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More Classic Games To Hit Xbox Live 89

Posted by Zonk from the dang-dogs-always-follow-me dept.
Several classic Midway games are slated to arrive on the Xbox Live arcade service sometime this year. The Gamespot article mentions Defender and Paperboy among the titles on the block. From the article: "'We've been generally surprised by the response rate...the paid downloads are more than we expected,' Midway CEO David Zucker told GameSpot. 'It's not going to change our economic success overnight, but it's a nice little business on the side, and we're glad that people are happy with the product.' Midway's chief executive also expressed interest in doing similar projects with the PlayStation 3 and Revolution, should they provide that functionality."
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More Classic Games To Hit Xbox Live More

More Classic Games To Hit Xbox Live

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  • New ones. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mingot ( 665080 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @02:14PM (#14836264)
    They could use some more NEW games before they get too crazy with the classics.

    • Re:New ones. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Eddy Da KillaBee ( 727499 )
      Amen. Lord knows most of us who spent the $300 or $400 probably haven't been too happy with our rather limited selection of games. Even the backwards-compatible game that would've kept me happy is technically no longer BC cause the last update screwed it up. I'm talking about Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory...
      • Anyone that spent $300-400 already got exactly what they wanted: the right to say they own the current hot item. The list of available games was not a secret - if the games available were not worth it, then you wouldn't buy the system yet (assuming you do any research before dropping $300 on something).

        From what I hear, the classics and mini games ARE the best part of XBOX 360. So I think its great they are making more. To some people, a system that integrates nicely into their home entertainment system and

    • Re:New ones. (Score:1, Troll)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 )
      What's the point of having new OR old games when you still can't buy the console?

      -Eric

    • There are finally quite a few coming.

      Scheduled in the next 4 weeks:

      The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
      College Hoops 2K6
      Burnout Revenge
      Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
      The Outfit
      Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII
      Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
      Rumble Roses XX
      Top Spin 2
      Far Cry: Instincts Predator

  • I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tekkou ( 944664 )
    ...are the sales of these games more than the actual xbox360 games?

    If so, what was the point of buying a 360 in the first place? Kind of a sign that gameplay > graphics. Developers take note!
    • Kind of a sign that gameplay > graphics. While I agree with you, there's something else at work here. From my experience, nostalgia > gameplay > graphics. I'm surprised they're so surprised by the success of offering people games from their childhood or at least younger days.
  • I was never able to remember where to throw the papers....
  • Man, both those games suck without their original controller set-ups. I understand why Xbox would want them available. They're the kind of game you remember fondly and would probably plunk down $10 to download, but without the original control scheme, they both leave much to be desired. I doubt many people will be happy with that investment after the fact. I guess 720 will be next.

    • I guess 720 will be next.

      The Xbox or the game?

      (Sorry, couldn't resist)

    • Do those old games really cost $10? I imagine that more people would be willing to buy them if they were at half that price but it's hard for me to imagine people shelling out ten bucks unless it happened to be one of their all time favorites from that era. To each their own, I guess.
      • I bought metroid prime for $CDN 12.50 after tax used at EB. I can't possibly imagine paying $10 for a "classic" game. Maybe they should make them more like iTunes. $0.99 sounds like a fair price to me.
      • The classic games have only been 400 points so far - $5. That's with included leaderboards and mutliplayer play over live. The latter is what really makes them worthwhile - being able to play with/against other people on XBL. I can play 4 player Gauntlet any time I feel like it, for example.
        • That's definitely more reasonable. You make a good case with multiplayer Guantlet. I still wouldn't pay $5 for pacman, though. :)
          • We don't have Pac-Man yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if that one didn't make it.

            Besides, the best part about XBLA? If you don't think a game's worth $5, then you don't have to spend the points to get it. :)

            I bought Robotron, Gauntlet, and Joust - but not Smash TV yet. I probably won't do Defender or Root Beer Tapper, perhaps Paperboy, and very likely MK3U and Cyberball - since those two are multiplayer, which is where the fun lies. Of course, SF2 might well be ruling XBLA by that point.
      • If I had a 360, I'd spend 20 or 30 bucks and buy one of the Midway classics discs for the original xbox. You get these games, plus another 20 other great (and some not so great) games.
    • Paperboy is dependent on the controller for fun. I actually have a motorcycle controller for PS2 and Xbox, do Xbox controllers work on the 360? They were supposed to... But anyway, defender isn't. It was fun in the arcade, it was fun on the 2600 (best arcade conversion on the 2600 by a long shot) and it's fun on my Xbox in an emulator using a PS2 gamepad on an adapter. (Xbox controllers are pretty crappy for emulated games, not least because they have analog triggers instead of shoulder buttons, and if you
      • 1. Defender sucked on Atari 2600. It was the most disappointing arcade conversion they ever did (well, besides pacman). I can understand now why they couldn't duplicate defender's vector graphics, but as a kid it was heart-wrenchingly disappointing.

