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Farewell to Midway Games - Part II
October 9, 2009 | 1:00 AM PST
Last time in our farewell to Midway Games, we looked at some of the more common classic entries in their deep archives. Everybody knows games like Joust and Defender, but the 90's lineup of Midway/Atari Games classic tends to be overlooked with the exception of the obvious all-timers such as Mortal Kombat. These years truly were Midway's golden era. Starting with the obvious headliner, let's look at a favorable sampling of Midway's lineup from the last great era of arcade games, the Clinton years, aka the 1990s.
Mortal Kombat [Series]
Ah, the game that kicked off the often laughable "video game violence" debate and got conservative politicians all hot and bothered. Mortal Kombat was one of the single most defining titles of the early 90s. It also helped usher in Midway's modern approach to "Big Badass American Video Games," the effects of which continue to trickle down into productions even today. Mortal Kombat was the American response to Street Fighter II. While being a 2D fighter by definition, it played totally different from Capcom's offering in that most of the characters controlled very similarly, defined mostly by their image, personality, and their trademark finishing moves: fatalities. A large percentage of parents just bought games for their kids and used them as digital babysitters (oh, how the world has changed....not), but can you imagine the first time an uptight parent walks into the arcade/living room and sees their child performing a fatality? I'd pay for the laughs of seeing that again.
MK's blood bath was a watershed moment for gaming and one of its first trips into the mainstream since the original arcade boom of the early 80s. It was also one of the first major titles to make the learning of "codes" mainstream, as Mortal Kombat required pretty detailed and precise knowledge to pull off all the satisfying stuff compared to Street Fighter II where some general three quarter motions and half-rolls in varying combinations could at least get results for a newbie. Mortal Kombat's initial home port to Genesis and Super Nintendo helped solidify Nintendo's image as "kiddy" to an entire generation of maturing NES owners when Nintendo notoriously had the blood removed from the home port (you could use a code to get it back on the Genesis). Future titles went uncensored, but the damage was already done and resonates to this very day, even though nobody remembers where it began.
Many claim the series peaked with Mortal Kombat II. That's debatable for sure, but certainly the series' greatest days were in the era of 2D digitized graphics. The series lost a lot of its mainstream charm after going 3D with MK4 (and beyond), and the ever increasing level of violence in video games also helped to dull the appeal. Mortal Kombat is one of the few franchises sure to survive the Midway collapse. In fact, the MK franchise is likely the primary reason Warner Bros. coughed up the cash. Now lets just hope they don't try to mainstream MK's appeal by toning down the insane violence for a T rating. Otherwise, that multimillion dollar investment may just have been a giant waste.
Smash TV
Who would have thought that a video game could have predicted the future of television? Perhaps modern day reality shows haven't quite hit the level of violence in Smash TV, but we're well on our way. Smash TV envisions the reality show of the future, all the way to the year 1999 (again, they weren't that far off) where contestants sign a bunch of wavers, grab a gun, and throw themselves into the path of mortal danger for the reward of home appliances and a bunch of other crap that isn't worth the risk. Imagine Contra crossed with The Price Is Right with a mechanical evil Bob Barker/Drew Carey as the final boss. It's just psycho fun and the true definition of old school video game random violence. You plow through room after room of endless bad guys, killing them to win stuff like toasters and used cars while picking up as much cash off the floor as possible and finding enough power-ups to prolong your killing spree.
Smash TV is just one of those games screaming for a remake. There hasn't been much like it since, which is a real shame.
NBA Jam [Series]
To many, the NBA's glory days were the 90s. NBA Jam's $1 billion quarters in arcade revenue wouldn't seem to discredit that fact. NBA Jam ditched the quest for a perfect digital recreation of basketball in favor for an on-screen flurry of fast, fiery 2-on-2 arcade action. Forget realism. Bring us the 30 foot backboard shattering dunks, and "On Fire" players. NBA Jam was everything an arcade game should be, and on top of that, it included a selection of unlockable characters like sports mascots, and politicians. Even Mortal Kombat characters were included, though they had to be removed from home revisions due to the NBA's fear of controversy. NBA Jam was stocked with the best digital sampling of famous players from the then current roasters. Sure, the home conversions lacked Michael Jordan, Shaq, or Charles Barkley (due to licensing issues), but people didn't seem to mind.
After NBA Jam took the world by storm, Acclaim (holders of the rights to develop Midway home conversions) decided to go on a dickish greed rampage and took advantage of their position by suing Midway for the rights to the franchise's name. Somehow they managed to win that suit, but Midway treated it as an opportunity. While Acclaim trashed the "Jam" name by eventually turning it into a borderline sim,
Midway moved on and created a real sequel in the form of NBA Hangtime. Fans knew the difference. Hangtime was an exaggerated NBA Jam with even more insane gameplay, create-a-character, and improved visuals. The home port to N64 proved to be one of the most popular launch titles for the platform. Things didn't seem like they could get any better...that is, until Midway's arcade NBA went 3D.
To close out the 1990s, Midway decided to go all out and produced what is unarguably one of the greatest arcade sports games of all time: NBA Showtime. This time, along with the now standard NBA license, Midway sought out the full NBC license, bringing home all the broadcast graphics, and trademark John Tesh "Roundball Rock" ("Ba nah duh nuh nuh na nah nah") theme music to replicate the full look and feel of arguably the NBA's greatest era: The NBA on NBC. And to top it all off, the series used its new 3D presentation to go all out with the pretty visuals.
Midway followed up Showtime with a slower, and overall crappier console sequel by the name of NBA Hoopz for consoles after they shut down the arcade division, but by then the magic was gone. The NBA Jam series had already seen its greatest heights in arcades, but we will never forget the sight of President Bill Clinton playing a game of hoops with Mortal Kombat alumni Sub Zero. That image with last forever.
Cruis'n [Series]
"Of course it's not realistic...who cares, you know? That's the thing that I think a whole lot of people are missing right now in the driving game environment...they're trying to go for reality. Well, I drive enough. Thank you, but no thank you. I don't want reality. I want fun."
--Xion Cooper, artist for Cruis'n World
Today, fast action ultra satisfying arcade racing is practically a dead genre on home consoles thanks to the focus on sims. But back in the 90s, things were different. 3D graphics arguably helped no other genre advance faster than racers, and arcade graphics back then were always at least a generation and a half ahead of the consoles. Once Daytona USA set the bar, everybody wanted in. The first real rival for Daytona's arcade floor space was Cruis'n USA, Midway's ultra American styled point-to-point racer. Drive real fast to some stereotypical music and watch a bikini model present you with a trophy/free race if you came in first. It wasn't a hard game at all (which is where the appeal came from), but the AI was cheap as hell. Cruis'n wowed people with its high polygon (for the time) graphics provided courtesy of a very early version of Nintendo's upcoming Nintendo "Ultra" 64 hardware, "Coming to you home in 1995!" (yeah right). When the stiff gameplay started to stagnate, Midway updated the series to Cruis'n World, a global tour with car flipping wheelies, meat splattering roadkill, and a soundtrack almost as cheesy as Sonic R. World was as, if not more, popular than its predecessor. Unfortunately, the series had just hit its peak.
Once Sega's Model 3 arcade hardware came out and Super GT and Daytona USA 2 had stolen the graphical thunder, Cruis'n lost much of its appeal. Midway responded by upping to more powerful hardware. adding licensed cars (like the Ford Mustang) and going extreme with outlandish Mars tracks and underwater dream lands in Cruis'n Exotica.
It enjoyed some mild success in the by then declining arcade market, but everything fell apart with the home port. Cruis'n Exotica was essentially a Dreamcast level game ported to the wrong system...N64. While the exclusivity deal with Nintendo was gone as Midway was no longer using N64 style arcade hardware, the series wasn't known anywhere else on consoles outside the Nintendo base. With the N64's then dated hardware, Exotica lost its visual flash, and that's when players realized that visual flash is all Cruis'n really had. After Exotica, series creator (Mr. Defender himself) Eugene Jarvis left Midway to form his own studio Raw Thrills and went on to develop The Fast and The Furious (which you can still find in some locations even now) for arcades to mild success. People enjoyed it because it had that familiar Cruis'n gameplay and feel. Midway planned to bring Fast and the Furious to GameCube, but lost the license mid-development and re-tooled it as "Cruis'n" for Wii. The game reeked of budget title syndrome, and nobody touched it.
