Midway Arcade Treasures 3

October 2,2005 -

The fall season is almost here, and with it comes a surge of new game releases. Along with this year's usual fall rush, come many retro gaming compilations. Namco and Tecmo have just released classics collections recently, and now Midway is here with their annual addition to their Arcade Treasures franchise. The previous Midway Arcade Treasures sets have been general collections with games from many different styles in one package. For Volume 3, Midway has decided to go for a more focused collection, putting the spotlight on their racing games.

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 bundles together eight games spanning roughly ten years of arcade history. These games can basically be divided into three categories. There are the extremely old-school, top-down games like Badlands and Super OffRoad; the more primitive, first-generation 3D games including STUN Runner and Race Drivin’; and finally, the more modern games such as Hydro Thunder, San Francisco Rush 2049, San Francisco Rush: The Rock, and OffRoad Thunder. Super OffRoad also includes the upgraded Track Pak, that came out several months after the game’s initial release. It’s a pretty solid line-up overall, but there is a rather glaring omission in the list of games included; namely the Cruis’n series. These were some of Midway’s more popular racers, and it’s odd that they’re not represented here. Perhaps we’ll see those on Arcade Treasures 4?

For the most part, the games all control well. It seems like some effort was taken to make sure that the games handled well enough. The default control options work out for the most part, but some games like Race Drivin’ could have used some alternate control layouts. Sadly, it’s not possible to re-map the controls in any of the games. Race Drivin’ would have definitely benefited from a steering wheel configuration. There are some great steering wheel peripherals on the various consoles, and it would’ve been a huge help for this game to use one that had a clutch pedal and stick shift. The 2D games control much like you’d expect; holding the D-Pad or analog stick will “spin” your car around, simulating the action of spinning the steering wheel. Though it’s functional, it just doesn’t quite feel the same. Playing Super OffRoad on this collection feels much like playing it on any of the consoles that it was released for. At least you can play with 3 players, which definitely brings back some of the arcade feeling.

One interesting thing about this collection is that two of the games on it aren’t the arcade versions. Hydro Thunder and San Francisco Rush 2049 both appear to be console ports. In a collection called Midway “Arcade” Treasures 3, this feels a bit out of place. At least the ports appear to be from the Dreamcast versions of the games, as the graphics are definitely comparable to those of their arcade counterparts.

Another note: the two early 3D games, Race Drivin’ and STUN Runner, both seem to run faster than they did back in the arcade. The frame rate is quite a bit smoother than it was back then. This is both good and bad. It’s good since now the games play quite a bit smoother, but it also makes them considerably faster than they were in the arcades. STUN Runner was always a quick game, but now things go by so fast that it’s hard to keep your craft on track. This doesn’t make either of the games any less fun to play, it just makes them a bit different than they used to be.

Like the previous Arcade Treasures collections, both local and online scoring is available on the Xbox version. If you want to see how you hold up in Super OffRoad compared to the rest of the world, now is your opportunity to do just that. Some of the games included originally-supported Linked Cabinet play. Having this simulated over Xbox Live would’ve been great. Unfortunately, there’s no such option.

From a presentation standpoint, Midway Arcade Treasures 3 is quite plain. There just isn’t very much going on in terms of the UI. There’s also a significant lack of good bonus content. All of the games have some basic information about them, and some have a gallery of a handful of sell sheets, but that’s it. This makes the collection feel as if it were rushed to completion.

As far as how the games look, they run the gamut from the 2D top-down artwork of Badlands and Super Offroad, to the flat polygons of Race Drivin’ and STUN Runner, to the more modern textured polygons of the Rush and Thunder games. It’s quite neat to go through these games and see all in one shot how arcade-style racing games have evolved over the years.

The audio follows pretty much the same evolutionary pattern as the graphics do. The earlier games feature mostly FM Synthesized audio with a smattering of digitized samples. The newer games use a more modern sound processor, which gives out more dynamic sound and better sounding music. None of the games sound anywhere near as good as the games we’re playing today, though, which is a testament to how far technology has come. The newest games on this collection, San Francisco Rush 2049 and Hydro Thunder, are only six years old and already sound dated.

If you’re a long time fan of racing games, then you’ll no doubt remember most of these games, and might want to pick this one up. Midway Arcade Treasures 3 offers up a decent amount of value for the twenty dollar sticker price, but not enough to make it very easily recommendable to everyone. If this collection had more games and a much better presentation to go along with it, it would have been much more attractive and easily-recommended.

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