        2. The xbox 360 controller does have shoulder buttons.
        • Defender may have looked like crap, but the play was pretty damned good, especially for what a craptactular piece of equipment (compared to an arcade machine, of course) the 2600 was.

          I haven't even seen the Xbox 360 controller, except at range in Sears and Gamestop, but I believe you. Won't help me on my Xbox though. :)

          • There are a few Xbox controllers that duplicate the layout of the 360 by placing the black and white buttons in the shoulder positions. I've seen them at Gamestop before.

            Almost bought a few, because my old big "duke" Xbox controllers are wearing out and I can't stand the placement of black and white on the "S" controller, but I picked up a 360 on a whim and the Xbox hasn't been turned on since, except to watch Xvid movies (XBMC = happiness)
        • Defender the arcade game didn't have vector graphics. Defender had raster graphics. Take a look at Red Barron, Asteroids, Tempest, and some of the old Atari arcade games if you forget what vector graphics are. Better yet load up MAME and load the Defender ROMs if you forget how Defender looked.
          • well, they looked vector. At least how I remember them. But thinking about it, yeah, I guess you're right.

            They certainly looked sharper than anything that could be done on the 2600, though. I guess it was a matter of resolution.
    • I disagree. I always thought the arcade handlebars were a needless gimmick that make a hard game even harder. There was always too much play, or some kid knocked them out of alignment, or something.

      And all 720s control was an analog stick, bent out to a 45 degree angle, right? That's not all that far off from modern controllers... albeit much smaller in scale.

    • Awww, did the big bad controller scare you?

      Seriously, I guess you've never tried playing them. So far all the arcade classics in XLA work great with the controller.
  • Well, of course . . . new 360 games cost $60 bones. Also, let's not forget that the lineup of packaged games available for the box in the US is less than bigantic.
  • ... that it only took Microsoft 5 years to develope a $400 machine that's *almost* as useful as a Dreamcast.

    • NesterDC (NES emulator) is my favorite Dreamcast game; it was one of the main reasons I bought the thing in the first place. It would be nice to play Dr. Mario over a network though... one of the two games in which I was ever dominant (the other being Mario Tennis on N64); generally I suck at video games. Ah nostalgia.

    • Hey now, you have to give Microsoft a little more credit than that...

      It was only four years. ;)
  • Make ancient games available for download while we wait for the game corps to get their head out of their rear.

    But... could be me but... how is this different from using a C64 Emu (or an Amiga emu for those of you who really want the stunning graphics) to play those games? I mean, aside of having to register somewhere and send money some direction?

    Let's face it, in THOSE games, the graphics isn't really the selling point. M.U.L.E. anyone? Did it have graphics to splatter you across the wall? Nope. Did it ha
    • It's Paperboy were talking about! No gameplay, no gfx, no hype - but it probably got some hypnotic mumbo jumbo in the works - which got everyone hocked. There is no resonable explanation why anyone want to ever play that game again.
    • But it had something I sorely miss in today's games:

      Gameplay.

      The game managed to keep you playing for weeks, months, some for years. Not because you needed to unlock that very last piece of eye candy.

      No, you kept playing because there was nothing else and you didn't know better gameplay yet. Most old games had very rough gameplay with many critical flaws (problematic saving, instant death that cannot be avoided by means other than trial and error, hitboxes that were in no relation to the graphical represent
      • I agree. 100%.

        I've played all of these old games. I've been playing games for over 30 years.

        The games coming out now are BETTER than they were 10 years ago...20 years ago...

        It is only nostalgia that keeps people thinking those old games were better.

      • "No, you kept playing because there was nothing else and you didn't know better gameplay yet."

