The Final Word game review

Arcade's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 -- Williams

Re-live the the past today with the classic Williams arcade titles: Defender, Defender II, Joust, Bubbles, Robotron, and Sinstar. This compilation additionally features historical backgrounds on each game as well as interviews with the key developers who brought the games to life. The first volume in a series from Williams for the Sony PlayStation.

Jester
Ah, Joust. Such sweet memories. Sneaking over to play you at the roller rink when I should have been skating. Now you to can relive those memories. Not only of Joust, but Defender I & II, Sinistar, Robotron, and Bubbles. Anyway, every game is arcade perfect and also includes a history and video clip interviews with the programmers. It also includes a media gallery with sell sheets and other Williams' documents. Not very pretty but effective and with minimal load time (as opposed to Namco's disc of load death). Highly recommended.

R.I.P.
If you played arcade games in the early eighties, you played these games. If you played these games in the arcade then you must purchase this compilation now. If you've never played these games, or are an aspiring game designer, then you owe it to yourself to own this title. This is what the arcade experience is all about, and what every game designer should aspire for... games that keep the player coming back for years. Not only are these games exactly the arcade games you've grown to love, but they are running under emulation, which means that they truly are the exact same games you played, quirks and all. Another excellent aspect of this compilation is the historical segment. Featuring detailed individual written histories for each game as well as video footage of interviews with programmers from each of the games, this provides nicely rounded coverage. The only thing really lacking here was a good photo library of cabinets (including readable displays of original control templates) so that you could make the best of the ability to configure both control ports as one controller. This is the problem that caused me to knock the overall score. For instance, I've got two joysticks here, and for Robotron I've configured controller one as the left joystick and controller two as the right joystick... For Defender/Stargate, I've configured the left controller as my Up/Down and Reverse controls, and the right controller as my button array (sure the hyperspace button isn't down below, but I never used it anyways). Needless to say, this rocks.

>>>>> 42.0/50 <<<<<		Jester	R.I.P.
Graphics		3.0	4.5
Sound		3.0	4.5
Gameplay/Control		5.0	5.0
Longevity/Playability		4.0	5.0
Overall		4.0	4.0
Total		19.0	23.0

(10/96)