0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2

  

Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2 is the third collection of arcade games developed by Digital Eclipse Software and the second to focus on Atari arcade games. Like the previous Atari arcade collection it consists of six games with Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Paperboy, RoadBlasters, Crystal Castles, and Millipede in this collection.

The game was released on the 5^th of April 1998 in North America with the game releasing in mid April of 1998 in Europe this date may not be accurate as I have found several different release dates for this game on the net. Midway Games would handle the North American publication while GT Interactive would publish the European version.

Paperboy, Gauntlet, RoadBlasters and Marble Madness were all code conversion for this collection, the remaining two games Crystal Castles and Millipede are both emulations, unlike the previous Atari collection this one would only release on Playstation and for Windows.

First game in this second Atari collection is the 1984 release Paperboy, this isometric arcade bike game has the player taking control of a paper delivery boy, who must wreak as much damage to the houses of your non customers, damaging customers houses will result in losing that customer as will missing a delivery.

To make the players task harder multiple types of obstacles must be negotiated by the player including, construction workers, rogue tires, skateboarders, dog and cats and occasional tornado. The game has the choice of three difficulty modes, Easy Street, Middle Road and Hard Way, with the game taking place over the course of seven days.

Next in the collection is the top down fantasy action game Gauntlet one of the first multiplayer dungeon crawlers and introduced along with Quartet a year later introduced co-operative 4-player gaming to the arcades. The player chooses the character they wish to play as. 

They have the choice of between four, Thor the warrior, Merlin the wizard, Thyra, a Valkyrie and Questor who is an Elf. Each of these characters have their own strengths and weaknesses, with the warrior obviously very useful in hand to hand combat, the Wizard has powerful magical skills, the Valkyrie is the best armoured, and the Elf is by far the quickest of the quartet.

Once a character has been selected the player is put in a top down maze with the aim to reach the designated exit point this is the same for every level, the player will be able to pick up various items around the maze in order to help their cause, such as health increases, door unlocks and magical potions. The player also needed to negotiate the likes of ghosts, goblins and death, the latter drains the players health, while trying to escape the maze.

The third entry in this Atari collection is a racing game released in 1987, RoadBlasters is a vehicular combat racing game with the players aim to complete all 50 levels or rallies without running out of fuel. The player has no limit on the number of vehicles they use as long as they have fuel, however if the player does lose a vehicle they will lose some fuel as well.

This is not made any easier by enemies trying to take you out with armored cars, motorcycles, cannons on the side of the road, landmines as well as some others. As the player progresses through a level they will reach the mid way point of the race, at this point their fuel supply will be replenished, the player also has a reserve supply which can be called upon in an emergency as well as pick ups on the course, in certain levels these will be vital in order to complete the level.

The fourth game in this collection is Marble Madness a puzzle platform game with an isometric viewpoint, the simple premise of the game guide a marble down a path without hitting anything. Of course it is not that easy a verity of obstacles from ramps and tight corridors to be negotiated as well as enemies and changes to the courses, for example the fifth course has a different orientation to try and confuse players.

The main aim of the game for the player is complete six mazes before the set amount of time is exceeded, any time that that player has in reserve at the end of a maze is carried over to the next maze as well as being granted a set amount of additional time.

The game also has a two player mode, with each player having their own times, like the single player game the aim is to reach the end of the maze before the time runs out and as with the single player additional time is awarded not for having time left on your clock but for winning the race.

Going back a year to 1983 we find the fifth game in this collection is the platformer Crystal Castles (I feel old I still own this for the 2600), the player takes on the role of Bentley Bear who has been trapped inside of Crystal Castles. Bentley must go around the castle collecting gems, each of the castles are multi platformed add in a various creatures as well to make things more difficult and they need to be avoided.

Bentley can jump over enemies this will sometimes stun them, coming into contact with an enemy however will result in Bentley losing a life. Occasionally the player will receive assistance from a magic hat that appears in the level, If this hat is collected it will give Bentley temporary invincibility in total there are 37 castles to clear spread over ten levels with four castles to each level with the exception of level ten which has just one castle to negotiate.

The final game in this collection comes from 1982 and is a sequel to Centipede from the first Atari Collection, gameplay wise it is very similar to its predecessor only this time it is the cousins of the centipedes that have invaded the garden. As with the previous game the Millipede moves across the screen once it reaches the edge of the screen or hits and obstacle it will move down a level.