        While that's certainly the case for a lot of games, it's not always so cut and dried. There are still plenty of games from the 80's that have excellent gameplay by today's standards. The Mario Bros. titles, for instance, have sold millions of copies on the GBA, and they're still leagues above the average Game Boy title in terms of gameplay. (And as a personal anecdote, I never really played much of the origin

      • You just don't both speak about the same games.

        The parent is right : there were lot of old games that are much better than the *average* crap today.
        Just as you are right : there were a lot of crappy games back then.

        The difference is only about which games you're thinking :
        When thinking with nostalgia, people usually only think about the good parts. They do remember those games that they realy loved and play continously for hours.
        They silently forgot all the crapastic stuff that you describe and that they ei
        • Most of those "great" games from back then don't hold up today, either. Not even compared to the "average" game. Space Invaders, for example or Asteroids. Pac-Man's easily exploited AI. If those were released today (obviously with updated graphics and assuming that the game hasn't existed before) noone would buy them and reviewers would complain about too simple gameplay, bad controls, repetitive level design, etc. These days we expect more from a game than we did back then, for example today a new level is
  • Long live Defender! Eater of quarters! Sucker of time! How I miss thee, and how I loathe the latter-day attempts to modernize you. Long live Defender!
  • Who the hell would buy these? They've been available for free over the Internet (via MAME, etc.) for the better part of a decade.
    • Well...My Xbox is the only thing convienently connected to my projector...dont want to drag out the laptop and all the wiring that entails. The 13 year old way down inside me is in heaven playing Smash TV on an 8 foot screen...with an infinite supply of quarters! Especially since the demo lets you keep playing after a single nag screen. Defender is definately something I would be interested in.
    • There is an entire generation of people who don't know jack about classic arcade games and haven't ever played Pacman. I imagine for them it's quite exciting to see some of the classics. Just as an example, last summer at minigolf they had setup one of those multiarcade systems. Robotron was on there and I was on like level 5(hey, its a hard game), the kids watching me play were blown away by game and couldn't believe how manic it was. In short they were very impressed.

      Kids could care less about classic gam
    • Who the hell would buy these? They've been available for free over the Internet (via MAME, etc.) for the better part of a decade.

      Same reason people buy music for iTunes.

      Its a bitch to spend hours searching the internet for roms and it isn't just because the SPA, RIAA, or MPAA has shut down the sites, but it is because most of the ROM places are nothing by malware, spam, and ultra porn popup sites with no real roms on them.

    • Who the hell would buy these? They've been available for free over the Internet (via MAME, etc.) for the better part of a decade.

      The same people who pay 99 cents to have jokes text messaged to them, not groking that that means shelling out $365 bucks a year plus tax.

      plus

      The same people who pay $20 for a burger, when you can buy one at Dick's in Seattle for 99 cents.
      • The same people who pay $20 for a burger, when you can buy one at Dick's in Seattle for 99 cents.

        You know, this isn't a bad analogy.

        Sure, you can download ROMs for free on the internet and play them on an emulator. But it takes work to find them, you have to be very careful not to get your browser hijacked from all the cram on most websites, and what you're doing isn't exactly legal. When I bought Robotron on XBLA for $5, it was easy to get a hold of it, it plays on my TV which is much bigger and has bett
        • Sometimes one experience is better enough than the other that you're willing to pay more.

          So, you're the guy paying $100 for a Mariner's ticket while I get a $10 ticket from the UW HUB with equally good sight lines ...

          That said, I think having classic games is cool, I just don't think one should pay exhorbitant rates to play them.
          • Actually, I'm the gal that does neither of them because baseball isn't exciting to me. Though Hockey on the other hand - and there I'd pay more for an NHL game because I've seen those games, and I've see the Seattle T-Birds, and I know I'd much rather watch an NHL game in person.

            And remember, the classic games on the 360 aren't just emulated simple ports - all of them so far have had mutliplayer over Xbox Live, leaderboards, and achievements. You do get more with each one for your $5 than the simple versi
            • Actually, I'm the gal that does neither of them because baseball isn't exciting to me. Though Hockey on the other hand - and there I'd pay more for an NHL game because I've seen those games, and I've see the Seattle T-Birds, and I know I'd much rather watch an NHL game in person.

