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They use to have an NFL title. They probably dropped it because Madden is just that much better and the EA purchased every NFL related right they could. However Midway does make an NFL title.

http://www.midway.com/us/Game_BlitzTheLeagueII.html

My Mom loves Rainbow Islands, and all those classic arcade games of that ilk.

Of course Taito collection is already on the XBox so it was mom friendly when it came out. Does it still work under the emulation?

I only wish they would have provided a real Bug joystick, and let Bub and Bob jump using pushing up of the joystick, rather than pressing a button. You can't fire rainbows and jump so easily with two buttons on one hand :(

She loves the ORIGINAL Mario (or the Mario Allstars version. As long as it's the Super Mario Bros. or Lost Levels versions, or Mario 3. Anything else she won't play). Once XBox 360 gets those, it'll be on a win. ROTFLMAO. I guess Wii wins there.

Anyone thinking of porting Tapper to a next-gen console? :)

http://www.midway.com/classicGames/classicGamePlay er.php?game=tapper

I read this PR twice, convinced that I had read this wrong or that it was some kind of a hoax, thinking "can this mean what I think it means?".

This is bad. So very bad. If this is true (see above), this will essentially kill the football franchises of Sony/989 Studios, Sega, and Midway. It doesn't matter how good a game is -- without the license to use the official teams and players, you are toast.

The immediate effect of this will be price. When Sega slashed it's sports line to $20, EA followed suit by dropping it's sports titles to $30. Think that will happen when EA has no competition? Quality will be the next to go -- what will be EA's motivation to innovate? When SCEA first released NFL Gameday for the Playstation, EA cancelled it's Madden because of its inferrior quality. They came back the next year with a much-improved offering. Without compeition, what will stop EA from shoveling out complete garbage? There wasn't a lot of year-on-year innovation in the first place, but now I'll be surprised if they do little more update the team rosters.

Oh, and doesn't easpouse's husband work for EA Tiburon? I guess that situation isn't going to improve. "Where else are you going to work? Sega? Bwah hah hah hah!". Guess I better figure out how the BCS works... damn you EA!!!

Guantlet is a Midway title (something about the difference between Atari's Arcade and Atari's Console divisions being split up). If you'd like Guantlet purchase Midway Arcade Treasures

I haven't tried Doom 3 myself yet, but judging by your comments I think you would like a game like The Suffering a lot more. I've completed the game two times, and I can certainly say that it is *really scary*, but not in the traditional Resident Evil way. Monsters rarely jump right out of nowhere to give you the whole "suprise-chock" (IIRC this only happened once or twice in the game). If you like scary games, I'm convinced you'll like The Suffering a lot better.

Just my two cents.

They're not made anymore?

I think you're talking about Spy Hunter. We're talking about Spy Hunter .

Basically, the reason why Hollywood is looking at a Spy Hunter movie is because the 3D, modern Spy Hunter game is so much fun.

The original Spy Hunter was a favorite of mine, but would hardly inspire a movie. It was a top-down (third-person perspective) sprite-based scrolling shooter game, designed to be hard enough that it would pull in a respectable amount of coins in an arcade.

The 3D Spy Hunter game, available for the major game console systems, plays differently and I think it is huge fun. It's a "second-person" shooter: like a first-person game, but you can see yourself (i.e., the car) to make it easier to figure out if you are clearing obstacles. Once you learn the game, you usually don't die; you are racing the clock and trying to find secrets in the various levels more than trying to survive. You have lots of weapons, an unrealistic amount of them, and it's surprising how I never seem to get tired of locking missiles onto bad guys and lighting them up. The music is also excellent in this game, enough so that I want to get Ogg Vorbis files of the music so I can listen to it when I'm not playing the game.

The most recent Spy Hunter game, Spy Hunter 2, is different again. Your car is much more fragile now, and survival is a major problem. Your turbo boost doesn't recharge, you have to find and collect powerups to recharge it. And "boss" enemies are now a major part of the game. While I found the first one to be addictively playable, the second one frustrates me, and frustration isn't fun. Oh, and just in case you are a 12-year-old boy, there is now a female character with lots of polygons on her chest, moving in stiff, unrealistic ways as she walks and talks. Woo hoo! Who needs game play! And the music isn't nearly as interesting as in the first one.

