For those who did their share of popping quarters into arcade games in the late 80s and early 90s instead of the 70s and 80s, there's finally an arcade compilation for your generation. Featured within the simple menu structure are Klax, Toobin', 720, Rampage, Smash TV and Super Sprint, along with video interviews with the designers about their original ideas and the development of the individual games. (Midway, 1999, for Playstation)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and state something that you'd probably already noticed: Arcade Party Pak is loaded down with games that really post-date the golden arcade era covered by Phosphor Dot Fossils, so in some respects it's a wee bit out of place here. Still, the games included here are worth looking at just to get a glimpse of the arcade's evolution.

The old family tree is most proudly displayed by the double-joystick, double-barrelled shooter Smash TV. Designed by Defender guru Eugene Jarvis, Smash TV may seem awful familiar - it's basically Robotron: 2084 dressed up with new visuals and a new storyline. Even the enemies correspond to Robotron opponents: there are a number of indestructible hulks, and later levels' cruise missile-firing goons behave more or less the same as a Brain launching its guided missiles; the only thing really missing is the last human family. The story leans heavily on the Schwarzenegger film The Running Man for inspiration, pitting the player against an overwhelming number of enemies in live, televised gladiatorial combat to the death. As gory as it gets, Smash TV isn't without a sense of humor: each level is packed with prizes for you to scoop up, and a loud "woohoo!" is heard if the prize is something like a new VCR or a toaster - hardly something to be risking one's life for. Then again, look at reality TV these days.

Toobin' shows its mixed lineage, a cross between the setting of Tehkan's Swimmer and the basic "thread the needle" game play of many an old video skiing game. Klax is Atari's well-loved block-stacking game with a pronounced classic feel (and one that kicks my butt repeatedly). The overhead racing game Super Sprint adds a few new bells and whistles to the simple formula that dates back to Atari's early 70s coin-op Sprint 2. Skating game 720 reminds me of nothing so much as Paperboy with a new graphics set, and Rampage lovingly parodies 50s B-movie monsters by casting you as the monster with a mandate to smash as much of the cityscape as you can before being brought down by the authorities.

As with Midway's past few retro arcade packages, Arcade Party Pak was skillfully emulated by Digital Eclipse, a studio loaded down with old-school talent (including none other than former Atari 2600 programmer Tod Frye, who was given the impossible time frame of mere weeks to come up with Atari's home version of Pac-Man). These folks know what the original games looked, sounded and smelled like, and they've done an admirable job with the translation. A nice bonus is that Arcade Party Pak is recent enough to support the Playstation dual shock analog joysticks, meaning you finally get to recapture a little taste of that double-joystick vibe with Smash TV. Arcade Party Pak flew under most game buyers' radar, though, and is now reappearing as an overstock budget item in many stores. I paid ten bucks for mine instead of the original $40 price tag, but I can safely attest that, even though it crosses the line into arcade territory that I no longer consider classic, Arcade Party Pak is worth at least that ten bucks.

Rating:  Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and addictive game.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster