Smash TV (XBLA, 2005)

Smash TV

Developed by Midway/Digital Eclipse

Published by Midway

Released for XBLA (11/24/2005)

Also on Arcade

 

Around a year after Xbox Live Arcade launched, Midway dropped a bunch of arcade classics as download-only titles onto the service and Smash TV was one such title. An arcade fondly remembered by those who played it back in the day, Smash TV is a twin-stick shooter with a game show theme heavily inspired by the Running Man. We'll go into a brief overview of the game to see if it's still worth playing all these years later... 

Smash TV is the textbook definition of an arcade quarter muncher, meaning that the game is excessively difficult and designed to empty out all of the quarters from your pockets. Death will come quick and frequently in Smash TV as you are constantly being swarmed from enemies in all directions. There are only 3 levels, but there are many screens within each. You'll get to choose your own path as you go, making for some nice replay value should you decide to come back for more. Each room is a screen where you'll have to fend off an onslaught of enemies while powerups and bonus prizes appear at random during the action. There's a nice array of weaponry to find here, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

This is Vegas (Xbox 360, Cancelled)

This is Vegas
Developed by Surreal Software
Published by Midway/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Announced for PS3/Xbox 360 (2/2008)
Cancelled (8/2010)

This is Vegas was originally announced in February 2008 and was being developed by Surreal Software, a studio perhaps best known for the Suffering series that had releases for PlayStation 2, Gamecube, PC and Xbox. This is Vegas was going to be an open-world game that would let you explore Las Vegas and featured gambling, racing, fighting and partying.

There was some gameplay footage released for the game (link at bottom), but it only showcases the party aspect of the game. The character walks around a nightclub, speaking with various people and obtaining objectives. One of the missions involves dancing in order to get the dance floor popping. The dancing is about what you'd expect, involving hitting button combinations as they scroll down to the indicator at the bottom. Another objective involves punching an obnoxious patron. The fighting system was proposed to have had combos and defense options and from what was shown on the video, the fighting actually didn't look all that bad.

After completing these objectives the character goes over to the bar, orders a drink, swigs it down and throws up in front of a bunch of females, who all run off disgusted. They also display our character trying to dance while inebriated, sloppily flailing about and bumping into nearby patrons. It is then demonstrated that you can bring your buzz down by using the urinal. After this, they show that you can serve drinks, which turns into a minigame where you have to serve customers quickly before they become irritated, a bit similar to the arcade Tapper, though it didn't look near as fun as that old classic. 

Our character is then shown back on the dance floor, busting out some more moves and getting the whole crowd involved for some synchronized dancing. After this, apparently our character has earned enough 'party points' to unlock the wet t-shirt contest, so he gets to grab the spray hose and blast 3 giggling ladies. After this we get one final shot of the dance floor, which shows it packed up and everybody having a good time, with the party officially popping. As far as the gameplay is concerned, it looked decent for what it was but it's a bit odd how they would choose to showcase what is easily the most uninteresting aspect of the game (partying). I think it's safe to say most people would've much rather had a look into the gambling, racing or fighting. Showcasing one of these, especially if the gambling part looked good, would have definitely helped garner some more interest in the title.

This is Vegas ran into some issues when publisher Midway closed down due to bankruptcy and most of its assets went to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. At the point when the publisher changed, Midway had already invested around $43 million into the development of This is Vegas, but the game still wasn't quite ready for release yet. The game still had a lot of development time left and would take around a year to finish at the time Warner Bros. attained the property. They must have deemed it too expensive to finish and cancelled the project. That's over $40 million and several years of development time just thrown away. This is Vegas was definitely an ambitious project, maybe too ambitious, but is still an interesting one to look back on and wonder what could have been. Perhaps they should have just focused on the gambling aspect and left all that other stuff as an after-thought for a sequel if it worked out?

Related Links:
This is Vegas - Xbox Marketplace
This is Vegas Trailer - YouTube
This is Vegas Gameplay Footage - YouTube
This is Vegas Canned Announcement - Xbox Achievements
This is Vegas - Wikipedia

Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (XBLA, 2011)

Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection
Developed by Midway/Other Ocean Interactive
Published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Released for Xbox Live Arcade (8/2011)
Also on PC/PS3

Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (why not Arkade) was released in 2011 and boasted to have the original arcade versions of the first three entries in the series. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was previously released on XBLA but had since been de-listed, so it was nice to see that game make a return in some form. The games all featured support for both local and online versus battles. Let's start off with a brief look at each game:

The original Mortal Kombat game came out way back in 1992. I remember thinking this game looked pretty sweet all those years ago, but looking at it in modern times the first entry in the series really hasn't aged all that well. While the game does seem pretty accurate to the arcade version, the move-sets are quite limited and the characters all play alike except for a few special moves. There's only seven fighters to choose from, and while they are a colorful crew it just feels a bit lacking. Thanks to nostalgia, I'll personally always be able to play and enjoy the original Mortal Kombat but its simplicity will probably bore most of those who didn't grow up with it.

Mortal Kombat II hit arcades in 1993, just one year after the first title. Midway went all-out on this sequel and added in a bunch of new characters, fatalities and secrets. The new characters were all welcome additions and everything about the gameplay just felt better the second time around. There were more moves, better graphics and nastier gore. In my opinion, the second game was always the best in the series when it came to the original arcade Mortal Kombat games and the version included here is a solid port of the arcade.