Today, the Cruis'n games have lost their appeal to the mainstream outside of nostalgia. I admit, when I see one in the wild, I almost always plunk down the cash and give her a go, but really only to relive memories of a bygone era when my and my best friend sat in the seats and ogled at the roadsters. Daytona USA has stood the test of time, but unfortunately Cruis'n has not.
--Note: For a laugh, spend the quarters to beat Cruis'n USA (arcade version only) and watch the hilarious ending featuring President Bill Clinton in the jacuzzi with a bunch of hotties on the roof of the White House. The ending to World was even funnier. Of course, Nintendo pussed out and had this stuff cut from the home version, but it's sure worth a laugh. Midway sure loved Billy didn't they?
NHL 2 On 2 Open Ice Challenge
Riding high on the success of NBA Jam and Hangtime, the same team was assigned to develop a 2D 2-on-2 arcade hockey game in the same over-the-top style. Certainly the attitude of hockey made for an easy match, and the game wound up essentially being NBA Jam on ice. Setting the net on fire? Check. Crazy announcer and funny on-screen graphics? Sure. In fact, about the only thing it didn't have in droves was sales. Open Ice never really got a wide distribution, and since the home version was only ported to PlayStation, the game never saw the same success as its hard court brethren, likely because all the arcade sports titles saw most success on the N64. Regardless though, it still stands out as a highlight in Midway's sports catalog and served as Midway's last big 2D huzzah.
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey
Midway's initial arcade hockey offering was met with a lukewarm reception at best, but Atari Games decided to take another stab at it. Fortunately, they were much more successful. Beating their cousins at Midway into the "real" 3D sports arcade market by a full year, Atari Games' Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey was the first real 3D attempt at a hockey game, arcade or sim alike. Gretzky 3D didn't take itself seriously, as you could clearly see when the goalie transformed into a brick wall during power saves. While EA was classing things up with NHL 96 and Konami was still trying with their struggling Blades of Steel franchise, Atari Games/Midway were enjoying the runaway success of pure arcade hockey.
Trading "On Fire" mode for Power Saves, Power Shots, and Power Checks, Gretzky 3D was also the first real arcade sports game since NBA Jam to qualify as a party game, which was perfect timing as the first home port turned out to be one of the precious few launch window releases for the "Fun Machine" Nintendo 64, further cementing the consoles image as the ultimate party gaming machine of the era. Gretzky 3D also had the prestige of being one of the precious few arcade sports games in history to outsell its sim counterparts since Sims became popular in the early 90s. The series faded some years later perhaps due to a lack of innovation, but no one can dispel the influence the first real 3D hockey game had on the industry.
Hydro Thunder
There were three games in the Thunder series. Arctic Thunder was the last, and is seen here and there in arcades, but it's really not all that great. Off-Road Thunder (the first) was a bit shallow and lacking in Midway's traditional over-the-top style, but saw some success on N64 when ported home. But the middle game is the one everybody remembers the series for. Back in 1996, video was shown by Nintendo of an early version of Wave Race that more resembled a futuristic speed boat race than what the game became. That version was tossed out and replaced with the Kawasaki jet ski game we know today, while the game engine was reused for F-Zero X. Clearly Midway was paying attention because a couple of years later Hydro Thunder showed a very strong resemblance. Hydro Thunder was perhaps one of the last big arcade racers of the 90s to get a decent wide release, and you can still find it here and there even ten years later. It's essentially Cruis'n World crossed with Wave Race, and frankly that's 
awesome. You controlled the boats with a throttle(which could be used for jumping) instead of pedals, and the boost button was on the handle, and four cabinets could be hooked together.
Strangely enough, the N64 version was the only one to bring the 4-player support home, even though the Dreamcast version had the superior looks. A couple of years later, America was hit with the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, after which it became politically incorrect to portray New York in a post apocalyptic look. Hydro's secret track New York Disaster, featuring a meteor stuck New York (including Late Show with David Letterman marquee floating in the water). Hydro Thunder marked the last great arcade racer of the 90s, and it sent the era out with a bang.
NFL Blitz
The year was 1997. Midway had nailed arcade Basketball. Midway and Atari Games had nailed arcade Hockey. Now the time had come to nail arcade Football. But how could they? By now, people expected their sports games to be officially licensed. All the real contenders had a license. It just wasn't fun without one. Sure, Midway could do another game like High Impact to possibly decent success, but could Midway Games go big time and convince the notoriously conservative NFL to sign on to a violent, bone crushing, cursing, screaming, and gut busting rendition of fast-action arcade football, especially after nearly a decade of successful and popular sims like Madden, NFL Quarterback Club, and NFL Gameday that sought realism and the NFL's approval? Nobody really knows what kind of pitch Midway made to get the NFL on board, but somehow they pulled it off.
NFL Blitz was to 90s kids what Tecmo Bowl was to 80s kids. As video games advanced, football games became more and more complex. Midway distilled the game to its essence and simplified the controls to three buttons: Pass, Tackle, and Turbo. You could preform any main game function with those three buttons. As with all Midway sports titles, the announcer was just as memorable as anything with such broadcast unfriendly comments as, "What the F*** was that?!?" after some outlandishly brutal late tackles. Yearly revisions introduced roster updates and 4-player options, as well as polished visuals, but the brutal arcadey gameplay never weakened. When the arcade game came home a year later, though it was a multiplatform release, the PlayStation unofficially became the home of serious Madden gamers, and the N64 became the home for 4-player Blitz parties.
It was a brilliant mix. Blitz brought all the attitude and punishment you could ever want in a fantasy NFL game. Unfortunately, this would eventually be the series' demise. The conservative heads of the NFL could only tolerate Blitz for so long, regardless of popularity. Beyond NFL Blitz 2001, concessions in the presentation were demanded and the brutal action, trash talk, outlandish announcer, touchdown celebrations, late hits, and general attitude of the game was dialed back until eventually with the release of Blitz Pro for home consoles, NFL Blitz had become a sad imitation of the very sims it was originally meant to be an alternative to.
Perhaps the NFL was happy, but gamers weren't and the series died a quiet death. Soon after (in one of gaming's darker days), EA snagged an exclusive NFL license and killed all the competition basically for good. Supposedly the NFL was tired of negotiating with various license holders, but more likely it was due to EA willing their play by their rules and their ability to add however many zeroes to the check necessary. EA later tried to bring back the arcade play style with their half-hearted NFL Tour, but with the restrictions under which licensed NFL video games are imposed combined with EA's general lack of interest in arcade sports, it was really just Madden-lite, further cementing the fact that EA really didn't understand what made Blitz so much fun. After EA monopolized the NFL license, Midway tried to revive the series without a license in the form of Blitz: The League, but to mixed results. The glory days were past, the ultimately, so were the days of arcade football.
San Francisco Rush [Series]
The Rush series is likely the last truly great series of video games to come out of Atari Games, and also one of the true highlight racing series of the late 90s for its insane air time. Here's a series that knew it was an arcade racer, and flaunted it freely. Rush was about driving your flying brick (and yes, those cars steered like bricks) off the hills of San Francisco at 150mph just because you could. The original Rush and its lime green cabinet was released in 1996. You could find one in most arcades, and every Chuck E. Cheese across the nation. The tracks spanned all of the trademark Frisco's landmarks. Yet the real thing that made Rush stand out from the pack was its emphasis on shortcuts. It took a quick eye to see them, but if you could turn in time, you could destroy the competition. But it was hard to make those turns because the cars were fast, and the steering was really loose. Flinch and you explode in a fiery ball of failure.
The next year an update was released in the form of San Francisco Rush: Alcatraz Edition which added a stunt heavy psycho track titled: The Rock. This set the series on a new track with an emphasis on tricks that beget is own small sub-culture. Suddenly it was just as much fun to attempt mad tricks and stick the landing as it was to race. The next game in the series reflected that
change of focus. The next installment hit the N64 (a trend for Midway) and featured the brand new Stunt Track. Sure, it was almost like driving around on the beta physics testing track, but that was the fun of it. Do something crazy, then stick the landing. When the next installment hit arcades in 2000, Midway went all out. Cars in the futuristic setting of Rush 2049 featured extending wings on all cars that allowed you to glide through the air performing INSANE flips, twists, turns, and landings. The track design was mad, and the arcade game featured online tournament connectivity. Rush 2049 was far ahead of its time...perhaps too far, because the cabinet was expensive as hell. The game saw even more rave reviews when it came home to Dreamcast with one of the best ports ever (and of course, N64 got a respectable conversion as well, with a totally different soundtrack due to cartridge memory restraints). There was a planned sequel in development for 2000 entitled Hot Rod Rebels that reached prototype status, but was shut down after Midway closed their arcade division and began their long decline. It's actually still known to exist. There were to be eight tracks, but only six were finished, and only three of those have textures plus the car logic was never finished.
