Midway Arcade Treasures 3
Platform: Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Publisher: Midway
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail
Compilations of classic games are a good thing. One of the major problems with gaming is that our history is lost with every generation. Software catalogs start from scratch with every new gaming platform, leaving the majority of games to fade into obscurity.
Sure, the emulation scene has done an admirable job of keeping then flame of old school gaming alive. But commerce will soon render their efforts illegal and copyright will do it's unwritten job of pushing antequated or consumer-shunned content into extinction.
Midway Arcade Treasures 3 does the valliant job of preserving eight fairly forgettable games. Having blown their load with the first two volumes, Midway scrapes the bottom of their barrel for racing games remainders. The top billed, Hydro Thunder, San Francisco Rush 2049 and San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition are the most recent and the most forgetable -- all sitdown racers of a similar, unassuming breed. But Offroad Thunder stands out for its sheer gaudiness. The racer's butt-ugly textures are painted with a day-glo-meets-vomit pallate. The soundtrack blares roaring engines and obnoxious guitar solos. The game itself is overly forgiving and floaty -- your truck seems to bob up and down like a jet ski as it rounds the dirt track turns.
The older half of the games did a better job of pushing my nostalgia buttons. Off Road and Badlands, both top-down racers, are rendered in intricate and artful sprites. S.T.U.N. Runner's wireframe combat racing recalls the satisfying twitch gaming of Tempest. Most special to me was Race Driving, a extremely unforgiving driving simulator rendered in the bland, textureless 3D of low-rent VR. I spent quite a bit of money as a teenager trying to master the loops and jumps of the game's stunt track. Taking the game for spin conjured memories of the Pompano Beach shopping mall where I spent many Saturday afternoons.
Publisher: Midway
Review Type: Touchy
Version: Retail
Compilations of classic games are a good thing. One of the major problems with gaming is that our history is lost with every generation. Software catalogs start from scratch with every new gaming platform, leaving the majority of games to fade into obscurity.Sure, the emulation scene has done an admirable job of keeping then flame of old school gaming alive. But commerce will soon render their efforts illegal and copyright will do it's unwritten job of pushing antequated or consumer-shunned content into extinction.
Midway Arcade Treasures 3 does the valliant job of preserving eight fairly forgettable games. Having blown their load with the first two volumes, Midway scrapes the bottom of their barrel for racing games remainders. The top billed, Hydro Thunder, San Francisco Rush 2049 and San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition are the most recent and the most forgetable -- all sitdown racers of a similar, unassuming breed. But Offroad Thunder stands out for its sheer gaudiness. The racer's butt-ugly textures are painted with a day-glo-meets-vomit pallate. The soundtrack blares roaring engines and obnoxious guitar solos. The game itself is overly forgiving and floaty -- your truck seems to bob up and down like a jet ski as it rounds the dirt track turns.
The older half of the games did a better job of pushing my nostalgia buttons. Off Road and Badlands, both top-down racers, are rendered in intricate and artful sprites. S.T.U.N. Runner's wireframe combat racing recalls the satisfying twitch gaming of Tempest. Most special to me was Race Driving, a extremely unforgiving driving simulator rendered in the bland, textureless 3D of low-rent VR. I spent quite a bit of money as a teenager trying to master the loops and jumps of the game's stunt track. Taking the game for spin conjured memories of the Pompano Beach shopping mall where I spent many Saturday afternoons.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home