| paleface [sys=PS3; cat=Action_Variety; reg=UC] |
| | | Disc-only 2012 compilation that I didn't know about. 31 games, a lot repeated from the three Midway Arcade Treasures releases on PS2 (24, 20, and 8 games, respectively). The ones with asterisks in front AREN'T in the PS2 collections:
720°
APB
Arch Rivals
Bubbles
Championship Sprint
Defender
Defender II
Gauntlet
Gauntlet II
Joust
Joust 2
Marble Madness
Pit-Fighter
Rampage
Rampart
Robotron: 2084
Root Beer Tapper
Satan's Hollow
Sinistar
Smash TV
Spy Hunter
Spy Hunter II
Super Off Road
Super Sprint
Toobin'
Total Carnage
*Tournament Cyberball 2072
*Vindicators Part II
Wizard of Wor
Xenophobe
Xybots
And of the PS2 collections, the ones that AREN'T in the PS3 collection--asterisks denote different versions than the one on PS3:
Midway Arcade Treasures 1
Blaster (1983)
Klax (1989)
Paperboy (1984)
RoadBlasters (1987)
Splat! (1982)
Vindicators (1988)
Midway Arcade Treasures 2
*Cyberball 2072 (1988)
Hard Drivin' (1989)
Kozmik Krooz'r (1982)
Mortal Kombat II (1993)
Mortal Kombat 3 (1995)
NARC (1988)
Primal Rage (1994)
Rampage World Tour (1997)
Timber (1984)
Wacko (1983)
Midway Arcade Treasures 3
Badlands (1989)
Offroad Thunder (1999)
Race Drivin' (1990)
San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition (1997)
S.T.U.N. Runner (1989)
*Super Off Road (including its upgrade/add-on pack, Super Off Road Track Pack) [1989]
Hydro Thunder (1999)
San Francisco Rush 2049 (1999) |
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| | | | Managunz File Manager ripping reports 48 files, 440.34 MB. Oh hey 256 MB of that is a PS3UPDAT.PUP, I guess I don't need that do I. (Come to think of it all these disc rips have had that PS3_UPDATE folder, dang I can ditch those.) |
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The first 9 of the 31 games in Midway Arcade Origins on PS3, played in RPCS3. Nice sharp 1080p graphics. Not crazy about most of this first chunk of games, except I do get caught up in another Arch Rivals mini-marathon. ; D I broke the backboard! And still gradually lost hahah aaaaaah. And I kinda like the Defender games but hate the screen flash from bombs and dying, so I can't really play those, gargh.
I like how the game selection menu shows the arcade cabs and you can see their actual controls. I don't like how you have to set the screen zoom separately for each of the 31 games! (I've gone through them all now and set them so I won't keep forgetting to do it for each new game I come to. : P) And why can't you remap the single button--gas--in Championship Sprint? : PP
All of the games here appeared in some form or other in the three-game "Midway Arcade Treasures" series on PS2: PS2 had the add-on pack version of Super Off Road, the non-Tournament version of Cyberball 2072, and the prequel of Vindicators Part II. And there were 22 other games the PS2 collections had that don't appear here. BUT the games on the PS2 weren't nearly as crisp as these 1080p renditions. Nice arcade cab sidebar art, too.
Never got my head around 720°. The bees always get me! (The C64 skateboarding game I had back in the day was Skate or Die! (EA's "first internally developed game," says Wikipedia, w/ ex-Atari developers; also, ported to NES by Konami)--but the 720° announcer keeps saying "skate or die!" so I got confused and thought no, that can't be it. = P)
Can't handle the APB controls with a pad. : P Love the character art.
Arch Rivals I will apparently still get hooked into and slowly lose as the AI starts defending better and then punching back. I don't mind being on defense so much in this game because I can clumsily punch--but I hate it when they punch me!! Argh! ; D
Oh huh Arch Rivals runs at 30fps, not 60.
(Hm well NBA Jam--I took a look at the Genesis TE version--has much sharper controls than Arch Rivals which helps with my butterfingers but I still ultimately hit the problem of hating being on defense. ; D And just gradually losing. ; DDD)
Bubbles I just don't like. The control is so swimmy it feels like a trackball game but no, the cab pictured in the menu has a joystick!
Never got into Championship Sprint and the other tiny overhead racers, even with the steering wheels in the arcade. And why no gas button remap? ; P Although I suppose if I was really gonna try to play this I'd run RPCS3 through Steam and use Steam Input to make Gas a toggle switch.
