Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1

Developer: Digital Eclipse Publisher: Midway

Released: November 14, 2000 4/10 Rated: E

Though not as iconic as the evergreen moneymakers Namco was able to bring out with their own N64 package, Midway taps into their own extensive history to deliver a compilation of six classics for the 2000 holiday. While such compilations were becoming ever more popular on disc-based systems, being cheap to produce and easy to market, the cartridge format had likely cut too heavily into the profit margins to see releases of similar collections from the likes of Atari, Konami, and Activision. Even Midway themselves were fairly prolific at this point in releasing compilations of six to eight games or so on the PlayStation, but the release of the Dreamcast evidently renewed their interest enough to whip up some new packaging and call in the old reliable crew at Digital Eclipse to put together a new package, while trying out an N64 release as well.

Mario kicking the glass for a successful round of service always seems like the dumbest possible move at that point.

It would be unfair to look too harshly on Midway Arcade Hits for things like a bare-bones presentation, low quantity of included titles, or relative age and simplicity of games on offer. Looking over at Namco Museum, which is a similarly simplistic collection held up by a few bigger and more marketable titles, the division between the two should practically come down to personal preference. And yet, it would probably be fair to say that Defender, Robotron 2084, Root Beer Tapper, Sinistar, Spy Hunter, and Joust just don’t pass muster like Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Galaga. Even a few rounds worth of insider-heavy trivia aren’t going to be enough to give Midway the edge with most patrons, and that’s before accounting for the fact that this package only contains one more title than Midway was able to fit on a SNES cartridge years prior.

Again, though, let’s maintain, for the sake of argument, that this was an acceptable number of games at the time. It unfortunately still doesn’t make this the best way to play a lot of these games. Digital Eclipse were already well-versed and plenty trustworthy in their abilities to port titles like the ones featured here without any fault in performance or overall emulation, there are a few ways in which Midway’s Greatest proves less-than-optimal to experience some of these games. It’s actually kind of funny to think that just playing several of these games on a standard controller takes away some of the magic. Even if they are some of Midway’s biggest titles, Root Beer Tapper, Spy Hunter, and even Sinistar, to an extent, losing the gimmicks of their original cabinets is a surprisingly prevalent hurdle for this particular collection.

I do not understand Spy Hunter. I have never understood Spy Hunter. I am a fool.

Including options for starting lives, difficulty, and other options you’d find inside the original cabinets is always a nice inclusion, but the inability to play all but one of these games by using the control stick can be quite frustrating. While only Sinistar ever used analog control in the first place, the option to just move the stick instead of thumbing the D-Pad for a frantic game like Defender would have been welcomed. This proves doubly so for the twitch shooting of Robotron 2084, where its symmetrical eight-way controls are replicated by the D-Pad cross and four C buttons. Even if the brilliant two-controller scheme of its remake (another control gimmick unreplicated), Robotron 64, wasn’t going to be included, it still has the potential to feel roughly 50% better here.

The trivia game is a nice idea but a bit odd in execution. They’re mostly obscure (especially for the time) behind the scenes facts that you’re only going to know through process of elimination by playing the trivia game and remembering the next time.

“No frills” is really the name of the game here, and while that’s not inherently a bad thing, I just find it a lot harder to believe that Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits Volume I offered a lot of excitement even back in 2000. I’m invariably drawn back to comparisons to the only truly similar game on the N64, Namco Museum, and while it was the PlayStation showing off what a collection of classics could be. I think the menu music with the various sound effects mixed in is a banger, but it plays over a menu set up in a hideously and depressingly empty room that knows none of the joy of a real arcade. It commits no real sins because by its very nature, it has no real chance to. But whether it’s while looking at the label, floating around the menu, or after you’ve spent a credit or two on each game and the trivia machine, anybody who tries this package is bound to say the same — “that’s it?”

Continuing Legacy

Along with porting all sorts of releases to GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance in the forthcoming years, the team at Digital Eclipse would prove an all-star, go-to squad for all manner of arcade and other retro ports for years to come. Known as Backbone Entertainment from 2003-2015, they have helped in accurately porting and compiling titles for collections like Atari 50, Mega Man Legacy Collection, and, to tie things back to the subject at hand, the Midway Arcade Treasures trilogy. Each of the six titles from this collection would be included in the first Arcade Treasures volume, along with 18 other titles, all from the ‘80s.

Additional Information

Saves: Controller Pak

Compatible With: None

Players: 1-2

Print Guides: None

Aggregate Critical Reception (GameRankings): 63.43% based on 7 reviews

Other Releases: N/A (North American exclusive on N64)