Midway collections/PS2

[Alienblue]

Midway arcade treasures / PS2

I traded the rest of my Colecovision Collection for these three PS2 collections and am happy both with the games and that my old CV collection found a good home!

VOLUME ONE / B

There are some utterly FANTASTIC games on this disc, but how exciting it is depends on whether you own all the PSX midway collections........I do, and so this first collection is just a Conveinance item......having MOST of the Williams,Atari and other games on one disc. But yeh......Spy Hunter, Joust, Defender, etc.......we've played these all before. And I question leaving out gems like Burgertime for losers like SPLAT!. The best game on here is VINDICATORS, a fun tank game from the late 80's arcade. Also good to see Satans Hollow and Klax on here. But um, yeh, moving on!.......

VOLUME TWO / A+

NOW WE'RE TALKING! Some great games on here, led by GAUNTLET TWO in all its Zelda-inspired glory (If I'm right the first Gauntlet preceded zelda but this is post Zelda right? Lots of Zelda stuff like pushing blocks and traps);
PRIMAL RAGE, fantastic Dinosaur fighting game, APB is a hilarious cop driving game, also TOTAL CARNAGE, WIZARD OF WOR (YES!YES!YES!),XENOPHOBE, and the adorable,unique TIMBER (as a Mainer I really appreciate this pine tree cutting game!). There are a few duds like PIT FIGHTER, SPY HUNTER 2 and worst of all KOZMIK KROOZER (one of the lamest arcade shooters ever), but hey no ones forcing you to play the duds......play the A+ Marquee titles and have a ball. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

VOLUME THREE / A+

FOR DRIVING FANS ONLY! Unlike the previous two discs this DVD contains EIGHT count em ATE, thats EYT driving games!!!!!!! Including some of the best old arcade dreyeving games like HYDRO THUNDER.......racing in jetboats! and SAN FRANSISCO RUSH.......utterly slamdamfantastic, and SFrush two ALCATRAZ RACE THE ROCK. You will feel it in your throat when the vehicles grab air.......that's right you become airborne and it is the exact same feeling as you'd get in FREEFALL.......WHOAAAAAA DUDE!!!!!!!!!! these games are some of the coolest drving games ever. Unless you hate driving games. If so stick to riding your tricylcle wimp! A must have for us racing fans.

FOTY ATE MO ARKADE GAMEZ! AHM IN HALFEN! Coooooool!
Nice tradez!
Duuuuuuuuuuude! way too much Caffeine today! Buzzzzzzzzz!

[Leo1]

Burgertime was a licensed game and they didn't want to pay to relicense it a second time. That's also why Moon Patrol wasn't included or the early Atari Corp. releases that Midway had licensed during the 90's for their PSOne era compilations. Midway was getting cheap so MAT1 was essentially just their PSOne era compilations combined into a single package with all the licensed games stripped out.

I don't particularly agree with your scores. I'd rate MAT at around a A, MAT2 around a B (I'm still mad that they botched up the emulation job for Wizard of Wor), and I don't think I'd rate MAT3 beyond C territory.

MAT3's save files on the PS2 and Xbox routinely become corrupted (Something that was fixed with the later GCN port). So I gave up trying to get anywhere in Hydro Thunder and Rush 2049 until I bought the GCN port and had a reliable save system. And discounting the fact that most of these games just didn't translate very well to a game controller, there are various emulation issues, poor decisions (The music tracks have been replaced in San Francisco Rush, for instance), etc.

Heck, I was playing Super Off-Road recently on it with friends (The GCN version, can't remember if it happens in the Xbox version), and quite a ways into the game, at the canyon track with the tall pillars everywhere, the emulator suddently couldn't even keep up and we were getting maybe 10fps on that track. And that was nearly the oldest game in the compilation.

All three are nice collections that I don't regret buying (I actually own all three on both the Xbox and the GameCube, never tried any of the PS2 builds). But all three have no shortage of flaws thanks to the tight budgets and schedules. The time between Midway green lighting a project and the desired completion date was just never enough to give the talented folks at the now defunct Digital Eclipse studio adequate time to iron out all the issues.

MAT2 is actually the reason why I bought a Xbox. I always loved Timber, so when that compilation was released and the Xbox build was viewed as the superior version, I went out and bought one just for Timber and didn't regret it. I had bought MAT1 for the GameCube prior to that since it was viewed as the best version (Beyond a slight audio delay that I was never able to personally notice) and it was the only one of the three systems that I owned at the time.