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Konami Arcade Classics
It is the year 1999, and Japanese entertainment
conglomerates everywhere are unleashing their back catalogs of early 1980s
arcade titles. Your job? Go nuts! Have a blast! Save some little pigs, do a
little driving, bomb a few enemy installations, go to the circus, and practice
your martial arts while you're at it...
(Konami, 1999)
Well, it's about time that someone other than Namco and Midway got a piece of
the Playstation arcade emulation action. And Konami isn't a bad place to start
- their games are some of the biggest cult classics in coin-op history. In
fact, only one title had to be mentioned to persuade me to buy this
collection: Gyruss.
Though it's a little confusing these days to remember who made which games -
especially since Japanese companies such as Namco and Konami licensed their hits
to American corporations such as Atari and Midway - chances are you'll remember
at least a few of these games. Gyruss is the cult classic quasi-3D
shooter in which your ship rotates, Tempest
-style, around the edge of the screen, shooting inward at endless waves of
aliens while a techno version of Bach's Tocatta & Fugue pounds in
your ears. Pooyan is, of course, the game
which pits you, as Mama Pig, against some big bad wolves who are trying to make
bacon out of your piglets. Time Pilot travels through various eras of
past and future, blasting away at enemy formations and rescuing defenseless
paratroopers. Scramble and its sequel Super Cobra are very early
Defender-style side-scrolling shooters.
Also included are Circus Charlie, Roc 'n' Rope, Road Fighter, Shao Lin's
Road and Yie Ar Kung Fu.
The online "liner notes" aren't even remotely as elaborate as those
of The Williams Collection, and
certainly less elaborate than the video interviews of Intellivision
Classic Games. At best, they might be back-of-the-box descriptions for
old Atari editions of these games. It would've been
nice to read more about the conception of Gyruss and Pooyan. But
the [game] play's the thing, and Konami Arcade Classics delivers in
spades. The sound and graphics of the various games are perfectly translated,
and finally a classic arcade collection supports the analog joystick controller
- excessively handy with Time Pilot.
Rating: 
Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and
addictive game.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
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