Midway Arcade Treasures

Written by Kyle Williams  on April 14, 2004

Full Review: Old School is the best school

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Before they closed the doors to their arcade division, Midway was one of the heavy hitters in every arcade in the United States. That was a move that I'll always be sad over as they made the games that brought me out into public throughout my high school years. Fortunately, there is a retro gaming craze kicking around and Midway has decided to release twenty-four of their classics from the 1980s for us to enjoy at home. Check out the complete game list:

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
Root Beer Tapper

Some of these titles you may remember, some of them you may not. Regardless, there is a plethora of arcade classics for every gaming taste.

What Midway Arcade Treasures does right is that it brings all of the classic gameplay of these titles home. Personally, I can't be more pleased with the dual analog stick control of Smash TV, Robotron 2084 and Vindicators. The only possible criticism is that MAT contains ports that are too true to the original. Don't get me wrong, none of these games are ever uncontrollable. It is just that Paperboy was easiest to control with the snazzy handlebar controller in the arcade and Rampart was best when you had a trackball. Do you get my drift? Regardless, Midway Arcade Treasures is a near perfect recreation of some of the best arcade games that Midway ever put out.

Now, as much as I love a good retro game, there is no denying that Midway Arcade Treasures is full of games that look dated. Perhaps that is part of their charm. The one problem that this creates is that, on certain games, it can be very difficult to read some of the smaller text fonts. I don't know what people playing MAT on a 19" TV are supposed to do about this as I can hardly read them on my 27" set. To go along with this, the main game select menu doesn't actually have the game titles listed on it. True, the opening screen shows up in the center of your set once you select the appropriate icon, but what happens if you don't know which icon goes with each game? You have to sift through all of them, that's what.