PlayStation 2

Midway Arcade Treasures 3

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 is a very well spent $20. If you have any interest in these retro games, I suggest you pick it up, as it's the best retro collection so far in my book. With really only one stinker and one "iffy" title (that for some reason, a lot of people rave about), you really can't go wrong. A definite buy.

When Midway announced the third installment of their Midway Arcade Treasures series, many were surprised to see the series would be shifting gears so drastically. Not only would this compilation focus on one specific genre, but it would only have 8 games. This is quite a change of pace from the 20+ titles previous Midway Arcade Treasures collections have featured. However, this is offset by the fact that all but two of these games are from the era of 3D, with a few even being as recent as the Dreamcast era. Unfortunately, I have to question just how “classic” most of these classics are.

An occasional bug and the clunky menu system are each real issues with this collection, but the games are a blast worth remembering. Old racing is the new hotness.

Hey, I understand a title like this has limited appeal. But if there was ever a definitive collection of arcade racers, this is it. Come for the Rush and Hydro Thunder, stay for the other great games you can play when you need a break from those.

It's like clockwork: another year, another Midway collection. This time, though, the company's working a theme into its value pack: for the third addition of Midway Arcade Treasures, Midway is reintroducing eight racing games from the company's intellectual property collection. On the surface, it may seem like a let down that this third edition of the compilation series cuts the usual dozen-plus quantity down to a mere eight. But in reality, many of the eight games within this pack can stand on their own, even in this generation of console gaming. Rush 2049, San Francisco Rush: The Rock and Hydro Thunder are the highpoints to Midway's most worthwhile compilation, and it's these games that make Midway Arcade Treasures 3 the one classic collection you just can't skip.

Unlike earlier compilations, Arcade Treasures 3 is skimpy on the "extras", which mainly consist of background information and some marketing material. Pretty lame, but this is still a worthy purchase for those who appreciate old-school racing action.

So there you have it. Another collection of arcade games from the Midway/Atari vault. And so the question is, how many of these games will you actually play? Of all three Midway Arcade Treasures games, this is the one that probably has the most amount of games you won't want to play for any length of time. It's not like Gauntlet or Joust 2 where the gameplay is timeless. Some of these racing games because of their lack of polygon pushing ability are never going to be played. It's not the game's fault, but it simply is what it is. But there are 4 games on here which I think more than pay for the price of the compilation; Hydro Thunder, Offroad Thunder, Rush 2049, and Super Off-Road. It's worth the rental to see if you agree with me. And now, here are some quick game videos to give you a look at Rush the Rock, Hydro Thunder, and S.T.U.N. Runner.

This is the third installment of Midway's classic arcade collection series. The first game alone offered up great gems like Defender, Gauntlet, Joust, Marble Madness, Rampage, Robotron 2084, Sinistar, Smash TV, Spyhunter, and more – a truly fantastic deal for twenty bones. The second in the series featured some sequels, like Gauntlet 2, Spyhunter 2, Rampage World Tour, and heavy-hitters Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 in addition to other lesser known games; not a bad collection, though less great than its predecessor.

With 8 games to choose from, this treasury presents a pretty well-rounded cross section of Midway racing titles from the last two decades. “S.T.U.N Runner” is kinetic, colorful, and frantic, requiring tremendous hand-eye coordination as you race futuristic sleds over zingy sci-fi tracks, blasting enemies and obstacles. “Race Drivin’” plays almost like a sim (i.e. start the car, shift the car into gear, etc.) taking you along benign tree-dotted courses with the occasional loop-the-loop or ramp jump thrown in for good measure. History-minded gamers might want to play these first since they make the complexity of the remaining six games astounding by comparison.

While the two previous Midway Arcade Treasures compilations have spanned a great variety of games released over long, long periods of time, the series focuses the scope of its efforts in Midway Arcade Treasures 3, which consists of eight arcade racing games released between 1989 and 2001. The games that represent the rather specific subgenre of arcade racing in this package show a surprising amount of variety, and from a technical standpoint, they're largely successful emulations of the arcade games. This technical competence, however, puts into sharp relief the elements of the arcade experience that you simply cannot emulate.

Morning retro campers! Welcome to barrel-scraping territory where everything's a 'classic' and a 'treasure' if it, you know, it once appeared in an arcade. Having just trawled through the annals (or should that be anals?) of Tecmo's 'classic' retro history, we were in no mood to be fobbed off again with a pile of stinking detritus masquerading as jolly retro fodder - so forgive us if we're just a little stroppy with Midway's latest collection of old long-forgotten hits.

Midway has been making popular electronic arcade games for more than two decades now, and they're no stranger to putting their classics on compilation discs for home video game consoles. Their past two Midway Arcade Treasures assortments featured a wide variety of classics, but for their third outing they are trying something different. Every game in the third installment is an arcade racing game, spanning the late 80's/early 90's to just a few years ago.

For Midway and other publishers who might consider imitating the single-genre format of Treasures 3, it's worth noting that "genre" shares a common root with "generic." And it's hard to think of a more generic compilation than this. The venerability of these selections combined with the substandard interface (exiting out of a given game is performed inconsistently and tends to be very confusing) and paltry selection of titles makes this one you can skip over without losing any sleep.