World Championship Poker
PS2 (2004)

If you don’t watch much television and haven’t been to the mall lately, you may not have realized that the game of poker is back in vogue in a big way. Between Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments being broadcast around the clock on cable television and retailers like Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R Us adding dedicated poker sections to their stores, the resurgence of poker is evident everywhere. All you need to join in on this current wave of fun is a deck of cards, a few friends, and your change bucket. But in case you don’t have a deck of cards or any friends, you can use the change from your bucket to pick up Crave Entertainment’s World Championship Poker, available for both the Playstation 2 and Xbox. And with a MSRP of only $19.95, hopefully you’ll still have some change left for when you do finally get a real deck of cards (and some friends).

For a budget title, World Championship Poker covers all the bases and offers players everything they could want in a single-player console-based card game. While the game plays several different variations and flavors of poker, the default mode is the currently popular Texas Hold ‘Em variation. Players ready to jump into the action can join a quick game at a table, sign up for a world tournament, or go online to face fellow human opponents. But before you hop into a game, you’ll first need to create your own character.

World Championship Poker’s create a character section is one of the most advanced avatar generators I’ve ever seen. After working through the easy choices (ethnicity, weight, hair color) you’ll get to choose your way through screen after screen of details. Everything from eyebrow width to style of teeth can be customized. The only frustrating part of the engine is that it doesn’t do some seemingly simple tasks. For example, players can choose one of about ten different hats, but you can’t change its color. Other than that, the character creation engine is quite robust and should allow almost anyone to create an avatar that resembles themselves (my son recognized mine immediately as me).

Once you’ve got a body, it’s time to sit it at a table. If you just want to get a feel for how the game works, you can select Sit at a Table and jump right in to a game. The goal of Sit at a Table is to be the last person, well, sitting at the table! This is accomplished by putting the rest of the jokers at your table out of the game, one at a time. In all honesty, the AI isn’t that tough to read, although sometimes the computer plays so terribly that it’s tough to figure out the type of hand they have. If you do end up needing a little help, R2 will bring up your helpful online advisor. Once you’ve aced this portion of the game, it’s time to move on to the World Tournaments, configured to play through just like the real thing (single elimination). One cool thing about World Championship Poker is, even if you’re out of a hand (or a game), you can continue to watch your AI opponents play through the rest of the hand. Just like in real life, to become a poker king you’ll need to watch how your opponents play and see the outcome of each hand to learn their particular style of play.

Both the Sit at a Table and World Tournament modes are single-player only. To play against another human being, you’ll need to pack up your cards and head online. Not only will you appear in the online poker tournaments with your customized avatar, but if you own a PS2 Eyetoy, the game will actually show your face in the game as well – cool feature! Both the PS2 and Xbox versions of World Championship Poker support online chatting as well, if clubbing your opponent verbally is more your style. Either way, online play is where the real action is. The only thing WCP is missing is a PayPal option for betting real cash. That’s probably just as well, as several of the games I played online just consisted of people sitting around jacking up the pot for no reason.

Consider yourself a diamond in the rough? You may want to forgo the games altogether and check out World Championship Poker’s tutorial section. All the variants of poker from normal five-card draw to Shanghai and Crazy Pineapple are explained here, as well as winning poker hands and some basic poker lingo. More slang terms are presented during the game’s loading screens.

World Championship Poker isn’t without its quirks. Your cyber opponents sometimes look a little zombie-ish a’la Madden 2001. The voice acting is mostly limited to short comments like “I’m folding” or “I’ll check.” The game also has a strange “Press X to Continue” policy. There’s almost always something in the corner of the screen where that message appears, so when the game informs you to press X, half the time I miss the message and end up staring at the screen, wondering when something’s going to happen.

Quirks aside, I heart this game! The lack of a two-player mode is surprising, but I suppose if you have friends in real life, one of you probably own a deck of cards. It’s easy to blow this game off as a simple budget title, but let’s call a spade a spade; World Championship Poker is a great game at a great price, especially with its online gameplay and friendly tutorial mode. $20 is less than the amount I lost the last time my friends and I got together to play poker, so I say the game is definitely worth the price. If you’ve watched World Series of Poker on television more than once or ever wished you lived a little closer to a casino, be sure to pick up World Championship Poker. And watch out for Flack405 online.

