A must-have for PSP owners.
I’m not exactly a huge fan of arcade ports, most collections have one or two “must have” games and a load of “filler” games included on the disc. Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play is defiantly not one of those collections. Mortal Kombat aside, games like Rampage, Paper Boy, Spy Hunter and Gauntlet were some of my personal favorites as a kid. So lets get down to business.
Gameplay: This is difficult to gauge since the original titles had hit or miss gameplay to begin with due to the technology of the times. However the translation to the PSP seems to have kept control quality intact. There are times when things are difficult to control but I think that’s more due to the PSP’s button layout than the actual game design. The biggest problem I noticed was a tendency to accidentally put the PSP to sleep when playing Mortal Kombat. The face buttons are a little too close together for my thumb and I’d often use my palm to grip the PSP better and in doing so I’d bump the Power button, putting it to sleep. This was especially problematic when playing Multiplayer.
Speaking of multiplayer, Midway Arcade Treasures is awesome. Both myself and my roommate picked up copies, so while I haven’t tried out the single disc broadcast capability, playing multiplayer with 2 discs is fantastic. 16 of the 21 games are multiplayer ready, which is pretty outstanding. It’s very easy to host and search for games, however you have to do so from the main game menu, so if you are planning on playing a game multiplayer and accidentally launch the game you have to wait for everything to load, then exit the game and re-enter the multiplayer mode from the main menu.
Load times are the only major drawback to the gameplay of Arcade Treasures. You have to go through up to 3 load screens before you actually play a game. You have to load the main menu, load the game title and occasionally wait for another load screen once you launch a game. For such simple games on such a powerful piece of hardware it’s frustrating to have to wait so long to play.
Graphics: On whole the graphics display nearly perfectly. Bright, crisp colors and snappy frame-rates make Arcade Treasures appear to have completely updated graphics, however that’s not the case. I’ve noticed a few quirks with the Mortal Kombat series, character profile photos appearing after a fight starts, but beyond that the graphical qualities of the ports is outstanding.
Quality aside the size of the display differs slightly between some games. For example Sinistar displays on a small square in the center of the screen and the Mortal Kombat games almost fill the screen, but not quite. Frustrating, but an understandable loss considering the PSP’s screen.
Sound: The sound in Arcade Treasures is as clear, if not seemingly more so, as the original games. Some ports have sound problems from skipping to muffling but this title retains the same quality as the arcade versions.
I truly have to give props to Midway for putting together such a fine collection for the PSP. If you are interested in even a few of these games, it’s well worth the $30 for this collection. I found myself playing more of the games that I was unfamiliar with than my old favorites, which says a lot for the quality of these titles.
Don’t pass this one up.