              No argument there. I personally prefer watching soccer or baseball in person, mostly due to Ichiro. Hockey's fine, used to be on a team in school, used to watch games, nothing wrong with NHL, since it's back on the ice. More fun
          • I look at it this way:

            I played many of these games hundreds of times as a kid dumping tens of dollars worth of quarters in to them (I'm sure the Pac-Man machine at my local bowling lanes has swallowed close to $200 of my quarters in the past 15 years). Assuming a $0.25 arcade, after 20 plays these downloads have paid for themselves. For the ones I played on a console, the value is even better, because I paid more to rent these back in those days than I do to buy them and compete online with my friends now
        • I get my roms from a private bittorrent tracker with absolutely no popups or advertising. There are no viruses in any of the sets, and all the sets are either complete or near complete. They're all a quick search away, and free. It's no trouble to get my computer to plug into my TV, and a TV-out card is far cheaper than a 360 with no compelling games. And since the 360 controller is USB, I can buy one and use it with the emulators on my PC without any trouble. A lot of emulators offer multiplayer over the i
    • I enjoy many of these games on MAME, but I'll probably also buy a few for the 360. A) It's only $5, B) Live integration means easy multiplayer via the Internet (like the Gauntlet example someone noted above), and C) It's nice to have something I can kick back on the couch in the living room and play either alone or with friends for 15 minutes.
    • The choice is:

      Download & install MAME
      Find, download & install ROM (and we all know how fun those ROM sites are, particularly for those unfamiliar with them)
      Play game (hopefully it works!) on PC at desk
      Hope you don't get sued for copyright infringement (unlikely, but you never know these days)

      -or-

      Pay $5
      Sit on couch & play game

      I'm going for the second option, you do as you please.
      • I would agree with you, however MAME currently has a much wider choice of games. And if you have a modded Xbox1, the version of MAME for it can run just about everything that the PC version can.

        When I can get games like OutRun, Ms Pac-Man, TMNT, The Simpsons, Final Fight, Aliens, Chase HQ, R-Type etc on Live I'll consider the money vs MAME issue.

        Simpsons multi-player on Live would be really neat. With MAME I map all the characters to the same controls and play all 4 characters with the same set of keys, but
    • Some people like to own legal copies of things.

      In an effort to *encourage* this sort of thing, I've bought every single classic games collection out there for my Xbox 1. (The best is the Sonic Mega Collection-- spent weeks playing those!) I'm still waiting for a company to release the best titles from the Commodore 64, but given how many C-64 game makers there were, and how many have gone out of business, that's not very likely.

      Still, you'd think EA, who was a major maker of C-64 games and still around, w
  • ... how about some NEXT GENERATION games? The 360 is turning out to be a great classic game machine, it's just unfortunate that's not what it was designed for.

  • Already available on disc - cheap (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Generic Guy ( 678542 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @03:00PM (#14836721)

    These are the same titles you can get on their Treasures collection for under $20 ($12 used). http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=950 453/ [gamestop.com]

    I don't know the status of "backwards somewhat-compatibility" of these on the Xbox360, but it sure seems the per-title cost on Live Arcade is pretty hefty given how cheap you can get authorized copies elsewhere.

  • I think that we should all step back and see this announcement for what it truly is:

    a. an admission that there are no Killer Games that make anyone rush out to buy the xBox 360, and thus a stop-gap until someone can be convinced to do one;

    b. an admission that the competing next-gen platforms (PS3,NR) were wise to promote the use of older platform version games, and that this revival of older games for those platforms, but not for xBox360 for the most part, is really hurting MSFT on the revenue side (note: I

    • a. an admission that there are no Killer Games that make anyone rush out to buy the xBox 360, and thus a stop-gap until someone can be convinced to do one;
      How do you tally that with the fact that 360's are sold out pretty much everywhere? PGR3 is the best racing game ever (IMHO) and I bought mine just for that. Killer app in my opinion, but some people prefer others, and that's fine.

      b. an admission that the competing next-gen platforms (PS3,NR) were wise to promote the use of older platform version games, a
      • How do you tally that with the fact that 360's are sold out pretty much everywhere? PGR3 is the best racing game ever (IMHO) and I bought mine just for that. Killer app in my opinion, but some people prefer others, and that's fine.

        I tally that with the planned undershipment of xBox360's, as was detailed in the Wall Street Journal, which was used to create a crowd feel, and has worked quite nicely in maximizing profit per unit.

