Where are the Midway arcade games?

[Flojomojo]

It's been a long time since Midway Arcade games (including Atari Games, Williams, and others) were redone for consoles. I mean things like Defender, Spy Hunter, Joust, Marble Madness, Paperboy, and so on. The last release was Midway Arcade Treasures which is backwards compatible in 360 mode on the Xbone, but nothing on PS4 or Switch. 

 

With all the classics already on Switch, this seems like a deliberate omission. What are they waiting for?

[Tanooki]

I don't think WB cares or sees value in it, it's just not Mortal Kombat to them.

[roots.genoa]

I find especially weird they didn't try to capitalize on the Rampage movie... Most of the audience probably had no idea it was based on a video game.

[dj_convoy]

Midway Arcade Treasures seems like a natural fit for Switch. Maybe it bombed in the last release? I hope not; that was an enjoyable collection. 

[Flojomojo]

Summoning the great and powerful @JeffVav to tell us he's ready to roll with a product but needs the go-ahead from WB, who is not feeling it at this time. It seems strange of them to skip a whole console generation. Maybe they don't want to cannibalize 1Up mini arcade cabinet sales. 

[boog]

It's not the most convenient way to play, but Lego Dimensions has a Midway Arcade expansion pack with 23 arcade games including Rampage/Spy Hunter/Gauntlet/etc. Your Lego character walks to the chosen cab and it switches to full-screen gameplay.

 

Lego Dimensions is available on PS4, PS3, Wii U, 360, and xbone. Maybe there was an exclusivity deal with Lego preventing a separate compilation release for a while?

 

Edited March 20, 2020 by boog

[Daj]

Hear, hear. I'd drop full retail priced just for Robotron, if they'd only give it to me. Another Mortal Kombat collection is on its way, if that's anything to you.

[JeffVav]

2 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

Summoning the great and powerful @JeffVav to tell us he's ready to roll with a product but needs the go-ahead from WB, who is not feeling it at this time. It seems strange of them to skip a whole console generation. Maybe they don't want to cannibalize 1Up mini arcade cabinet sales. 

The story I heard in informal circles back during the Midway sale was the reason WB bought Midway was for the Mortal Kombat franchise. The rest just came along for the ride. As @boog noted we did do the Midway Arcade expansion pack for Lego Dimensions. And there was that browser based tie in for Ready Player One we did in 2018, but generally (aside from licensing via Arcade1Up) it's looked just as quiet to us as it has to you. Aside from MK it looks from our spectator's position like the classic Midway library has been used by them as more of a value-add than a product in its own right. Even then the MK products are modern evolutions, not retro. Perhaps retro is just not on their radar? But yeah we'd love a stab at something if someone were willing. Williams Arcade Classics was my first commercial game release and we were the keepers of that legacy from that point right up until Midway's demise. 

[Mockduck]

Having worked directly on the IP under WB in a community management role I can attest that the licensing is a bit complex, but that was the state I saw it during the original rollout of Midway Arcade for mobile. It would not surprise me if WB mixed it in with Lego Dimensions and Arcade1up has it for physical cabinets that it might be difficult to sort through, and the financial gain is up in the air. 

[Atariboy]

On 3/20/2020 at 5:59 PM, boog said:

It's not the most convenient way to play, but Lego Dimensions has a Midway Arcade expansion pack with 23 arcade games including Rampage/Spy Hunter/Gauntlet/etc. Your Lego character walks to the chosen cab and it switches to full-screen gameplay.

 

Lego Dimensions is available on PS4, PS3, Wii U, 360, and xbone. Maybe there was an exclusivity deal with Lego preventing a separate compilation release for a while?

 

I'm a bit late to noticing this thread, but I'd caution against the Wii U version.

 

Through no fault of Code Mystics, a late patch broke the arcade games on the Wii U. Severe visual artifacts appear, although the issue is less severe when you fire up a game from within the arcade hub world (Which is where you go to play the arcade games after you've unlocked them). I'd also be suspect of the 360 and PS3 builds, which probably were similarly neglected in the QA process towards the end.

 

 

Going through the Xbox One version in recent days to unlock these games and no such issues there. Performance seems solid enough with what I've so far unlocked (Although certain games like Super Sprint run in slow motion when you play them in the Lego world you found the game in, they run at full speed from within the arcade hub world afterwards which is what matters).

 

There are things I'd like to have seen different though. In particular, I wish that Super Sprint, Championship Sprint, and Badlands had a steering setup like the overhead racers in the Atari Flashback Classics line did. Boog is already familiar with all of this, but in those recent Atari compilations if you for example wanted your car to steer towards the upper right corner of the screen, you just had to push the stick towards the 3 o'clock position. That simple change over moving the analog stick left or right completely transformed the overhead racers that could never be done justice on compilations before. 

