The 12 Video Games of Christmas: Midway Arcade Origins

Today in our The 12 Video Games of Christmas feature, we have Midway Arcade Origins for PS3, developed by Backbone Entertainment and released by Warner Bros. Interactive.

Warner Bros. picked up the assets of Midway when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009.  Their presentation here of 30 classic Midway arcade games is certainly a no-frills affair, where you merely  quickly cycle through the cabinets to choose your game, while the murmur of a busy arcade plays in the background.  A nice option though is being able to tag games as favourites, so you can use that option to quickly find the cabinets you prefer to play on.  You also get access to operators switch options, letting you do things like change difficulty or add more lives.  Unfortunately, there are no bonuses or history offered.

There could also be some more options given for configuring controls in the games, although most of them feel pretty good on the PS3 gamepad.  It's also great to see these classics up on the big screen, bezel art and all.  A high score leaderboard system helps you keep tabs on your friends' activities in the arcade.

I wouldn't exactly call this collection the "origin" of Midway's storied past in the video game world, but it certainly is a cornucopia of gaming goodness from the company.

The 12 Video Games of Christmas: Midway Arcade for iOS

Virtual N.A.R.C.

Today we start our 12 Video Games of Christmas feature, where we spotlight a game a day that would jingle a retrogamer's bells this holiday season.

In the stocking today is the Midway Arcade app for iOS devices.  It is a universal app that works for both iPhone and iPad.  It is a collection of 10 classic titles from Midway, one of the first manufacturers of arcade video games and producer of such classics as Gunfight, Sea Wolf, a little number imported from Japan called Space Invaders, among many, many others. This app features some of the later games of Midway.

The in-game Menu has you moving through a virtual re-creation of a classic arcade, faithfully replicating the noisy din of a typical video game hangout.  As you shift from one rendered classic cabinet to the next, you can choose to step up to one of the 10 games included for the initial $1.99 purchase:

• Defender
• Spy Hunter
• Rampage
• Root Beer Tapper
• Arch Rivals
• Joust
• Four skill games: Basketball, Pool, Air Hockey and Roll Ball (Skee-ball)

Available for in-app purchase are two game packs, for $0.99 each:

Fantasy Game Pack

• Gauntlet
• Gauntlet II
• Wizard of Wor

Action Game Pack

• NARC
• Total Carnage
• APB

Start flapping

It gets to be a bit of a broken record with reviews of classic game emulation on mobile devices, but a real problem here are the controls. There aren't many options for adjusting the nature of the virtual joystick, and the tilt-controls are a bit wonky too.  Driving games like APB and Spy Hunter are a lost cause.  A mitigating factor here is that Midway Arcade supports the iCade, a mini-arcade cabinet with a joystick and button array,  which you just might see under the tree later in this series.  Since the iCade lacks a steering wheel, it doesn't help much to control the vehicle games.

Midway made some great games for the arcades, and Midway Arcade brings that shifty, smokey coin-op jive right onto your iOS device.

Available on iTunes

Visual Cortex: Explosive Invaders

Where we pull a visual bauble out of the treasure chest of images at TDE and examine it with a loupe.

Today in the cortex, a flyer for Space Invaders, which helped solidify video games as popular entertainment.  Invaders' biggest contribution to the North American video game industry was probably how it brought coin-op games out of bars and bowling alleys, and into restaurants, coffee shops, hotel lobbies and other mainstream venues.  Such did video arcade games move from a smokey niche market and into popular consciousness.  

But that's nothing compared to how Space Invaders affected Japan when original manufacturer Taito released it there.  The game was so popular, with so much change being dropped into the machine to play, that the Bank of Japan had to triple 100-yen coin production to keep it in circulation.

This flyer sent by North American licensee Midway to distributers is mighty explosive.  A fitting graphic for a game that set the world on fire.  For more information on Space Invaders, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.