Tag Archives: midway games

PlayStation 2, Reviews

Shadow Hearts [PlayStation 2] – Review

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Shadow Hearts - PlayStation 2 - North American Box Art

Up until playing it, I’ve only ever had two associations when thinking about Shadow Hearts. One related to the game’s Judgment Ring, an appealing mechanic that added an element of action to otherwise typical turn-based battles. The other, more prominent association was the proximity of its release to Final Fantasy X, one of the most anticipated games at the time. At first blush, this seems like unfortunate timing, but in actuality it was opportunistic: a hope that those awaiting Final Fantasy X would purchase Shadow Hearts to bide their time with a similar role-playing game, albeit one with a much smaller development budget. With this in mind, I long ago established modest expectations. Now that I’ve completed it, I’ve found that these expectations were spot-on, which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy playing Shadow Hearts, but it was somewhat unimpressive. Continue reading Shadow Hearts [PlayStation 2] – Review →

PlayStation 2, Random Games

Random Game #8 – Midway Arcade Treasures 3 [PlayStation 2]

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Midway Arcade Treasures 3When you have a video game collection like mine, it can be hard to play all of the games. This is especially true when additions are made on an almost weekly basis. Still, I appreciate nearly every game I’ve accumulated for this reason or that. In the hopes of improving my writing through continuous effort and promoting ongoing learning of these games, I’m going to compose brief, descriptive articles.

The Midway Arcade Treasures series was a great batch of compilations. The three releases on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube compiled around 60 arcade games spanning 20 years. The third game differed from the previous two as it focused on a single genre – racing games. A majority of the games didn’t resonate with me as they were classic top-down racers. I can appreciate them, and enjoy them in multiplayer, but my focus was honed in on two titles – Hydro Thunder and Offroad Thunder.  These two 1999 releases were the epitome of what arcade racing games were at that point – flashy, fast, and fun. Completely unlike Race Drivin’…

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 was released in North America on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on September 26, 2005 and on the GameCube exactly one month later – October 26, 2005. The individual games were primarily developed by Atari Games and Midway Games, although there are some other studios in the mix. The ports were handled by Digital Eclipse and the game was published by Midway.