Wordtris
Super Nintendo (1992)

Despite the fact that Tetris may be one of the most perfect videogames of all time, developers have continued to tweak the formula over the years and release different variations of the original. Games such as Tetrisphere, Tetris Worlds and Welltris all built upon the original’s gameplay and took the series in new, fun and interesting directions. One of the most interesting variants to come out was Wordtris, a combination of classic Tetris gameplay and the board game Scrabble.

Replacing colored blocks in Wordtris are Scrabble-like letter tiles that drop from the sky. Instead of geometric shapes, words must be formed in order to advance through the game. Words of three letters or more can be formed both horizontally and vertically, although building words vertically is a dangerous gamble as the playing field is only ten tiles tall. Bonus points are awarded for words four letters in length and up, but once the game begins to speed up this becomes increasingly difficult.

In addition to letters, bonus items including bombs and potions (both of which eliminate existing tiles) drop frequently. Also appearing are tiles labeled with a question mark that turn into a random (and almost never helpful) letter when they land. But the biggest frustration isn’t these bonus tiles; it’s the complete random delivery of tiles. Like the original Tetris in which gamers found themselves begging for a “straight piece”, those playing Wordtris will quickly find themselves pleading at the screen for a vowel. There are only so many words a person can make with the letters FFFFFFFZXXXXV (not including Roman Numerals).

Settings in the menu system include one and two player modes that allow both competitive and cooperative modes. The ability to disallow repeated words exists, and like most versions of Tetris the starting difficulty level can be chosen.

Wordtris uses the Tetris gameplay in an interesting manner, but unfortunately each round’s outcome relies more on tile selection than actual skill. Despite that, the game is quite fun to play, especially to Scrabble fans. And, it’s much harder to toss the board when you’re losing.

Word Zapper
Atari 2600 (1982)

The easiest way to get kids to play educational videogames is to simply trick them into doing so. Word Zapper attempts this by disguising a combination spelling/memorization game as a space shooter. Unfortunately this duality is also the game’s major downfall – it’s neither particularly educational nor fun.

The object of Word Zapper is to memorize and spell back words displayed across the bottom of the screen. The alphabet continually scrolls across the top of the screen, and words are formed by shooting the correct letters in the correct order. This is made only slightly more difficult by the addition of horizontally scrolling ships that attempt to crash into your ship, dubbed the “rotary wing Word Zapper.”

Above the scrolling alphabet sits a countdown timer that starts at 99 and counts backwards to 0, at which point the game is over. The game also ends whenever a “Doomsday Asteroid” (a specific side-scrolling enemy) crashes into the Word Zapper, or the player successfully spells three words. The good news is that even in a worst-case scenario the game will be over in 99 seconds or less, which is likely to be as long as you’ll want to play Word Zapper.

Word Zapper supports one or two players and includes 24 gaming variations that allow you to configure every portion of the game from meteor speeds and density to the alphabet’s scrolling speed. While the game can be made more challenging, there’s no setting to make it fun. The spelling portion is elementary and the shooting elements are so boring that they may have actually convinced kids not to become astronauts. Instead of spelling, take a lesson in economics and skip this one. Class dismissed.

Wonderboy
Sega (1987)

Call me isolated, but for almost two decades I had no idea the classic platformer Wonderboy for the Commodore 64 was actually ported from an arcade game. While I knew the same was licensed from Sega and written by Activision, it wasn’t until just a few years ago when I happened across a Wonder Boy cartridge for the Sega Master System that I realized the game was released for multiple systems!

Wonderboy was released during the flood of platformers that followed Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., and while the game doesn’t contain the depth of hidden objects nor the iconic hero of the Mario games, it’s still a great platformer that I played the heck out of for many months.

The game’s mechanics should be familiar to fans of platformers. There are two basic types of enemies, those which take away from your Vitality meter (like rocks) and those which kill you instantly (most animals, rolling boulders, fire, and more). Your Vitality meter also acts as a timer and is continually being depleted, but it can be restored by eating any of the snacks (from bananas to banana splits!) you come across. There are also giant yellow eggs that can be busted open to reveal weapons, guardian angels, skateboards, tomahawks, and other goodies to help Wonderboy in his quest. Throughout the levels are hidden cupie dolls, each of which will have to eventually be collected in order to fight the final boss.

