phungus's Full Review: Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for Xbox
The first Midway Arcade Treasures collection contained a bunch of older arcade games that did not translate well to the console, and many of them just weren’t any fun. With this sequel, Midway has given us a collection of 20 more games. This time around, they’ve selected a much better choice of games, though a few of them aren’t worth playing. For the most part, this second collection is superior to the original.
Midway finally got the menu system right with MAT 2 because you can now see a picture of the game logo along with a screen shot. In the earlier version, it used an icon along with a screenshot and it was sometimes hard to tell the games apart. The menus in this are in much higher resolution and just plain look better. The games are selected using a vertical scrolling menu that is quick and easy to navigate.
This collection of games bears the M for Mature 17+ rating due to the graphic violence in some titles. After all, this collection does include the three awesome and bloody violent fighting games Primal Rage and Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. Some of the other games feature blood or gore, but the fighters are what really stand out, especially the MK series.
This collection contains sequels to several titles that were in the original collection, such as Spy Hunter II, Gauntlet II, Rampage World Tour, plus the previously mentioned Mortal Kombat games. I don’t remember playing SH II, but it is a pseudo-3D racing game that isn’t as good as the original. G II is actually better than the first, and its old school fast-paced action is still fun after all these years. RWT is basically the same game as the original, only with slightly better graphics and a little more to do.
According to the game history, Xybots was the first third person shooter. It puts the player in a simulated 3D maze type area. The gameplay may seem primitive now, but it was groundbreaking at the time. Every game on this disk has information such as the history of the title as well as programming credits. For some of the games, like Timber, I wish Midway had included some explanation as to why they thought anyone would want to play it.
Several games on here employ a really annoying control style that I have not gotten used to. This falls back to the main fault of the first MAT collection in that the controls don’t translate well to the Xbox controller. In the games Total Carnage, Kozmik Krooz’r, and Wacko, you use the four A, B, X, and Y buttons to control directional shooting. It gets really annoying, even if Total Carnage looks like it would be a lot more fun.
Only two sports games come on the collection, and they are the very good basketball game Arch Rivals and the fairly lame robot football game Cyberball 2072. A couple of racing games, Hard Drivin’ and Championship Sprint are also included, and they are both pretty fun. There’s also a police car game called APB that looks a little like Spy Hunter.
The one game on here that really brought back memories was Xenophobe. I don’t think it was every a very popular title, but I did remember playing the home console version of it as well. When I was younger, when the Gulf Coast area was much smaller, there was only one big movie theater in town, and they had Xenophobe in their lobby. In fact, my wife’s first job was working in that theater and we both vaguely remember seeing each other there ten years before we actually met. Hurricane Katrina destroyed half of that theater and demolition crews finished the rest, so it kind of holds a special place in my heart because I spent a lot of time there when I was younger. I don’t know why Xenophobe jogged my memory like it did, but I can vividly recall standing there in the lobby playing it while waiting on my ride.
Most of these games came out in the late 80’s and early 90’s, so the graphics and sound quality is mostly 16 or 8-bit, like a Sega Genesis or Nintendo Entertainment System. Some of the titles look horribly dates, especially the lame Pit Fighter, but the Mortal Kombat games stand the test of time pretty well. Chances are if you find one of those MK stand-ups in an arcade, somebody will be playing it.
Midway Arcade Treasures 2 is a nice collection of twenty games and offers a lot for your money. I think they could have done away with several of the titles included on the disc, but at least it has more good stuff than the original collection. It isn’t as good as it could have been, but it could have been a lot worse.
Run Xybots through deadly mazes, wander with the Wizard of Wor and chop down trees in Timber Exciting battle action with Total Carnage, Spy Hunter II ...More at Amazon
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