blocks to stop the spread of baddies and also to reach different stages of the game. It's quite addictive this one, and I'd recommend it to the people who like battle-axes and pixellated slime.
Joust – 1982: 2 player [with local wireless]. This game is where you're a little bird, and you have to flap your wings and jump on other birds to take their eggs (or whatever they are, possibly massive parasitical grubs). Joust is a game where if you go out of one side of the screen you re-enter it on the other - often called 'wrapping' (and not to be confused with threatening rhymes). It's a little repetitive, although you need to get so many eggs/grubs to pass a level, so it keeps it fairly exciting. Impressive for something coded in 1982, very impressive in that respect.
KLAX – 1989: 2 player [with local wireless]. KLAX is a fun game - I really liked this one. You have to arrange tiles in a certain order to gain points. It's almost exactly like Tetris, except you have a different layout and different tiles orders. KLAX is really fun, and you have to see it for yourself to be able to see what I mean. You can hold three or four tiles at a time, and you must drop them in the right spot, and quickly too, in order to fit on the next KLAX tile. It's highly addictive and the graphics are reasonable, and is good when you're on the train surrounded by sullen people exhausted and stressed out by the corporate machine, as you tend to laugh and scream a bit, which cheers them up and makes them think about joyous videogames.
Marble Madness –1984: 2 player [with local wireless]. This is quite a well thought-out game. You control a marble, kind of like a glass eyeball without the ocular mucus, and must manoeuvre it though a whole range of obstacles in order to get to the finish. I remember playing this on the NES. The game obeys simple laws of gravity, friction and momentum, so it can get fun as it has a real-world vibe to it. Although it seems all good, there is one problem -- it can get really frustrating when you're one centimetre away from the finish and the marble drops off into the abyss for the fifth time in a row! You stupid f***ing game, I'll KILL YOU INSTANTLY! Apart from that it's a very nice game for its time!
Mortal Kombat – 1992: 2 player [with local wireless]. We all know Mortal Kombat, kill, maim, stab, decapitate and kill some more. You can perform low kicks, low punches, high kicks and high punches and can also perform 'fatalities', just like the onces in our time. The characters in this original include Cage, Sonya, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Kano and all the other originals from this classic. The UMD also includes Mortal Kombat 2 and 3, which have extra characters and moves in each one, which adds to this compilation's amusement.
Paperboy – 1985: 1 player. I love this game - it's one of my favourites and for good reason: the aim of it is to ride past people's houses owned by various people while avoiding a whole heap of obstacles while perfectly delivering papers from your hybrid BMX. It's great fun, but can get very hard very quickly. But ultimately, it's still very addictive to this day, and shows that you can't judge a game by its graphics, but you can judge a dog by its collar. At the end of each paper round you get to go on a BMX dirt track and do jumps and stuff, and even I found this quite amusing! Nice game, very nice.
Rampage – 1986: 3 player [with local wireless]. This is a King-Kong style game where you get munch people to get health and smash windows to bring down buildings. First you get on a building, smash it to bits and then kill military recruits. The aim is to smash all the buildings in the 2D screen to bits, and kill as many people as possible and dodge grenades and missiles. Good for fans of the many Rampage games released over the years, but kind of boring and a bit of a crap compared to Marble Madness...
Rampart – 1991: 3 player [with local wireless]. This is a game where you must choose a location on an island, set up a fort and place cannons. The aim of the game is to kill the incoming ships trying to attack your fort. Although the graphics are useless, the gameplay is quite acceptable. I like the strategic point of it and military buffs will enjoy it, but it can get very hard to kill the incoming ships with only two cannons. This one's in my top seven - nice game!
Sinistar – 1982: 1 player. This is a game a bit like space invaders except you can free roam - you're not constricted like CSIRO scientists trying to do their jobs. It's quite cool, kill little space ships etc... Except near the end of the level you hear a voice and it says "Beware coward, run coward," then this huge white creature that looks like a cat comes and kills you. It's hard to escape it because there are meteors in your way... I don't find it too exciting, but it's pretty cool nevertheless. Kind of like cornflakes - not great, but still very digestible.