A few years ago, Midway attempted to give Rush a street image and move the setting to Los Angeles. All that really did was make the series feel like a cheap and skanky copycat of Midnight Club. Rush faded soon after, but not without leaving a legacy of high flying super jumps and several kick-ass games.
That brings us to the end of our look back. There have been other games in Midway's past worthy of mention, but it was truly the arcade classics that Midway will be remembered for. In the 2000s, Midway began a slow decline into obscurity that eventually ended with the company going into the red for quarter after quarter until the recent purchase by Warner Bros., likely solely for the Mortal Kombat series and classic IP. All of their development studios have been closed or sold. Their original IP will live on in classics compilations, while their sports titles will probably fade away into the bowels of legal limbo hell. That's quite sad, because today there is nobody left in the gaming biz that understood arcade sports like Midway.
Sports sims have always been the highest selling genre around, but there's a bunch of us out there that like to take advantage of the freedom video games give us. We don't want to live a virtual simulation of real life. We want to throw flaming basketballs, run over livestock on every continent, crush receivers five seconds after the whistle while trash-talking, and rip the spines out of our rivals after plowing a hook through their chest (messed up? Yes, but it's fuuuun). Sometimes we take ourselves, and our video games too seriously. Midway understood this, and their passing will long be felt by those who loved "Big Badass American Games." Rest in peace Midway Games. It was a fun ride.
Ah, the game that kicked off the often laughable "video game violence" debate and got conservative politicians all hot and bothered. Mortal Kombat was one of the single most defining titles of the early 90s. It also helped usher in Midway's modern approach to "Big Badass American Video Games," the effects of which continue to trickle down into productions even today. Mortal Kombat was the American response to Street Fighter II. While being a 2D fighter by definition, it played totally different from Capcom's offering in that most of the characters controlled very similarly, defined mostly by their image, personality, and their trademark finishing moves: fatalities. A large percentage of parents just bought games for their kids and used them as digital babysitters (oh, how the world has changed....not), but can you imagine the first time an uptight parent walks into the arcade/living room and sees their child performing a fatality? I'd pay for the laughs of seeing that again.
MK's blood bath was a watershed moment for gaming and one of its first trips into the mainstream since the original arcade boom of the early 80s. It was also one of the first major titles to make the learning of "codes" mainstream, as Mortal Kombat required pretty detailed and precise knowledge to pull off all the satisfying stuff compared to Street Fighter II where some general three quarter motions and half-rolls in varying combinations could at least get results for a newbie. Mortal Kombat's initial home port to Genesis and Super Nintendo helped solidify Nintendo's image as "kiddy" to an entire generation of maturing NES owners when Nintendo notoriously had the blood removed from the home port (you could use a code to get it back on the Genesis). Future titles went uncensored, but the damage was already done and resonates to this very day, even though nobody remembers where it began.
Many claim the series peaked with Mortal Kombat II. That's debatable for sure, but certainly the series' greatest days were in the era of 2D digitized graphics. The series lost a lot of its mainstream charm after going 3D with MK4 (and beyond), and the ever increasing level of violence in video games also helped to dull the appeal. Mortal Kombat is one of the few franchises sure to survive the Midway collapse. In fact, the MK franchise is likely the primary reason Warner Bros. coughed up the cash. Now lets just hope they don't try to mainstream MK's appeal by toning down the insane violence for a T rating. Otherwise, that multimillion dollar investment may just have been a giant waste.
Who would have thought that a video game could have predicted the future of television? Perhaps modern day reality shows haven't quite hit the level of violence in Smash TV, but we're well on our way. Smash TV envisions the reality show of the future, all the way to the year 1999 (again, they weren't that far off) where contestants sign a bunch of wavers, grab a gun, and throw themselves into the path of mortal danger for the reward of home appliances and a bunch of other crap that isn't worth the risk. Imagine Contra crossed with The Price Is Right with a mechanical evil Bob Barker/Drew Carey as the final boss. It's just psycho fun and the true definition of old school video game random violence. You plow through room after room of endless bad guys, killing them to win stuff like toasters and used cars while picking up as much cash off the floor as possible and finding enough power-ups to prolong your killing spree.
