Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari Coll. 2
PlayStation Review from the Net
It is one thing to review an arcade game which has been ported to a home system, but its another thing when the game is emulated. You can't discuss "how close" the emulated game is to the arcade counterpart or what features are missing from the home version since it IS the exact same game. Therefore, if you enjoyed the coin-op games Millipede, Road Blaster, Crystal Castles, Gauntlet, Marble Madness and Paperboy, you'll also enjoy the AGH: Atari Collection 2. Any negatives? Very few, and very picky ones, but here they are. First, I didn't like the interface as much as I liked those for the first three AGH collections. You know—the rotating game cabinets (Atari 1) or the rotating game icons (Williams and Midway 2). Here the game names and icons scroll by horizontally under three tube/tunnels from Marble Madness and a marble enters the tube/tunnel when you pick the game. Second, there are no interviews with programmers (Atari 1 and Williams) or a quiz show with video of the programmers (Midway 2). There is only an archive of photos of cabinets, sell sheets, posters, etc. Although this does feature a few tidbits of information, I wish we could have listened to the original programmers themselves. Finally, as was the case with Atari Vol. 1, these games scream out for alternative controllers. In the arcade, Marble Madness, Crystal Castles and Millipede used trak-balls, Road Blaster used a steering wheel and Paperboy used bicycle handlebars. Only Gauntlet was made for a joystick and feels natural with the PlayStation controller. An analog joystick definitely helps with Marble Madness, Crystal Castles, and Paperboy, although you'll definitely have to adjust the sensitivity. Millipede is somewhat playable with the normal controller but Road Blaster is not. Still, 5 out of 6 games are definite winners. I'd forgotten how much fun Gauntlet could be with 4 players using the multi-tap. I've played so many ported versions of these games on the NES, Lynx, 2600 and old Atari computers that I had forgotten how much better the actual arcade games were with the original music, voice samples, etc. Kudos to Midway for another fine collection of arcade classics. It is especially nice to finally see some emulated games from the more recent mid to late 1980's. But where will they go from here? Have they run out of "classics"? Is the AGH series dead? May it never be! I'm hoping we will be graced with a Midway Volume 3—Xenophobe, Rampage, Kick(man), etc. Or an Atari Volume 3 and 4—Road Runner, Indiana Jones, S.T.U.N. Runner, Hard Drivin, Klax, Toobin', Rampart, Xybots, I Robot, Tetris, etc. I'd love to see these collections, but I'm sure it depends on how well AGH: Atari 2 does. So, if you are a retrogaming fan, go out and buy it today! -- MARK ANDROVICH Videogame Enthusiast & Collector 2600(288); Intellivision(32); Colecovision(9); Vectrex(1); 5200(8); 7800(49); NES(37); Atari 8-bit (36); Lynx(32); SNES(25); VirtualBoy(4); Jaguar(8); PlayStation(40); N64(5)
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