Since the C64 is limited to one joystick-button, jumping is done by pressing diagonal on the stick. Holding down your stick’s fire button makes you run faster, and after picking up throwing axes the fire button throws them too.

Wonderboy contains everything that made the classic 2D platformers of the mid-1980’s great. The Commodore 64 was designed to deliver colors, graphics, sound effects and music such as this. The whimsical enemies (from whirling natives to jumping octopi) are as cute as they are deadly, and the game’s platform designs are both challenging and entertaining.

Wii Sports
Wii (2007)

Back in 1977, Atari set a videogame precedent with the release of its Atari 2600 VCS console — that precedence was, home videogame consoles should include a game. Thirty years after its release Combat may not seem terribly exciting, but that wasn’t necessarily the point. The point was (and is), after spending a couple (or few) hundred bucks on a brand new console, “said console” should come with a game to play when you get it home. For decades, this has been the rule. Some consoles (like the original PlayStation) bent the rules a bit, offering single-level demo versions of multiple games instead of one single game – but again, at least when you got the system home it did something. In recent years, more and more companies have opted to not include a pack-in game with their system (neither the Xbox 360 nor Sony’s PS3 comes with a game.) Thankfully, Nintendo stuck with the age-old pack-in game tradition by including Wii Sports with their latest console, the Wii.

Wii Sports consists of five simplistic sports games: Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing. Each game uses the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller (the Wiimote) to simulate actual sport-related motions. The result is five mini-games that are all easy to learn and fun to play but not particularly advanced. Then again, neither was Combat.

Tennis, the first of five games, allows 1-4 players to pick up a Wiimote and go head-to-head (to-head-to-head) on a virtual tennis court. The game’s controls are super-simplistic; as the Wii controls your player’s running direction, all that’s left for you to do is swing the racket in the corresponding direction (forehand, backhand, or overhand). Players can somewhat control the direction of their shot by the timing of their swing. Regardless of the number of human participants there are always four players on the court. In one or two player games, gamers control both players on their side of the net (again, controlled by the time of the swing). Despite the game’s simple controls, Tennis is actually quite fun. By varying swing speeds and techniques the game yields more variety than one would initially suspect. In addition to the game itself, there is a constant threat of being whacked in the head by your opponent’s Wiimote and the constant fear that someone is going to bash their hand into your ceiling fan, or let go of the Wiimote and send it smashing into your expensive flat-screen television.

Baseball, the second game on the disc, brings more fun yet simple gameplay to the Wii. Anyone who has ever played or seen America’s favorite pastime played before will find the Wiimote controls intuitive. Batting is performed (as one might suspect) by swinging the remote like a baseball bat. Pitching is performed by swinging the Wiimote in an overhand motion. Pitchers have a few more controls at their disposal; by holding down one or more buttons, pitchers can choose between four different types of pitches. The velocity and force at which the remote is swung affects the speed of your virtual pitches as well. (Again, both of these motions are likely to scare owners of expensive televisions, with both the batters and pitchers swinging remotes with much force.) Like Tennis, all player motion control including outfielding and base running is automated by the console. The distance from which the ball lands determines whether a hit is a single, double, or triple. While gamers looking for a serious game of baseball will find the lack of control frustrating, the game is what it is — more of a “Wiimote learning tool” than an actual baseball simulation.

Next up is Bowling, possibly the most entertaining game on the disc. Once again, the motion of swinging a bowling ball and releasing it is duplicated via the Wiimote. Release the button too early and your ball will go sailing backwards, causing onlookers to jump; release too late and your ball will sail through the air before plonking down somewhere down the lane. Bowling seems to be the most sensitive of the five games when it comes to the remote’s control – slight variations in the Wiimote’s orientation will cause your ball to spin, backspin, or, if you’re like me, make a bee-line to the gutter.

The fourth game on the disc, Golf, has players teeing off against one another in up to nine holes of virtual golf. Again, the key to the game is in controlling the Wiimote, which held like a typical golf club. Swing too hard and the power bar will go all wonky, causing your ball to either hook or slice. I personally found Golf to be the hardest of the five games to control, with the Wiimote occasionally not recognizing my swings or reading my power level incorrectly (especially while putting). I don’t mind the Wiimote when it enhances gameplay, but if it actually hinders my ability to play a game then it’s more frustrating than enjoyable. I think a putt-putt style game would have been more enjoyable here, leaving the “real” golf to Tiger Woods 2007 fans.