Smash TV is just one of those games screaming for a remake. There hasn't been much like it since, which is a real shame.
To many, the NBA's glory days were the 90s. NBA Jam's $1 billion quarters in arcade revenue wouldn't seem to discredit that fact. NBA Jam ditched the quest for a perfect digital recreation of basketball in favor for an on-screen flurry of fast, fiery 2-on-2 arcade action. Forget realism. Bring us the 30 foot backboard shattering dunks, and "On Fire" players. NBA Jam was everything an arcade game should be, and on top of that, it included a selection of unlockable characters like sports mascots, and politicians. Even Mortal Kombat characters were included, though they had to be removed from home revisions due to the NBA's fear of controversy. NBA Jam was stocked with the best digital sampling of famous players from the then current roasters. Sure, the home conversions lacked Michael Jordan, Shaq, or Charles Barkley (due to licensing issues), but people didn't seem to mind.
After NBA Jam took the world by storm, Acclaim (holders of the rights to develop Midway home conversions) decided to go on a dickish greed rampage and took advantage of their position by suing Midway for the rights to the franchise's name. Somehow they managed to win that suit, but Midway treated it as an opportunity. While Acclaim trashed the "Jam" name by eventually turning it into a borderline sim,
Midway moved on and created a real sequel in the form of NBA Hangtime. Fans knew the difference. Hangtime was an exaggerated NBA Jam with even more insane gameplay, create-a-character, and improved visuals. The home port to N64 proved to be one of the most popular launch titles for the platform. Things didn't seem like they could get any better...that is, until Midway's arcade NBA went 3D.
To close out the 1990s, Midway decided to go all out and produced what is unarguably one of the greatest arcade sports games of all time: NBA Showtime. This time, along with the now standard NBA license, Midway sought out the full NBC license, bringing home all the broadcast graphics, and trademark John Tesh "Roundball Rock" ("Ba nah duh nuh nuh na nah nah") theme music to replicate the full look and feel of arguably the NBA's greatest era: The NBA on NBC. And to top it all off, the series used its new 3D presentation to go all out with the pretty visuals.
Midway followed up Showtime with a slower, and overall crappier console sequel by the name of NBA Hoopz for consoles after they shut down the arcade division, but by then the magic was gone. The NBA Jam series had already seen its greatest heights in arcades, but we will never forget the sight of President Bill Clinton playing a game of hoops with Mortal Kombat alumni Sub Zero. That image with last forever.
"Of course it's not realistic...who cares, you know? That's the thing that I think a whole lot of people are missing right now in the driving game environment...they're trying to go for reality. Well, I drive enough. Thank you, but no thank you. I don't want reality. I want fun."
--Xion Cooper, artist for Cruis'n World
Today, fast action ultra satisfying arcade racing is practically a dead genre on home consoles thanks to the focus on sims. But back in the 90s, things were different. 3D graphics arguably helped no other genre advance faster than racers, and arcade graphics back then were always at least a generation and a half ahead of the consoles. Once Daytona USA set the bar, everybody wanted in. The first real rival for Daytona's arcade floor space was Cruis'n USA, Midway's ultra American styled point-to-point racer. Drive real fast to some stereotypical music and watch a bikini model present you with a trophy/free race if you came in first. It wasn't a hard game at all (which is where the appeal came from), but the AI was cheap as hell. Cruis'n wowed people with its high polygon (for the time) graphics provided courtesy of a very early version of Nintendo's upcoming Nintendo "Ultra" 64 hardware, "Coming to you home in 1995!" (yeah right). When the stiff gameplay started to stagnate, Midway updated the series to Cruis'n World, a global tour with car flipping wheelies, meat splattering roadkill, and a soundtrack almost as cheesy as Sonic R. World was as, if not more, popular than its predecessor. Unfortunately, the series had just hit its peak.
Once Sega's Model 3 arcade hardware came out and Super GT and Daytona USA 2 had stolen the graphical thunder, Cruis'n lost much of its appeal. Midway responded by upping to more powerful hardware. adding licensed cars (like the Ford Mustang) and going extreme with outlandish Mars tracks and underwater dream lands in Cruis'n Exotica.