Spy Hunter – 1984: 1 player. Spy Hunter! Cool. I heard they making this game into a movie starring Michael Caine as the transforming vehicle, but we're still waiting on his phone call to confirm this... This little game is quite fun. You start off in a car and you have to race up ahead on a vertically scrolling killing field and kill bad guys in cars. The evil cars are red so you can easily tell that you have to kill them. The only problem is that they ram you off the road and put oil slicks in your way! I've played this before on an arcade machine, and I sort of like it. It's hard, but it's fun and it can easily get you hooked. Nice game there, and probably my fifth favourite title in this very comprehensive package.
Toobin – 1988: 2 player [with local wireless]. This is a wicked and original game I must say! You are on a non-edible donut (in the water) moving down a stream and you have to steer and control yourself to move through markers, find treasure, avoid obstacles and get bonus points. You're against another non-edible donut 'bot' and whoever gets the most points at the end of the race wins. I loved playing this game over and again thanks to its simple racing them. A nice game and very original!
Wizard of War – 1981: 2 player [with local wireless]. This game is a complete Pacman imitation, except in this you can shoot. You're a little spaceman with a gun manoeuvering around little corners trying to kill dinosaurs, like Jurassic Park crossed with Desperate Housewives. Of course, as the round goes on, the dinosaurs get faster and harder and faster and harder until you get your arse kicked and slam your fish into the PSP's screen, rendering it momentarily inoperable. You have about five lives and you have to survive as long as possible and get the high score. Conclusion: unoriginal and boring.
Xenophobe – 1987: 3 player [with local wireless]. I could tell as soon as I went into this game that it wouldn't be that good. It's a 2D world where you're on the ground, and have to go around shooting in alien infested places, like Hollywood and Maroochydore - only joking, these places are lovely. You can get different weapons and stuff, but it's fairly boring. You can jump, duck and shoot at aliens for a long time, that's all it is. Disappointing for me, but others may find some joy here.
Xybots – 1987: 2 player [with local wireless]. This is probably the best game on the UMD, along with KLAX and Paperboy and Arch Rivals. It's the only 1st person shooter here and is pretty good for 1987. You're in these corridors and you can steer left and right and kill and zap aliens. BAM! Dead. The graphics are not really that good, but it makes it all the more interesting, which is strange but true in an ironic way. As you progress through the levels, you can buy equipment and soon the aliens get harder, move faster and are more accurate, and as the pace builds, so does the tension. Wait, who's behind me - noooooooo! This is probably on of the first 1st person shooters and it's great!
I had heaps of fun playing all these games, and I tell you what, you get a lot of games for your buck/euro here, and most of them are pretty good too, and if you're an old bastard like the Editor and haven't been frozen in the cryo freezer like a flaccid chunk of celery, you'll get right into this.
I think it's kind of poor that you would get 15 or so games and whack them all onto an operating system and sell it like that - the originality factor is nil because these games have already been created - but the truth of the matter is that there's a lot of gaming joy to be had with these old-school classics. Anyway, my question is, why wouldn't I just go and *this passage has been edited for legal reasons* because let's face it people, monotremes really do nourish their young with milk, after all.
I reckon that the gamers out there who like the old school games should get this, it would be handy to have around all the time, that's for sure. But if I had a choice between, say, Metal Gear Ac!d and this, I would choose Ac!d I think, because it's new and I like it. Still, this is one of the better nostalgic compilations to hit any system in recent times, showing off impressive levels of variety, and is a title that contains some of the better classics and very few stinkers.
Game: Midway Arcade: Extended Version
System: PSP
Players: 1-4 Player
Online: Sort of
Developer: Midway
Distributor: Red Ant
Rating: 75%
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