GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
OK
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 12/15/2005
- Released on: 12/13/2005
- Originally published on GameSpot: Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play (PSP) Review
Midway has been releasing packages with its classic games for some time now, and now the company's arcade lineup has been released on the PSP, in the form of Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play. Looking at the back of the box, this looks like an amazing collection. The list of games includes some truly legendary stuff, and the promise of ad-hoc wireless play sweetens the deal. Unfortunately, many of the games in the collection are messed up in one way or another, making this an extremely disappointing package.
This package is extremely bare-bones. You're dropped into a plain-looking menu that lists every game and lets you tweak a few very basic settings. Loading up a game brings you to that game's title screen and lets you fire it up. The list of games includes a lot of genuine classics, like Spy Hunter, Sinistar, Defender, Wizard of Wor, Joust, Klax, Cyberball 2072, and the first three Mortal Kombat games. If you're a fan of other, similar packages from Midway, you'll probably notice that Robotron: 2084 is missing from the list, which is unfortunate. Also, Mortal Kombat 3 is included instead of the superior-in-every-way upgrade, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. That just seems like a stupid choice.
While some of the games play just fine, there are a lot of problems with many of the games in the package. Much of the audio sounds wrong, like it's playing back at the wrong pitch. Joust is stretched out to fit the PSP's widescreen aspect ratio and looks like crap as a result. Yet Sinistar, a vertically-oriented game, runs in a very small section of the screen. Other similar collections have allowed players to play the games in a rotated mode that makes the vertical monitor games much larger without sacrificing their original aspect ratio. Without that here, Sinistar is too tiny to see.
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