If you haven't tried the Spy Hunter console game, I recommend you do so. It's a fun hybrid of a first-person shooter and a car racing game, retaining the best elements of each.

I'd be extremely happy if they ever release a "Spy Hunter 1.5" with the original game engine, just with new levels to play.

http://www.spyhunter.midway.com/futuretense_cs/fla sh/spyhunter/

steveha

Could some fine ex-Atari employee please release the ROMs for Marble Man (Marble Madness II), so it could be emulated for the PC? I don't see any reason to withhold the ROMs at this point in the game. I can't see anyone profiting, etc.

No? Granted, MMII isn't there (MM1 is) but publishers release stuff like this all the time. The ROMs are not public domain and the games are still commercially viable when packaged like this. Publishers occasionally even put out previously unreleased stuff on compilations (such as the Activision Classics compilation released a little while ago, and also soon for GBA).

Wrong.

Atari went out of business as a preemptive counterattack to an imminent slashdotting. After all, who would put a link to a bunch of pictures on the web unless it was meant to kill the target?

... still exists, albeit in new forms. Go to their website and find the "Play Classic Games" links (sorry about not posting a direct link, but I'm tired and they're doing lots of JS popups) and the info on their "Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits" pack for the GameBoy Advance. Sure, it's not the same as playing on a real arcade machine, but the games are at least still around.

I spent much of my first meager paychecks at Aladdin's Castle in Saginaw, MI, playing Crystal Castles and Gauntlet. There was some later version of Asteroids which i really liked, and wouldn't mind sharing my apartment with one of the full-sized arcade machines. And probably most favorite was Tempest, which I have for the PC. There's a knob for sale which I believe works with it. Best game ever with the sound cranked way up!

like this
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replace the [ and ]

ps - for Midway, you have to click here instead. No idea what the hell's going on with www.midwaygames.com dns resolution. It used to work.

I just got Spy Hunter and it's a blast.

20 years ago, Spy Hunter was a sprite-based top-down scrolling shooter. Your little car sprite would shoot the other little car sprites, or drop oil slicks in front of them. Sometimes you would drive a little boat sprite. You drove on an endless scrolling road (or sometimes river). (With Shockwave, you can play a version of the original Spy Hunter here.)

Now, on the PlayStation 2, Spy Hunter is a 3D game. The camera is just above and behind your car. There are 14 levels to play, with multiple objectives per level. It plays a lot like Hydro Thunder, but with weapons.

Drive into water, and the car morphs to a boat. Drive the boat up onto land it and morphs back to car. When the car takes too much damage, lots of parts explode off it and what's left morphs to an armored motorcycle! Even cooler, drive the motorcycle into the water and it morphs into an armored jet-ski! When you are driving the car/jetski, you don't have the full special abilities of the car, and you have reduced firepower, but you can play the level anyway; it's just tougher. Dock with the weapons van (or weapons boat) for a full repair of all damage and full ammo load.

If you like Hydro Thunder you should like this too. I haven't had it long, but I don't think I will get tired of it, just as I'm not tired of Hydro Thunder. The gameplay is somewhat repetitive: you drive around shooting bad guys, you try to find the ramps that let you make the jumps, etc. But the level design is fun, and I don't seem to get tired of locking guided missiles on enemies and blowing them away.

I have only two complaints about the game. 0) Most of the cinematic cutscenes are pretty boring (just a shot of your car making the getaway after finishing the level). 1) If you are a good player, it will probably take you 20 hours or less to finish all the levels. But as I said there is a lot of replay value even just playing the same levels over and over, plus it will take you many plays to find all the secrets and accomplish all the objectives. Once you have found all secrets and accomplished all objectives, that level unlocks for 2-player mode; in 2-player mode you both play, split-screen, at the same time. I haven't tried 2-player yet but it looks like a blast.

The music is great. The rocking "Spy Hunter" soundtrack the "Peter Gunn Theme" by Henry Mancini, but remixed and with variations. I like the soundtrack so much that if they sell a CD of just the music, I'll probably buy it.

GameSpot has a review. They like it but not quite as much as I like it.

Recommended.

steveha

(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)

Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.

Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.

Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).

Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.

Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.

Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?

While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.

So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.

MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.

I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.

Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.

-- Kevin

(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)

Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.

Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.

Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).

Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.

Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.

Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?

While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.

So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.

MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.

I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.

Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.

-- Kevin