Midway Classic Arcade Classics Vol 1 Review
This is the Midway classic Arcade Classics Volume 1. I picked this one up over at Bed Bath and Beyond on sale after the holidays for $9.99. It is a plug and play device designed to plug into televisions with RCA style inputs. The device requires three Double-A batteries to function. The games included are the Midway classics Joust, Gauntlet, and Defender and as other people have noted, these are the NES versions of the games, not the Arcade versions, and although the box lists the games like Gauntlet and Defender they are actually Gauntlet II and Defender II.
The joystick is left-oriented with the on/off switch located on the top left. To the right of that are the “start” and “reset” buttons and there are two game buttons, labeled as “A” and “B”.
I used to love Joust in the arcade and played a lot of it. But for me, this device in my opinion is not a good fit for the game. I would prefer a more stable controller like in the arcade version as opposed to this portable version.
As for Gauntlet, it seems to play just fine and even includes digital voices.
The third Midway game Defender, I believe this unit was made for this game. I love the way it controls and feels when playing. Defender is one of the best arcade games ever created and is primarily why I purchased this device. When you first start out you are presented with two options; Game A or Game B. Game A starts off easier, the difficulty ramps up as you play and you are awarded a free life at 50,000 points, whereas in Game B the difficulty starts out difficult and you are not awarded additional lives.
Now overall I think this is a decent unit for what it is. It’s a left hand oriented. The joystick is not overly firm. I would like the buttons to be just a little more springy but it’s not a big deal. I would recommend this unit if you can find it for around the $10 range or less.
Youtube Original Post Date: 02/18/2019