 

And YouTube videos have me somewhat concerned that two of my favorites have emulation issues. The log rolling bonus game in Timber seems to lack animation, but perhaps that's because the videos I saw were uploaded at 30 fps. And Roadblasters appeared to not have analog steering, but perhaps the uploader was playing with their d-pad. I'll find out for myself soon.

 

And while it's not nearly as harsh as some forced filters are, there does seem to be a forced bilinear filter here to soften the edges of pixels, which is a game breaker for some. I was especially noticing it in the Gauntlet games.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Atariboy

[DragonGrafx-16]

I got MAME plus all three Midway Arcade Treasures on Xbox so I'm pretty good...

[kisrael]

Got the Atari 50 thing, it's kind of lackluster selection of games made up for a great version of Food Fight. (especially if you use a controller with a bigger stick than a Joy Con)

But it made me hungry for Robotron...

What is this, just a lie or a misfire?
https://aspenpellot.fandom.com/wiki/Midway_Arcade:_The_Williams_Collection

[Tanooki]

Good question, I put that name into the search on google, it's that, then you waking up this post that gets dragged in so that doesn't look good.  I recently got the SNES equal of this pack for what it has, it's a perfect as possible source and audio(due to snes sound sampling core) port of 5 of those titles at least.  I'd like to see the rest if this isn't a fantasy, even if it's under the Japanese name.

[Flojomojo]

That’s weird, it would have been 2 years ago if it were going to happen. But nothing on the midway front, not even Arcade Archives, which is as far as I know exclusively Japanese games. 

[Rick Dangerous]

MAT Trilogy should definitely be re-released for modern consoles, I own all three for Xbox/Gamecube but i'd certainly pick it up again if they re-released them. 

[Astro Rabby]

Get Arcade Archives on the job!! Granted they seem mostly concerned with Japanese games but still. Maybe I'll find an email to suggest it!

I'd LOVE Joust with ACA leaderboards.

[Classic Pac]

I have MAT for the PS2 those are some amazing games. I would love to see them ported.

[Asaki]

On 4/29/2020 at 1:28 AM, Atariboy said:

Through no fault of Code Mystics, a late patch broke the arcade games on the Wii U.

What if you don't patch the game?

[Atariboy]

59 minutes ago, Asaki said:

What if you don't patch the game?

You can't pick and choose which patches to install on the Wii U. It's either the day 1 version as shipped on the disc (which predates the inclusion of the arcade games by years) or the latest version.

 

In theory you might be able to solve this such as by installing the game to an external hard drive and interfacing the drive with your computer and deleting newer patches, but there's no official way from the system's dashboard to do so.

 

I did something like that years ago on the Xbox 360. I slightly cared about achievements back then and Grid from Codemasters had a broken one keeping me from a full 1,000 points. A couple of car licenses had fell through at the last minute right before the game's release build was wrapped up and they didn't tune an achievement for owning every car in the game to reflect the unavailability of these two cars. This was fixed with the game's first patch but then was inadvertently rebroken with the second patch (which is when I played through the game).

 

Using the USB hard drive transfer cable that came with the 120 GB hard drive upgrade that Microsoft was selling back then (sure doesn't sound like much in 2022, lol), I was able to connect my 360's hard drive to my PC, delete patch #2, and then I fired up the game offline on my 360 where the achievement popped immediately (since I owned every vehicle).

 

I assume something along those lines is possible on Wii U, rewinding the game to its state when the classic arcade games were first added but before they were inadvertently broken.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Atariboy

[Asaki]

2 hours ago, Atariboy said:

You can't pick and choose which patches to install on the Wii U. It's either the day 1 version as shipped on the disc (which predates the inclusion of the arcade games by years) or the latest version.

Oh, I see.

Hmm...

[Crazy Climber]

Contact Limited Run Games, they might hold enough mojo to strike a deal with WB now...?

[Tanooki]

And once they work it out, they'll do a pre-order and going by their current efforts you should have something to play in 2025 or early 2026.

[Austin]

On 2/3/2023 at 10:16 AM, Crazy Climber said:

Contact Limited Run Games, they might hold enough mojo to strike a deal with WB now...?

Problem there is Limited Run manufactures games, not develop them. Last I checked, there's no existing Midway collection game for them to attempt to publish.

[Crazy Climber]

4 hours ago, Austin said:

Problem there is Limited Run manufactures games, not develop them. Last I checked, there's no existing Midway collection game for them to attempt to publish.

True, would have to be already available digitally. I didn't think that one through haha

[Tanooki]

Closest quality thing would be in the gamecube era, those 3 arcade treasures bundles were fantastic on there.  Perhaps taking all 3 to squeeze more out of people, or if not, just being cool roll it all into 1 $50-60 package, they'd be a pretty good way to go about it.