Lack of control, excessive copy protection, and clunky interface make this a stinker.
What is particularly aggravating is that there is every indication that the Starforce disk check is performed whenever the game menu is loaded, then the disk check is performed again when a game from the collection is started. If you happen to want to play a game from the first collection, then another from the second - this means four slow copy protection checks! I'm not sure whey they were led to believe that these games were so wonderful that this excessive protection was necessary, especially since Starforce can be circumvented anyway. This only serves to, you guessed it, punish those who actually paid for the game like me. Congratulations Midway!
My smallest complaint is that I found the interface to be strange, in that the conventional use of the ESCape key to exit menus or back out of setting screens was ignored in favor of the Backspace key. Here's a hint, developers, if you want to expand on convention that's great, but please don't ignore it. Why not make both Backspace and ESC keys perform the same function?
That aside, let's start a game. I was primarily interested in this box-o-games for the collection of classic driving games such as Hard Drivin' and the Rush series. I was extremely dismayed to find that Force Feedback is not supported in any of the games. This is especially aggravating since the arcade versions of all these driving games all _did_ have force feedback. As if this wasn't enough, analog control is not supported for any of the games in this collection. That means of course that steering wheels, joysticks, and gamepad analog sticks can be left on the shelf.
Midway says: "Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe does not have any support for third party controllers."
Unfortunately, these games were simply not designed for digital control, so when you press a key to steer or floor the gas in Race Drivin', the immediate result is skidding and loss of control. The whole point with the arcade versions of these games is that you had to ease onto the throttle and drive with finesse, while stamping on the gas off the line or torquing the wheel all the way to one side would spell disaster.
So, without force feedback or analog control, a lot of these games are completely ruined. At least: Hard Drivin', Hydro Thunder, Off Road Thunder, Race Drivin', S.T.U.N. Runner, San Francisco Rush 2049, San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition, Spy Hunter II, Super Off Road with bonus Track-Pak! can be crossed off the list.
This leaves a number of 2D arcade ports, most notably the Mortal Kombat series, which seem playable, but the fact that Midway doesn't support the use of controllers makes me suspect that you'll be stuck trying to play Mortal Kombat with the keyboard while your gamepad gathers a little more dust. I'm guessing those killer combinations are going to be a little hard to pull off without a stick and a mess of buttons. Another hint for developers, PC gamers do use controllers, including the steering wheel, mouse, joystick, flight throttle, yoke, stick shift, rudder pedals, and even a gamepad. If you are going to port a game that supports keyboard only, I might suggest you stick to Zork.
Among the other games offered, there isn't much to get excited about, since most if not all of these had been ported to any number of consoles and computers over the years, dating back to the Atari 2600 (yep, Wizard of Wor).
I think the real opportunity here was to offer some games that have never before been available at home, and to do so in a manner which was faithful to their arcade counterparts. Computers and game consoles are certainly up to the task of reproducing all of these games, even with a layer of emulation to contend with. Still, I'm sad to say that this was an opportunity missed by Midway, since making an arcade game that looks and sounds like the original is just not enough. It has to play like it too, without a controller, that isn't going to happen.