Mortal Kombat 3 (for some reason they didn't use roman numerals this time) would release in 1995 and would receive an update that same year, titled Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. The Ultimate version of the game added in some fan-favorites and is considered by many to be the best version of MK3. The version included in the XBLA trilogy doesn't feel like it was ported from the original arcade code, feeling more like one of the console ports of the time. The character sprites look low-resolution and the colors feel a bit washed out. The game looks quite a bit worse than the previous two and I'm sure that wasn't the case with the arcade version of this game. Personally I was never a big fan of the third game but if it was your favorite beware this is no perfect port. It's still totally playable if you're willing to use the goofy run button and memorize lengthy combo chains.

The games all feature support for both local and online versus competition. While it can be tough to find a random lobby, if you have a friend with the game on Xbox Live and are able to play it the netcode is above average. You'll want to play against a friend for maximum enjoyment as the computer AI in all three games can be downright brutal and cheap. The options and settings are bare minimum but it does at least have a graphics filters and screen-size options. While definitely not a perfect compilation, Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is still a nice blast of nostalgia for those '90's folks that remember these games. I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of Mortal Kombat 4, which was the last MK title to release as a proper arcade, but for some reason they never bother (likely due to emulating the 3D hardware of the time). The standard Xbox controller isn't the best for these types of games, which are definitely best experienced with an arcade joystick.

Final Verdict: If you're a fan of the original trilogy of Mortal Kombat games, you will enjoy Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. Nostalgia member-berries galore with this one.

Related Links:
Buy Mortal Kombat Arcade - Xbox Marketplace
Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment - Official Site 
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection - Metacritic
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection - GameFAQs
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection - True Achievements

BlackSite: Area 51 (Xbox 360, 2007)

BlackSite: Area 51
Developed by Midway Studios Austin
Published by Midway Games
Released for Xbox 360
Also on PC (11/2007)/PS3 (12/2007)

If you're at all familiar with the 1995 arcade hit Area 51 from Atari Games, then you'd do best to not build any expectations for this game based on its original source material. In fact, the only thing this and the old game really have in common is that they both take place in the location Area 51 and have you shooting aliens! This was not Midway's first effort at turning Area 51 into an FPS, as there was another game simply titled Area 51 that came out on Xbox/PS2/PC back in 2005, which was from the same developers.

Midway Studios Austin definitely had some ambition with this title. They tried to turn the simple rail-shooter arcade hit Area 51 into an FPS title with a cinematic presentation. To be honest, the lengthy and quite frequent dialogue-driven parts of the game bored me to pieces and I couldn't wait to just start shooting some aliens. These are peppered all throughout the campaign between action segments and are unfortunately unskippable. Also, in order to hear the dialogue you'll have to turn the volume way up as it's extremely quiet when compared to the gunfire and the developers neglected to include subtitles for those who would prefer to use that (I frequently use this option in dialogue-heavy games).

I can't help but reminisce about how action-packed the old Area 51 arcade game was, where you're shooting aliens within seconds and for the entire duration of your play-time whereas with BlackSite, there is a dedicated effort to build a story around the action and they play it as serious as possible. Personally I think had they applied the campy B-movie feel of the original game, this could have been much more entertaining and memorable.

The campaign features maps that at a glance may look expansive, which some of them are, but they are all navigated in an extremely linear fashion and are separated by lengthy loading screens. In certain parts you are allowed to drive your vehicle around, for some reason they decided to map the accelerate/brake button the left analog stick, which feels extremely clunky at first. One thing you'll notice about the boots-on-ground combat is that there is no run button. Also I wanted to note that the final battle in the game was quite a let-down as you just battle some alien soldier dude; I wanted a fight with some sort of gigantic alien beast but instead you fight a guy that looks pretty much like the grunt soldiers you're shooting through the entire game! Graphically the game looks a bit better than something that would have come out on the PS2, which is about what you would have to expect for a 360 game in 2007.

In addition to the single-player campaign the game also features online-multiplayer. While the servers have been shut down at this point, you would have struggled mightily to find a game on these even back in the day. There were just too many other, more popular options for FPS games even back in 2007. Given that this is a 10-year old game at this point, and one that nobody ever really talks about for that matter, I'm not at all surprised by the lack of online multiplayer. I also thought it would be worth mentioning that the game froze up on me on during the spore tower boss fight about halfway through the campaign.

In summary, BlackSite: Area 51 has some decent gunplay but the game drags on a bit longer than it needs to. While it may have been decent back in 2007, this one's not really worth your time these days. BlackSite reminded me of Duke Nukem Forever in a few ways, with its driving and turret segments mixed in with your standard alien-killing FPS action but without the humor, character or run button of that game. If you're really itching for some alien-blasting at the top-secret facility, then I'd recommend to go back and play the older but superior Area 51 game on the Xbox before messing with BlackSite.

Final Verdict: BlackSite features gameplay similar to Duke Nukem Forever in more than a few ways, with driving segments and helicopter turret areas mixed in with the traditional alien-killing FPS minus the humor, personality and run button. So, if you're one of the many who disliked Duke Nukem Forever, it's a safe bet you'd want to stay away from this title.

Purchase Links:
Buy BlackSite: Area 51 - eBay

Related Links:
BlackSite: Area 51 - Metacritic
BlackSite: Area 51 - GameFAQs
BlackSite: Area 51 Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
BlackSite: Area 51 - True Achievements