Defender and Defender II are such classics, fast with great sound, but darn them screen flashes, I just can't stick those out.
Gauntlet and Gauntlet II I used to play with friends once in a while in the arcade. Solo: super-boring, I'm just a ghost sponge. ; P |
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Joust & Joust 2
I was worrying about maybe these games not being as responsive as playing Joust in the Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 1 collection for Dreamcast in Flycast, with its crazy lower-than-actual-hardware input delay, and I also had some paranoia that the framerate got slightly wobbly now and then--but in the end I managed to edge out (89700) the Joust score I got in the DC version the other day, so this one can't be too bad. ^ _^
Joust 2 is pretty wild! Original Joust design John Newcomer is again the designer, but now they throw in all kinds'a crazy sci-fi and fantasy stuff swizzled together, it really feels like an adventure through strange lands, very different than the pure simple arcade action emphasis of the first game. Still, kinda neat! And there's something to be said for getting above a bunch of enemies, transforming into the comparatively huge pegasus & rider, and body-slamming everyone. Oh, and the huge thunderclap when you vanquish an enemy is pretty great. ^ _^
Wikipedia says Newcomer ended up dissatisfied with the vertically oriented playfield, dictated by Williams management, who wanted a game that could be sold as a kit for arcade cabinets with vertically oriented screens, which "had become popular at the time." |
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Marble Madness, Pit Fighter, Rampage, Rampart, and Robotron.
Ah you can pick which set of controls to use--with L/R on the dpad--on the "USER" screen that appears after you select Free Play on one of the cabs. Not sure if this really matters for most of them, but it probably will for Xenophobe, where each of the three joysticks accesses three unique characters, for a total of 9 (to see them all in the PS2 version I had to enable multitap emulation in PCSX2 ^ ^_).
Marble Madness has great music! Pretty darn tough though--maybe tougher w/o the arcade control big trackball--and no continue = ahh.
Had way more fun junking through Pit Fighter than I thought I would. Such a silly game. The CPU wake-up meaties you mercilessly! But the boss could barely touch Kato's kicks!
Rampage isn't the same without the rivalry with other players for knocking down buildings, grabbing the food (and the woman in red is worth big points as long as you hold her!), and bashing things back and forth...but still I ended up just playing and playing; wrecking the little cities is just kind of addictive, even though somewhat monotonous!
Never got into Rampart, still not here. Multiplayer would probably help I suppose...but it was always a bit too abstract for me I think.
Played more Robotron: 2084 than I thought I'd be able to--the flashing stuff isn't SO bad, maybe; at least for limited stretches. And what a gosh darned game: the colors, the sound, the visual FX, the crazy enemies, the last family, and the whole melee mix of it. "Wiz Kids" creators Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar also did Defender. (Oh gosh Jarvis also did one of my favorite pinball tables, Firepower. And demented viddy vidgames NARC, Smash TV, and Total Carnage. : P) |
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Root Beer Tapper, Satan's Hollow, Sinistar, Smash TV, Spy Hunter, Spy Hunter II, Super Off Road, Super Sprint
Root Beer Tapper is eh well it gets hard and then it just sort of feels overwhelming. The character art and animation is fun; less keen on the blocky and garish stages--funny how so many of these games had high res sprites on really low-res backgrounds.
Satan's Hollow does kinda resemble the earlier "Sasuke vs Commander" by SNK; here's a clip of me playing that game: https://youtu.be/dVEsyEK3tOA?t=1666 . The graphics are wild. What with building bridges over lava to a bonus side stage while dodging bombs from circling cyclopean pterodactyl demons and managing a recharging shield, there's almost too much going on. But it's pretty compelling and the one game of this bunch that I think I might want to go back to.
Still don't get Sinistar.
Smash T.V. is kinda gross compared to Eugene Jarvis' earlier dual-stick shooter, Robotron; and it feels like it overwhelms you with just more things than you can shoot, whereas at least as far as I got in Robotron, it felt like there was more ability to dodge things--just that they were real fast. ; )
Spy Hunter actually is somewhat playable on a pad; I'd forgotten that even in the arcade I stayed mostly in Low gear, leaving High gear as a sort of turbo boost for getting into the power-up truck. Still, it doesn't feel real easy to handle juggling that and the gas pedal--and you can't remap either of those--and the four or whatever various fire buttons, not to mention steering, all on a pad. The music is still awesome of course, and the high-res cars look cool.