Boxing is the last game on the disc and the only one to use both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck (the “other” Wii remote). By holding one remote in each hand, gamers will unleash their padded-fist fury by pounding their bobble-headed opponents into submission. Once again fun triumphs over technical prowess here – boxing fans will lament the lack of accuracy and control within this mini-game, while fun-seekers will over look this and happily swing wildly at one another. Boxing is probably the most physically exhausting of the disc’s five games. Your arms will be burning after this one

Wii Sports makes good use of the Wii’s Mii system. Miis are avatars that you create for gaming with on the Wii. Miis can be traded among friends online. It’s entertaining to see your friends show up as tennis opponents or members of your own baseball team.

Although it has faults, it’s hard to complain too loudly about Wii Sports. While some of the games are more fun than the others, they’re all playable. Each one does a good job of introducing players to the Wiimote, and they’re all easy to pick up within a minute or two. When gamers unacquainted with the Wii controller drop by to check it out, this is the game you’ll toss in. My five-year-old son beat me 3-2 in Tennis last night, so a complete mastery of videogames is not required to enjoy (and gosh, have fun) playing these games. Those looking for a bit more depth will likely find it in any of the consoles other $50 games – those looking to kill a few fun-filled nights with those non-hardcore gamers in their lives will find Wii Sports fits the bill nicely.

Uridium
Hewson (1986)

Uridium is one of the fastest games I’ve ever played. At top speed, things whiz by you so quickly that your reflexes simply aren’t fast enough. You’ll have to memorize the levels to fly at that speed – too bad you can’t memorize where the next wave fleet of enemies will be coming from.

It doesn’t matter that the box says you’re piloting a Manta class Space Fighter. In Uridium, you fly a snowspeeder from The Empire Strikes Back, making horizontal runs along the surface of big huge ships called Dreadnaughts (which might as well be Star Destroyers). Similar to a side-scrolling Zaxxon, players must destroy guns, ships, and parts of the Dreadnaughts themselves by shooting them. To complicate matters, you’ll be under constant attack by waves of enemy fighters who don’t take too kindly to your attempts to destroy their star cruiser. Fly too slowly and you’ll be hunted down by a smart mine. Fly too fast and you’ll discover the hard way all the walls, antenna, and other indestructible objects that have been mounted to the deck of the ship.

Destroy enough of the ship and you’ll be given clearance to land, after which the Dreadnaught will begin to self-destruct. Don’t spend too much time celebrating. Another ship is always waiting in the wings.

Uridium was one of the first games I ever saw on the Commodore 64 that made me say, “this looks good enough to be an arcade game.” It looked and played that good to me. From your ship’s spinning 180 degree U-turns to the shadows cast on the decks of the Dreadnaughts, Uridium was a graphical masterpiece. Programmed and designed by the legendary Andrew Braybrook (also responsible for Paradroid and the C64 port of Rainbow Islands), Uridium raised the space shoot-‘em-up bar to an all-new level. Along with a catchy theme song and some exciting sound effects, Uridium sounded as good as it looked.

Fans of the game should also check out Uridium+ and Uridium II, which combine the same frantic gameplay with all new layouts. Uridium was also one of the games included on the recent all-in-one Commodore 64 gaming joystick.

Despite its breakneck speed and overall lack of depth, Uridium is a classic entry in the shoot-‘em-up genre. Just when computer games appeared to have hit a plateau, Uridium blew the Commodore community away and sent programmers back to the drawing board collectively scratching their heads.

Ultra Bust-A-Move
Xbox (2004)

In the early days of electronic gaming, the biggest challenge game developers faced was coming up with new and exciting games to market to consumers. These days, their biggest challenge has become finding new ways to convince consumers to buy the same games over and over each time they are re-released for a new generation of consoles.

Take Bust-A-Move (originally Puzzle Bobble), for example. Since the game’s 1994 arcade debut, it has been ported to over a dozen different consoles, including the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, Gameboy Advance, Gamecube, Playstation 2, and many more. And just when you swore you’d never buy another port of this game again, along comes Ultra Bust-A-Move for the Xbox, which offers a feature many gamers have been hoping to get for years: online play.

Ultra Bust-A-Move makes no attempt to reinvent the bubble, er, wheel. Like every previous incarnation, the object of the game is to clear all the colored bubbles stuck to the top of the play area by launching other colored bubbles at them. Sticking three bubbles of the same color together causes them to pop, dropping any other bubbles hanging off of the cluster. In one player mode your goal is to clear each stage of all bubbles and continue on to the next. With two players, you’ll need to clear your side of bubbles faster than your opponent.

Various game modes from past versions (including four-player mode from the N64 version) have been stripped, making this particular port relatively lean. Also missing are Bub and Bob, the cute dinosaurs from the Bubble Bobble franchise who have appeared in all previous incarnations of the game. This time around they’ve been replaced by generic looking bubble-headed people.

Without any new in-game features, Taito is betting people will be interested in Ultra Bust-A-Move solely for the online experience. The Xbox Live portion offers a simple head-to-head experience that works as advertised. Again there are no surprises or special features to be found here, but if you’ve been dying to play Bust-A-Move online against other people via a console gaming system, here’s your chance.

And to be honest, that’s really the only reason to purchase Ultra Bust-A-Move. Not to burst your bubble, but if you aren’t interested in online play and already own another version of this game, you can skip this one.

Ultimate Puzzle Games
Gameboy Advance

Ultimate Puzzle Games is the perfect solution for word puzzle aficionados who can’t afford a pencil. And with over a thousand different puzzles included for gamers to solve, this game may be cheaper than buying all those pencils anyway.

Packaged in the compilation are a dozen types of word games including crossword puzzles, word searches, and several other close variants thereof. Most of the puzzle categories include over a hundred unique puzzles, bringing the actual number of included puzzles to 1,001. Three of the included categories are for “mini” puzzles that are smaller in design, perfect for younger gamers (or adults on a bathroom break). The larger puzzles typically expand beyond the screen’s boundaries. In each game, clues are given and answers are entered via a virtual keyboard. The game’s input system is simple and intuitive – the on-screen keyboard is quick and easy to navigate and input words with.

The puzzles include several handy features including the ability to save your place at any given time in one of the game’s two save slots, toggle the sound effects and music on and off, and, for the time impaired or the just plain stumped, display each puzzle’s solution. The menu system also includes a quick tutorial to explain the rules of each game. A nice inclusion is the ability to track which puzzles have already been completed.

The variety and sheer number of puzzles included should keep gamers coming back for a long time. Ultimate Puzzle Games is not only fun to play, but also a lot more entertaining than a box of pencils.

Transformers
Ocean Software (1985)

The raging battle between the Autobots and Decepticons continues in this exclusive title for the Commodore 64 computer. Take control of five different Transformers in the Autobots’ quest for Energon.

Back before fantastic graphics and CGI cut scenes, videogames often included additional paper documentation to explain who the characters where and what you were supposed to be doing. Atari, for example, packaged comic books with many of their games to add depth and back stories to their titles. Some early games relied so heavily on this documentation that without it, the games were difficult to play and didn’t make much sense. Ocean’s Transformers title was one of those games.

Like millions of other Commodore 64 owners in the 1980s, my primary source of software was the file areas of local bulletin board systems. Unfortunately for us, without documentation many of these free games were confusing, difficult, or even impossible to play. For example, the Commodore 64 version of Transformers contains absolutely no text explaining anything, leaving the point of the game largely a mystery and the game play mechanics an exercise in trial and error.

In the Transformers universe, the Autobots largely got the shaft by only being able to transform into cars and trucks, while the evil Decepticons convert into fighter jets. Let’s face it, who would choose a Volkswagen Beetle over a supersonic jet? Here, players get the opportunity to control Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, Mirage and Hound. Each Transformer can only die once, giving players a total of five lives with which to complete the game. Each character can transform between their robotic and vehicular modes, although players will discover within five seconds that the four-wheeled modes are essentially worthless. At least in their robot forms the Autobots can shoot and fly. Yes, fly. Like Superman, all of the Autobots can fly through the air with a flick of the stick.

