I'd love to have a Midway Collection for Switch or PS4. Arcade Archives has done a great job at modernizing Japan's arcade classics, including Nintendo's arcade games on Switch. I guess old arcade games are just too small potatoes for AT&T (which owns WB and includes all former Midway properties) to deal with.
Dragon Quest has adapted so well because of its basic design. All it needed was graphics to do the Akira Toriyama artwork justice in 3-D, and it had those as of DQVIII. Plus, unlike Final Fantasy, whose original creative team is long gone after the FF movie failed, and has been handed around to multiple designers, Dragon Quest still has the same three core designers behind it - Toriyama, Yuji Hori, and Koichi Sugiyama.
There was a kids' book of video game funnies that was published back during the Golden Age of Arcade Games that made fun of Pac-Man's eating habits, among other things. It was written by "Jovial Bob Stine", who I think was R.L. Stine that wrote the Goosebumps books ten years later.
It also had a manga spinoff that was not done by Akira Toriyama and didn't look anything like a Toriyama manga.
Fun fact: the villain of the Wizardry series is the name of one of its creators spelled backwards, Andrew Greenberg. That's also my name, LOL.
I've always thought of the dots as cereal marshmallows. That's an awful lot of diabeetus there. Plus, Pac-Man also eats a lot of questionable objects like bells, keys, and even Galaxian bosses (in the Atari 8-bit version, the Galaga boss was replaced with an Atari symbol.) Ms. Pac-Man ate much healthier than he did. Jr. Pac-Man, though, had an eating disorder eating his toys and even cats(!)
I had this game as well. It was pretty good, but it was rough and could have used a better budget. There is a massive difference in polish between Blue Dragon and Dragon Quest VIII and XI. Still, it was a good start. I wish Sakaguchi were still making console games and had gotten a long-term partnership with Nintendo. Mistwalker and Monolithsoft together under Nintendo's aegis would have been a huge RPG powerhouse.
The boss music was composed and performed by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, the same guy who sang "Smoke on the Water."
The arcade collection was kind of disappointing. Konami actually has one of the best classic arcade libraries, rivalling those of Namco, Atari, and Nintendo. They could have had Frogger, Gyruss, Scramble, Super Cobra, and so many other games on it. I guess since most of these are Arcade Archives titles it doesn't matter so much, but the SNK collection had a lot of games that were released separately as AA titles, so it could have been done I guess.
Stage Select: I've always wanted to see a Mortal Kombat turn-based RPG done as a collaboration between Netherrealm Studios and Square Enix, and that dream actually dates back to when Mortal Kombat 3 and Final Fantasy VI were the latest and hottest games. I also wouldn't mind Obsidian taking a crack at Mortal Kombat, and they'd honestly be better suited for it, but Obsidian is now owned by Microsoft and I'd rather not have to buy an Xbox to play a MK RPG. I'd want two fully explorable worlds - a fully explorable Earthrealm with locales like Liu Kang's Shaolin temple, Shang Tsung's Island, Chicago and the surrounding environs, all of them connected through airports, as well as a fully explorable Outworld where you get to visit the home realms of the Edenians (Kitana's people). the Shokan (Goro's people), the Tarkatan (Baraka's tribe). Either a world map like a classic Japanese RPG, or a fully explorable world along the lines of Fallout or Breath of the Wild. The time frame would be set during the first three games, where you'd witness the original Shaolin tournament and the fall of Earthrealm at the end of Mortal Kombat II. I'd like to see turn-based kombat with four-person parties composed of various Mortal Kombat characters, with their signature moves either being executed through menu commands or simple controller-motion techniques at the player's choice. And don't forget the Fatalities, which could be the game's stand-in for limit breaks. The last dungeon would be Shao Kahn's palace. The opening would be a playable flashback sequence that ends with the death of the original Kung Lao at Goro's hands 500 years in the past. However, like with FF6, the playable characters would be overall an ensemble cast with no clear main character and the story occasionally shifing focus around between say, Liu Kang, Scorpion, or Kitana much like how FF6 shifted between Terra and Celes. The soundtrack would be a collaboration between Dan "Toasty" Forden and Yoko Shimomura. I've always felt that Mortal Kombat has far more lore than can really be explored within the limits of a 1-on-1 fighting game.
Cage Match: Crystalis wins this round by being a great NES action-adventure. Journey to Silius looked pretty neat though.
I remember Joust 2 from Midway Arcade Treasures 1 on PS2 and Gamecube. That was the best Midway collection we ever got. Now WB won't even touch Midway's old catalogue.