I'd forgotten all about Spy Hunter II, including how much I always hated it. ; P I was a big fan of Spy Hunter back in the day (C64 had a pretty good version) and this supposed sequel was a huge disappointment.
Spy Hunter (NOT the sequel) was designed by George Gomez! He also did Satan's Hollow, and Tron and Discs of Tron--and loads of pinball games, including one of my very favorites, Monster Bash.
Sorta embarrassed I picked "SWIMSUITS" instead of "SHIRTS AND SHORTS" for the "CLOTHING" option in Super Off Road, given that the only ones in swimsuits turned out to be women standing around congratulating the male drivers. : P Anyway, liked this more than I thought I would; although it's more tiny overhead racing, it's got a good solid driving feel, unlike the "Sprint" games. Lovely shaded graphics, too. But it was less fun once the nitro ran out and I just felt like I was somehow behind the powerup curve. |
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Toobin'
"BIF and JET
They Think They're Cool!!"
You can play with the arcade-style four separate buttons for left/right forward/backward paddling, but that didn't feel great to me on a pad--in the arcade you can use both hands to slap at the things, you know; fortunately, they also made it so you can just move around with the d-pad, and that works great! Well done, there. I mean sure the buttons were a noteworthy gimmick but it's probably just way easier and less frustrating with the d-pad. Not that I can remember all that clearly, but I did play this now and then in the arcade as a kid. Don't think I ever got very far back then!
I didn't think I'd play through it but I guess I was just having too much fun! Herding the tube through the bonus gates is kind of addictive, and it's fun to see all the silly things threatening to pop your tube--although the worst are just the branches sticking up out of the water, especially when there's way more of them in the 2nd loop.
Darn branches! Took me a while to get it through my melon that I could swat away most threats by beaning them with cans, so I took a lot of actually cannable deaths in the first loop particularly, dargh. Funny how the cola cans in the Black Forest stage are black instead of red. ^ _^ Them dragons are hazardous!
Fun game! Did I ruin it for myself by crediting through? Could I play it for score? I mean it does give you a total score at the end anyway, I suppose you could still do it that way; probably dying less would net you a larger score or something by the end? |
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Last chunk: Total Carnage, Tournament Cyberball 2072, Vindicators: Part II, Wizard of Wor, Xenophobe, Xybots
I didn't really like any of these games so this is kind of a downer episode. ; D
Total Carnage is another twin-stick shooter by Robotron co-creator Eugene Jarvis but it's even grosser than it's predecessor Smash T.V., bleh. So '90s.
Tournament Cyberball 2072: regular Cyberball is in the PS2 collections and is a halfway decent football game thing although I don't like the exploding ball; but it's really the butterfingered passing that I fail at too hard. Didn't even try the "Tournament" mode whatever that might be in this 4-player cab, but single-player you're stuck playing in less than half the screen which is not ideal.
Vindicators: Part II - Kind of an okay futuristic tank blowing up things thing I suppose; the upgrade purchasing shtick (see also Xybots) is tiresome and I just ended up getting hit a lot and being impatient, so I dunno.
Wizard of Wor: I find the graphics and movement hard to handle, not really into it.
Xenophobe especially was a bit depressing because I've always sucked at it and never really got the controls/gameplay, ever since playing it as a kid in the arcade, but this was a proper high res (after setting the screen back to the slightly bordered view, 'cause Zoom was grossly chunked) version and I thought here's my chance to get into this--but while there's a bit of a process you can do in reading the "Code" from a note on the floor and then breaking a window and entering the code to blow up the base and get a 100 pt bonus per alien you'd killed, the real way to go (300 pt bonus per alien) is to clear the base, which simply involves crouching along zapping aliens monotonously with the long-range pistol through looping generic space stations forever.
That YouTube comment with Xenophobe play tips is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9uBXrNKm0Y&lc=UgghJKqj98vP3XgCoAEC (crouch, ~infinite grenade exploit, exploit health machine on Beta level of Starbase, laser gun best weapon).
Xybots: Sort of fun long-range duels but close-range sucks and really makes navigating the pseudo-3D maze feel like heck, especially without the arcade's twisty joystick. Also, it's just really friggin' hard.
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So of the 31 games in this collection, I like Joust, Joust 2, Robotron, Satan's Hollow, and Toobin', and kinda get hopelessly addicted to Arch Rivals and Rampage. ; )
And this may be the last versions of these games that we get because WB Games bought them but only seem interested in pumping out Mortal Kombats.
Next I'm gonna go through the three PS2 collections and cover the games in those that aren't in this one! |
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