One new detail I don’t seem to recall from the comics or television series is that the Autobots in this game are constructed of fragile porcelain. The slightest fall or collision into the background will instantly transform your Transformer into a giant flaming fireball. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t kill you is the one thing you might think would; attacks from the evil Decepticons, of which there are seemingly unlimited numbers. Each Autobot has a finite amount of shields which are depleted by the Decepticons’ attacks. Theoretically once your shields are gone your character is destroyed. I’ve never been able avoid being killed by stepping off a platform long enough to find out.

For close to twenty years I had no idea what the point or goal of this game was. Only now through the wonders of the Internet was I able to track down the documentation and discover the game’s back story – not that the information makes the game any easier to play, mind you. Apparently the goal of the game is to collect pieces of Energon while battling Decepticons, but as I previously mentioned your Transformers are so fragile that even without the Decepticons buzzing around and shooting you in the head, you’re probably going to kill yourself within seconds anyway by flying into something or stepping off a platform.

Ocean Software’s Transformers opens with an impressive splash screen and some terrific sounding music. The in game graphics are a mixed bag; the characters are detailed enough to distinguish from one another, but the backgrounds are extremely plain. While Transformers fans may enjoy recognizing familiar characters and running around the levels for a few minutes, only the most adept gamers will be able to get anywhere in this challenging platformer.

Tecmo Classic Arcade
PS2/Xbox (2005)

Someone has definitely not been saving the best for last. Tecmo Classic Arcade follows a long line of classic arcade compilations which have been released this summer, including Capcom Classics Collection, Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary, Taito Legends and MIdway’s Arcade Treasures 3. Unfortunately no matter how you slice it, Tecmo’s game collection simply doesn’t stand up against the competition.

Every successful retro compilation needs to have three things: a $20 price tag, interesting extras (such as interviews or trivia), and of course a broad selection of fun games. Tecmo Classic Arcade retails for $30, has lackluster extras, and a small selection of mostly awful games. You can probably see where this is heading.

Unlike most of the other recent home retro compilations which contain twenty to thirty games, Tecmo Classic Arcade contains eleven. Of those, three (at best) could be considered classics. Bomb Jack, Rygar and Solomon’s Key are the games 80’s arcade afficianados are most likely to remember. Others such as Senjyo, Swimmer and Pinball Action left arcades as quickly as they arrived.

Tecmo managed to nail the menu, with an easy to navigate system and nearly instantaneous load times into and out of games. The background music is simply a combination of all the games playing at once, and that’s okay; retrogamers don’t care about licensed music tracks (trust me, we’ve heard them all before and they simply end up increasing load times and royalty fees). When each title is highlighted on the main menu, scrolling text gives a brief summary of the game. Basic options such as the number of men and other variables can be changed for each game here as well.

Ah yes, the games. As mentioned, Rygar, Bomb Jack and Solomon’s Key are the three games most players will find themselves drawn to. All three allow unlimited continues, so you’ll be able to play as long as you wish. Bomb Jack’s platform action, Solomon’s puzzles and Rygar’s deadly yo-yo all provide plenty of entertainment and memories. Players will not be disappointed in these.

Unfortunately the rest of the titles demonstrate Tecmo’s skill of being a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. There’s a vertical SHMUP (Starforce), a horizonal one (Strato Fighter), two sports games (Tecmo Cup and Tecmo Bowl), and a few other games. There’s the Battlezone-esque Senjyo, the Space Invaders-esque Pleiads, and the arcade-based pinball game Pinball Action. Even as a self-proclaimed fan of retro games, I found it hard to play most of these games longer than five minutes. Tecmo Bowl is probably the closest to being fun, but anyone familiar with the NES or SNES versions of the game probably won’t care much for the arcade version. There are no “plays” to select (simply pick a receiver before the hike), and the game is simply too easy.

Extras on the disc are limited to pictures of marquees, side art and sales flers for each game, each of which can be zoomed in and out of and moved around the screen, guaranteeing owners a least a minute or two of entertainment.

Tecmo is pretty bold for referring to most of these games as “classics”. Few of them retain any replay value because they simply aren’t fun. Many of the games like Pleiads, Starforce and Strato Fighter offer nothing to separate themsevles from the thousands of other similar games out there, and games like Pinball Action are just weird. The good games make a good supporting cast, but there’s no headliner to be found.

Tecmo Classic Arcade has an uninspired selection of weak games, unexciting extras, and an inflated price tag. The few fun games included aren’t worth the asking price. Wait for this one to hit bargain bins.