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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 11/01/1999
- Updated on: 04/28/2000
- Released on: 09/30/1999
- Originally published on GameSpot: Arcade Party Pak Review
Midway is back with yet another collection of old arcade games. This collection provides classics from the mid-'80s to 1990. On paper, this collection looks unstoppable, but some little control problems and other emulation inaccuracies keep it from reaching its full potential.
The game's menu interface is simple - you can select a game, watch several video interviews with its developer, and configure most of the game's original dip-switch settings. The video interviews are nice and informative, and they provide quite a lot of insight into how arcade games were made back in those days. However, the individual developers aren't identified in the video, so there's no real way to match the names with the faces.
Toobin' is a two-player game that puts you and a friend in the roles of Bif and Jet, two guys who ride inner tubes and throw soda cans at anything in their way. Your mission is to simply move downstream, avoiding obstacles and collecting treasure chests. You controlled the original arcade game with five buttons. Four were devoted to movement in a very tank-tread type of way, enabling you to make very tight turns, and the fifth was for throwing cans. The default control on the PlayStation lets you play with the D-pad, but it really doesn't do the game justice. Thankfully, you can use the top L and R buttons to more accurately reflect the arcade's movement controls. Lastly, while the gameplay has remained intact, the sound, specifically the music, is pretty bad.
Rampage is another good game gone horribly wrong - and I'm not talking about the annoying sequels that have been released in recent years. The old monster-smashing-buildings game plays like it's skipping two out of every three frames of animation, resulting in an extremely choppy game. Plus, the low screen resolution makes everything look really blurry."It is the nineties and there is time for... Klax!" This is quite possibly the silliest game slogan to ever come out of an American developer. This puzzle game, based on catching tiles as they come off a conveyor belt and dropping them into a pit, was released as the Tetris craze was really starting to heat up. Klax is a good enough puzzle game, but it probably won't hold your attention in this age of Puyo Puyo and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.
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Arcade Party Pak:
