Midway Arcade Origins harkens back to that treasured age of gaming, where taking a date to the Arcade was cool. Unfortunately, cool isn’t the word to describe this random 31-game collection, which has an odd assortment of games ranging from Pit-Fighter to Joust. There are some games that will make you nostalgic, while other titles will remind you of archaic design problems that often led to one too many deaths (and the loss of a few quarters).
From Xbox Wire: "The July Games with Gold lineup is here! On the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, explore a mysterious, strange world in Planet Alpha, and create your own levels and destroy everyone else’s in Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break. And for our classic lineup via Backward Compatibility, play as everyone’s favorite raunchy squirrel in Conker: Live & Reloaded, and relive the golden age of arcade gaming in Midway Arcade Origins."
Confession time... I never played the original Conker on N64 and I did not play the xbox remake. It wasnt until Rare Replay that i played a Conker game. I do enjoy the Midway arcade series though. And that Planet Alpha looks kind of intriguing.
That Rock of Ages is sad, though. But, yeah, the other stuff isn't necessarily bad, just somewhat niche in market reach potential.
GamesAsylum: "Amongst various timeless Zelda and Mario titles, incredibly obscure PlayStation 2 and GameCube releases and some soon to be classic Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games sits a few others on our bulging dusty shelves that we wouldn’t even dream of trading-in or putting on eBay.
As the name of this article has more than likely already given away, they’re retro collections. Regular readers will know that we’ve always had a soft spot for these, and so today we’re looking at eight of the best.
Inexpensive and often containing one or two games that would cost a small fortune if purchased for their original hardware, all of these offer decent value for money as well as serving as invaluable portals back to misspent youth"
Gi - The days of the arcade are long gone. There currently exists no way to relive the magic of the 1980s gaming experience without dealing with hordes of children at Chuck E. Cheese’s or braving the loud sounds and darkness of an increasingly popular barcade. With the rise of game consoles and existence of in-home motion gaming over the past few decades, arcades have been rendered useless. However, Warner Bros. Games takes the classic arcade cabinets of yesteryear and brings them to home consoles in Midway Arcade Origins.
Also, the "Random Assortment" is all games Midway owns. They bough out Williams Electronics, so that's why Joust, Robotron 2084, Defender, Stargate (Defender II), etc. are on there. Along with Tapper and the Midway games.
And the archaic design line is. I think all of these games are much better programmed AND designed by modern games. They're only cheap because you haven't put enough time in to figure it out, aka buying more games. That is what these games were designed to do, after all.
And lastly, you need a cornerstone game like "Pac Man, Missile Command, or Centipede?" Do you not realize Defender was THE game of the 80's, along with Pac Man? It crushed everything, step for step with Pac Man. If you don't know the history of Arcade games, please don't review an Arcade collection like you do.
I think reviewers can often miss the point with these collections. It's very hard to jump straight back into what are obviously fiendishly unforgiving experiences anyway but these collections serve best those that know what it really means to play an older game
The idea of playing your favourite older games is in reality nothing like the initial shock of what that's actually like. It takes a while to ease back into why you loved the game in the first place and depending on just how long it's been, it's very likely your experience playing will be frustrating. Most people play these games and come to the initial conclusion, one which is in fact final for most, that these game's aren't as good as they once thought they were. And that's fine, but the conclusion is fueled by the frustrations they have at this more disciplined design. Back then we enjoyed the conditioning needed to get good at these games and the reward was this alone when you learned the mechanics well enough to play well. Lets not forget that what most people remember of these games is not actually how poorly they played them to begin with- which is where most people will be when you try them out again here after so long- but in fact how accomplished you were
Lots of people can't be arsed with this harsh level of commitment to games any more and reach the conclusion that these older games aren't as good as 'better' modern day design. It's not true of course but I can certainly understand why people have turned off playing excessively challenging games. It doesn't stop most games though being still excellent to play if you're prepared to do the training needed to get you up to speed, and it's more likely serious players of these collections anyway are going to do this for only a few of their absolute faves
Not much point then having a review score really