Midway digs deep into its arcade attic again for some well-known classics and some long-forgotten relics. With one Arcade Treasures already in the books, Midway goes two different routes for the sequel. One way is bringing back more obscure titles from the early days of gaming. The other is to set the way-back machine to the early- to mid-'90s. Both have varying degrees of success, but the end result is still a great gaming bargain that's hard to pass up.

The Good

It's another 20 games, faithful to their arcade roots, at the price of about a buck a title. What's not to like about that? Several of these offerings were trailblazers in their day, and still have a lot of life left in them today. Of course, the fact that you now have unlimited continues and tweakable options for each and every one of them means you won't be quite so mad when Shao Khan kicks your butt for the sixth time, or a tank blows up your radioactive mutant rat.

Both Mortal Kombat II and MK 3 are here, and are bound to get most of the attention. While they don't hold up as well as, say, Street Fighter II -- with its deeper and more refined gameplay -- most kollectors will want them in their kollections nonetheless. You'll spend hours on each one, if only to relive or redie with all the Fatalities, and they're definitely the MVPs of the package. Unfortunately, if you want the inaugural MK, you'll have to buy the "Special Edition" versions of MK: Deception. The inclusion of the goofy, stop-motion dinosaur fighter, Primal Rage, is a slight consolation.


Another title that holds up well today is Arch Rivals, Midway's original basketbrawler. I played several full games, punching away at my opponent and watching the cheerleaders shake their pom-poms whenever I scored. Rampage: World Tour and Total Carnage are worthy successors to the original Rampage and Super Smash TV, respectively, and really benefit from the free play treatment.

Other titles are worth a few hours of playtime, such as Wacko, which is like Robotron with a puzzle twist. Cyberball 2072, which I've never played until now, is a very serviceable football game. And Wizards of Wor is the equivalent to Pac-Man with a gun, which proves to be quite entertaining for a spell.

The Bad

That said, a lot of the titles included here may be more trash than treasure. NARC, despite the fact that it's getting the next-gen treatment, is a pathetic side-scrolling shooter. Kozmik Krooz'r, a game few will remember, is as terrible as its spelling.