Video games have increased in complexity exponentially over the years; however, those of us who grew up on a very unhealthy diet of arcade games just don’t need the graphical goodness of modern games in order to have a good time. And it’s this audience that Midway Arcade Treasures was made for. It’s a 24-game compilation - some of the best ever in the gaming industry.

Included in Midway Arcade Treasures are: 720, Blaster, Bubbles, Defender, Defender II (aka Stargate), Gauntlet, Joust, Joust 2, Klax, Marble Madness, Paperboy, Rampage, Rampart, RoadBlasters, Robotron: 2048, Root Beer Tapper, Satan’s Hollow, Sinistar, Smash TV, Splat!, Spy Hunter, Toobin’, Super Sprint, and Vindicators. In other words, it has enough games to keep you busy for a very long while.

Click here to get Midway Arcade Treasures for the Xbox

The controls for some of the games had to be adapted to fit the Xbox controller, and are not as responsive as they would have originally been; for example, Sinistar originally had a 49-position joystick (while modern consoles only use an 8-position stick), and Marble Madness originally had an analog trackball. These adaptations tend to lead to a steep learning curve, but once the controls are mastered, the games are just as fun as the original.

Some games do have frame rate issues (such as Paperboy and Smash TV) when too much is happening on-screen. With the power of thee modern machines, it’s disappointing to see that optimizations were not made to transform these 2D games to 3D hardware. On the bright side, the dropped frames are somewhat rare, and really a non-issue for nostalgic players, but perfectionists will be annoyed.

The sounds are, bit for bit, what I remember them to be. Since I don’t own any original hardware (nor can I find any) I can’t tell you if there are any issues. What I can tell you is that there are no delayed sounds, and when the fame rate does drop the sounds do not stutter, so, I have no real complaints here.

There is one added feature: interviews with the original development teams; however, these videos were lifted off of the Playstation Arcade Party Pak, and retain the same (poor) quality, so don’t buy this just for the interviews.

While there could be some improvements (better quality videos, and solving the frame rate issues), this game is great for those of us who occasionally get nostalgic and just want to pop in a CD full of games, rather than go hunting for ROMs and emulators.

Click here to get Midway Arcade Treasures for the Xbox