Midway Arcade Treasures 3 Updated Hands-On

It's been a few months since we last saw Midway's latest classic arcade compilation in action, and we're able to report that it seems to be developing quite well. We focused on some of the game's older entries this time around--specifically, the early polygonal games, Race Drivin' and STUN Runner.

Games from this era and class of hardware, as a rule, seem to require quite a bit of computing power to emulate efficiently. Midway's cutting a few corners on the emulation side of things by actually porting some of the games, rather than emulating the original hardware exactly. We're not sure which category Race Drivin' and STUN Runner fall into, but they both appear to be running well. A little too well, actually.

Both games had fairly sluggish frame rates in their original incarnations. That was pretty much the order of the day back when polygonal arcade games first started hitting the scene. But here, in the Xbox version of Midway Arcade Treasures 3, the games were almost running too quickly. The frame rate was usually much smoother than the arcade originals they're attempting to ape. Also, the control in both games was on point, making things like analog steering and acceleration work as well as you'd expect from a driving game on the Xbox.

The rest of the collection also seems to be developing well. Anyone with a soft spot for Midway's many arcade racing games should keep an eye peeled for this when it hits this September for Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube. The games in this collection will also be released in a larger pack of classic games on the PC.