It will keep doing this until it reaches the players area at the bottom of the screen, once it has reached the players area more heads will appear, also splitting a millipede will result in the split section sprouting a new head, if the player comes into contact with the millipede it will result in a lost life.

 

In addition new types of enemies are introduced to the sequel such as earwigs who take on the role of the scorpions from the first game making the mushrooms poisonous and causing the millipede to charge straight to the bottom of the screen when it touches them. Inchworms slow down all enemies for a short period, Beetles transform mushrooms into indestructible flowers during the short time they are on screen.

Mosquito’s bounce off of the side of the screen as it descends, when the mosquito is hit everything on the screen will scroll up one row, Dragonflies zigzag down the screen dropping mushrooms as they go, they can easily be taken out with one shot. Another addition is a DDT bomb these stationary explosives can be detonated with one shot and as a result will destroy all enemies and mushrooms in the blast radius.

Critically only a handful of reviews are available for this game with them ranging from above average down to a below average score, starting with the best as usual though we find a couple of German publications having the two highest review scores.

First up it Video Games who scored this collection at a 76/100 and had the following to say about this collection. What leaves 3D-Greenhorns cold, once again puts mature maturity into delight. Rarity lovers expect 95 percent true to the original machine feel and a lot of fun.

Especially fans of the legendary Atari slot machines "Marble Madness", "Crystal Castles" and "Gauntlet" are offered three pearls of historical superlatives. Unfortunately, the last bit of technical emulation perfection was lost in terms of screen utilization and speed optimization.

Fellow German publication Mega Fun praised the collection saying, AGH2 is without a doubt one of the better console collections in the console sector. Classics such as Marble Madness, Paper Boy or the discreetly improved Centipede sequel Millipede simply offer a timeless gameplay that is still good for a game in between.

They were critical of two of the games in the collection however, with the reviewer finding the shooting a driving of Roadblasters tired and concluded that Crystal Castles is only reasonably playable with a mouse (please note I do not speak German and this translation is from Google translate so may not be 100% accurate)

Next highest review score came from The Video Game Critic, who scored the game a 75/100 just one point lower than Mega Fun. Concluding that Paperboy is an excellent game but were critical of the translation from Arcade to console, saying the graphics appeared blurry.

They were critical of Crystal Castles as well saying that a trackball is really needed for proper controls, with even the analogue controls feeling too imprecise, they concluded like Mega Fun that Roadblasters is definitely one of the weakest in this collection.

The lower rated reviews up next with GameSpot having the lowest of them all with a 43/100, concluding that the biggest problem with the games in this collection they just don’t hold up to the test of time unlike previous collections.

They concluded with There's just something eerily wrong with the games, like all the fun got sucked out, and blurry, poor-controlling husks were all that remained. On one plus note for the collection they did recommend Gauntlet, especially If you are a fan of the game.

Official US Playstation Magazine is the last review we will be looking at, they scored the game at a very average 50/100 they concluded with. Just about all of us spent a lot of time with the games in this collection when they were in the arcades, so you might think you'd be as willing to spend time with them now. For the most part, you'd be wrong. Like most collections of old arcade games, this one is good for nostalgia not really not much else. Marble Madness is the best of the lot.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who have the same pricing as the previous Atari collection that I covered, if you are looking to trade in your copy Gamedude will give you $2 for your copy, if on the other hand you are looking for a copy Gamedude will charge you $6 for a copy.

Moving onto Retrogames.co.uk, who sadly do not stock this collection so we quickly move on to eStarland.com who don’t stock this title either. So quickly moving on to Amazon.com where we find a decent supply of the game available.

The cheapest copies however are not in the best condition several are acceptable disc only copes of the game, even the cheapest complete copies of the game are only in acceptable conditions. If you are looking for a complete copy you will be looking at a minimum of $11.53 for a very good condition copy of the game.

At the time of writing a like new copy of the game is available for just a few cents more so could be worth opting for that copy, from here used prices continue to rise with prices reaching a high of $33.87 once you have added in the shipping costs.

Now on to the new copies of this game with only three currently on the market on Amazon.com, with prices taking a substantial leap upwards with prices starting at $83.98 this price is with the shipping added in, prices continue to rise from here with new copies currently reaching a high of $104.98.

Written by

P J Gibbon