Let me make one thing clear from the beginning: Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play is a fun collection of 21 classics covering almost every genre one could ever want. You've got sports games (Arch Rivals, 720°, Cyberball 2072), fighters (Mortal Kombat 1-3), strategy (Rampart), and even straight-up action classics (Defender, Gauntlet, Xybots). Yep, there's truly something for everyone…it's just a shame the entire package is put together so horribly.
The most glaring problem with Extended Play is a problem common with many PSP titles - the load times. While really old games like Defender load fairly quickly (once you get through the long boot-up for the system itself and the company logos of course), most of the titles in this collection take an obscenely long time to load. Even a game like Xybots, which was released in 1987, takes 35 seconds to boot from the moment you choose it on the menu to the time you get to the start menu for the game itself.
As bad as long load times are in normal games, they're even worse here. Given that these are arcade games, and older ones at that, for the most part these don't have the depth you'd find elsewhere. Thus their main appeal is the quick "pick up and play" nature of the compilation, and the long load times mostly ruin this.
That's not the only complaint however, as there are emulation problems with both the graphics and sound. For starters, for some strange reason Digital Eclipse chose to show most of the titles here in widescreen mode. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which titles originally were and weren't in widescreen in the arcades (I'm assuming most given their age), but I can tell which ones look stretched and pixilated on the PSP's screen. Fortunately you can toggle up to three different resolutions (press Start and then hold L down while pressing the square button), but since it isn't documented in the manual anywhere (I found it online) and the games are set to widescreen by default many gamers will probably be forced to live with it until they stumble across the solution. Aside from that, a few games (notably the Mortal Kombat titles) have some slowdown problems bad enough to effect gameplay and there are some other minor glitches scattered here and there. Some sounds are also muffled or inaccurate, for example the music in Paperboy running slower or the muffled voices in the Mortal Kombat series.
Quite honestly, I expect some emulation problems in every compilation of this nature and I'm willing to mostly overlook those that don't affect gameplay. However, another problem that affects gameplay is the lack of a trackball, which hurts titles designed for it like Rampart and Marble Madness. They're still very much playable, but it's not quite the same effect and comes across as a clunky using either the D-pad or analog nub. Honestly this isn't Midway's fault (or Sony's really, a trackball on the PSP just wouldn't make sense), but it's worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning is the lack of extras. No interviews, no artwork, and none of the other goodies the console versions generally had plenty of. Finally, I don't understand why they left certain arcade-specific things in the games, such as the "insert coins" pause in the middle of Arch Rivals (where it pauses the game after a set amount of time asking for more coins). I understand it's part of an "accurate" translation from the arcade, but all it really accomplishes here is to be an annoyance.
One of the most impressive things with this package is the sheer number of titles that support wireless play - 16 out of the 21 in fact support from 2 to 4 players. However, it's local play only and unfortunately requires each player to have a copy of the game. The latter is especially disappointing given how small most of these games are; surely it wouldn't take more than a few seconds to transmit a game session to multiple PSPs.
Bottom Line:
Like I said in the beginning, I can't deny that I've had fun with Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play. The outstanding collection of games here is simply too great to ignore, but so are the collection's shortcomings. The load times are horrendous, and waiting for a long time just to play most of these games in short bursts doesn't feel worth it.
However, if you're a retro fan and don't think the load times will bother you it's hard to ignore so many great games for only $29.99.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
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| 6.0 |
Posted: 2006-03-19 06:17:43 PST