Retro Gaming Australia

Warner Bros. has decided to make the most of their acqusition of Midway’s back catalogue by throwing 31 of Midway’s arcade classics into a new package called Midway Arcade Origins for release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 later this year.

The games are: 720°, A.P.B., Arch Rivals, Bubbles, Championship Sprint, Cyberball 2072, 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, Vindicators Part II, Wizard of Wor, Xenophobe, and Xybots.

Sound familiar? Almost all of these games can be found on the three Midway Arcade Treasures packages released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC. Backbone is still listed as the developer of the new collection, so don’t go in expecting new and improved emulation.

The sheer number of Mortal Kombat II ads we have in our archive is testament to just how heavily advertised the game was. It was one of the major battlegrounds of the 16-bit era: the newly formed ESRB allowed Nintendo to soften their stance towards violence, leading to a Super Nintendo version that was on par with its Mega Drive equivalent in the gore stakes. We put this one up just for that absurd EGM quote.

After the surprise success of Rampage: World Tour, Midway continued the series with Rampage 2: Universal Tour, but didn’t really take the time to fix the problems – namely the lack of variety – that affected the first game. Unlike World Tour, this one wasn’t released in the arcades, though a prototype exists.

Basketball was at the height of its popularity in the mid 1990s – and NBA Jam struck at just the right time to ride the wave of the sport’s success. The home versions were some of Acclaim’s most successful releases in the company’s history.

2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge is to hockey as NBA Jam is to basketball – over the top arcade style gameplay with ridiculous moves and high scoring matches. Despite what the ad says, the game did eventually leave the arcades with a PlayStation port.

2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge is the result of a mixture of the lightning fast action of ice hockey mixed with the arcade-like absurdity of NBA Jam – which shouldn’t come as a surprise since it was developed by the same team. Due to the lack of fanfare for the ice variety of hockey in this part of the world, the game is largely unknown, but it is worth hunting down for an afternoon of fun.

As one of the most influential games of all time, Doom continues to be ported to just about every platform released – either officially or unofficially. This has been going on for many years; even though Doom was a couple of years old by the time the PlayStation was released, the game was still popular enough for Midway and GT Interactive to team up to bring it to Sony’s console and sell more than a million units.

Mortal Kombat 3 is probably the most divisive game in the series. Some believe it is the point where everything started to fall apart – too many characters, many of which have ridiculous or stupid designs, and that the story ceased to make sense. Others enjoy the increased speed, variety of new characters and dystopian setting. No matter which camp you come from, I think we can all agree that it was pretty stupid to leave Scorpion out.

Mortal Kombat celebrates its 20th anniversary this August, and in preparation for the event, Gamespot recorded a series of interviews with the game’s developers – Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel and Dan Forden – and three of the original cast – Daniel Pesina, Carlos Pesina and Ho Sung Pak.

The video discusses the origins of the game (including the well publicised Jean-Claude Van Damme connection), the challenges they faced in capturing the fighters on video and the game’s first location test.

Mace: The Dark Age was part of a rush of 3D fighting games released by Midway in the mid to late 90s. Although its visuals were impressive at the time, the gameplay was subpar – but when you’ve just bought a Nintendo 64 and need new and exciting things to play, that’s not really enough to stop you.