        Me, I don't like racing games, except maybe Mario Kart. Did too much real racing.
        • I tally that with the planned undershipment of xBox360's, as was detailed in the Wall Street Journal, which was used to create a crowd feel, and has worked quite nicely in maximizing profit per unit.
          You do that for a few weeks to create buzz. You don't keep doing it for months. There's no doubt MS had launch supply problems - they say is was a ram problem. They're losing money on sales right now - you better believe they're making those things as fast as they can. The system isn't in the (non-gaming) press

  • Midway classics vs. Mame (Score:3, Interesting)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Thursday March 02, 2006 @03:36PM (#14837021) Homepage Journal
    I bought all 3 Midway Arcade treasures for my PS2 recently. At 10-13 bucks a compilation, I felt I was getting a good deal. Things to keep in mind:

    1. These are ports of arcade games. They have timers/dead man switches on almsot everything as arcade games were intended to get you in & out of there fast. Some of these countdown timers are thankfully disabled(a few racing games on compilation 3).

    2.The controls work right. I could NEVER get the controls to work right on certain games in MAME. Mind you, if I got APB to work right, the game would still suck horribly. I have a thrustmaster 2 for my PC, which is just like a PS2 controller + 2 buttons. For some reason, the right analog stick in MAME stuffs a z-rotation in there for dual-analog stick games(like Assault). Maybe I need a driver freshen.

    3. You cannot access cheat codes, unlike MAME. That's 1 point for MAME.

    4. I have more controllers for my PS2 than I do my PC(all keyboards aside). If I get a multitap, it's easily 3-4 player Gauntlet on the big screen. 1 point for the consoles.

    5. Yes, the endless searchin' for uncorrupted ROMs for mame to get the games to work right. Then when a new version comes out, you sometimes have to get revised roms. 1 point for consoles.

    Now if players could hook up over xbox live/whatever to play co-op or competitive on arcade games, oh man would that be fun.

    I hope Midway continues to release more arcade ports for the PS2. The 3rd compilation didn't have many games, and you found out just how bad Race Drivin' was with the controls & physics. The load times between races in Rush: the rock were awful. They have plenty more atari coin-op games to port over. Sure beats out the Sega compilation.

    • Re:Midway classics vs. Mame (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can hook up over Xbox Live. Gauntlet, Smash TV, Joust all support this. SF2 and UMK3 will too.

    • Now if players could hook up over xbox live/whatever to play co-op or competitive on arcade games, oh man would that be fun.

      You sure can! Gauntlet on live is great fun!

    • The revision rom thing is what I never 'got'. IMHO, a rom dump is a rom dump is a rom dump. You dump a machine once, and the rom should be good forever if the emulator is up to snuff.
      • Sometimes it turns out that an existing "standard" dump was damaged somehow, or that there is a newer revision of the same game out there.

        It still does bug me though when games like Pac-Man get revised like that, since I'm sure there haven't been any new versions of the arcade machine for years and while the number of people with the capability to dump the ROMs is small compared to consoles, it's still a popular enough game that you'd think it would have been verified hundreds of times over.

        I'd like to see
        • I'd like to see the 'why' also. Although I do appreciate the MAME effort, it's just not logical that the a large percentage to a WHOLE set of ROMS need to be updated for a new release. I haven't gone over the source code, or gotten into the intrinsics of the emulator, but I have a sneaking suspicion that extra information the emulator needs in order to run the ROM effectively is being stored in the ROMS themselves instead of an external file.

  • There has been no update for backwards compatible games on the 360 since December. What the hell is taking so long?
    • I don't know... perhaps because what they're doing is HARD?
    • Not so hard they can't get one game ported in 3 months.
    • There has been no update for backwards compatible games on the 360 since December. What the hell is taking so long?

      Maybe they think we're all tech geeks who only care about hardware, and don't actually want any games to play on our nice shiny useless boxes?

      Seems to me they are probably pushing new games, none of which are out or will be before the other consoles ship, in some desperate attempt to catch the edge of the wave. I think they should realize you shouldn't aim for the crest unless you're boogy-boa
      • They're definately pushing new games, but I disagree withy your statement that they won't be out before the other consoles. The other consoles are just having their first "public" demos at E3, meaning they're still months off. Over on the Xbox360, we've got Oblivion and Splinter Cell: Double Agent to look forward to this month, among others (I just listed to two that I have preorders on, obviously since those are the ones I want most).

        I'll gladly admit that the 360 lacked a huge launch lineup, but PGR3 wa

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