It enjoyed some mild success in the by then declining arcade market, but everything fell apart with the home port. Cruis'n Exotica was essentially a Dreamcast level game ported to the wrong system...N64. While the exclusivity deal with Nintendo was gone as Midway was no longer using N64 style arcade hardware, the series wasn't known anywhere else on consoles outside the Nintendo base. With the N64's then dated hardware, Exotica lost its visual flash, and that's when players realized that visual flash is all Cruis'n really had. After Exotica, series creator (Mr. Defender himself) Eugene Jarvis left Midway to form his own studio Raw Thrills and went on to develop The Fast and The Furious (which you can still find in some locations even now) for arcades to mild success. People enjoyed it because it had that familiar Cruis'n gameplay and feel. Midway planned to bring Fast and the Furious to GameCube, but lost the license mid-development and re-tooled it as "Cruis'n" for Wii. The game reeked of budget title syndrome, and nobody touched it.
Today, the Cruis'n games have lost their appeal to the mainstream outside of nostalgia. I admit, when I see one in the wild, I almost always plunk down the cash and give her a go, but really only to relive memories of a bygone era when my and my best friend sat in the seats and ogled at the roadsters. Daytona USA has stood the test of time, but unfortunately Cruis'n has not.
--Note: For a laugh, spend the quarters to beat Cruis'n USA (arcade version only) and watch the hilarious ending featuring President Bill Clinton in the jacuzzi with a bunch of hotties on the roof of the White House. The ending to World was even funnier. Of course, Nintendo pussed out and had this stuff cut from the home version, but it's sure worth a laugh. Midway sure loved Billy didn't they?
Riding high on the success of NBA Jam and Hangtime, the same team was assigned to develop a 2D 2-on-2 arcade hockey game in the same over-the-top style. Certainly the attitude of hockey made for an easy match, and the game wound up essentially being NBA Jam on ice. Setting the net on fire? Check. Crazy announcer and funny on-screen graphics? Sure. In fact, about the only thing it didn't have in droves was sales. Open Ice never really got a wide distribution, and since the home version was only ported to PlayStation, the game never saw the same success as its hard court brethren, likely because all the arcade sports titles saw most success on the N64. Regardless though, it still stands out as a highlight in Midway's sports catalog and served as Midway's last big 2D huzzah.
Midway's initial arcade hockey offering was met with a lukewarm reception at best, but Atari Games decided to take another stab at it. Fortunately, they were much more successful. Beating their cousins at Midway into the "real" 3D sports arcade market by a full year, Atari Games' Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey was the first real 3D attempt at a hockey game, arcade or sim alike. Gretzky 3D didn't take itself seriously, as you could clearly see when the goalie transformed into a brick wall during power saves. While EA was classing things up with NHL 96 and Konami was still trying with their struggling Blades of Steel franchise, Atari Games/Midway were enjoying the runaway success of pure arcade hockey.
Trading "On Fire" mode for Power Saves, Power Shots, and Power Checks, Gretzky 3D was also the first real arcade sports game since NBA Jam to qualify as a party game, which was perfect timing as the first home port turned out to be one of the precious few launch window releases for the "Fun Machine" Nintendo 64, further cementing the consoles image as the ultimate party gaming machine of the era. Gretzky 3D also had the prestige of being one of the precious few arcade sports games in history to outsell its sim counterparts since Sims became popular in the early 90s. The series faded some years later perhaps due to a lack of innovation, but no one can dispel the influence the first real 3D hockey game had on the industry.
There were three games in the Thunder series. Arctic Thunder was the last, and is seen here and there in arcades, but it's really not all that great. Off-Road Thunder (the first) was a bit shallow and lacking in Midway's traditional over-the-top style, but saw some success on N64 when ported home. But the middle game is the one everybody remembers the series for. Back in 1996, video was shown by Nintendo of an early version of Wave Race that more resembled a futuristic speed boat race than what the game became. That version was tossed out and replaced with the Kawasaki jet ski game we know today, while the game engine was reused for F-Zero X. Clearly Midway was paying attention because a couple of years later Hydro Thunder showed a very strong resemblance. Hydro Thunder was perhaps one of the last big arcade racers of the 90s to get a decent wide release, and you can still find it here and there even ten years later. It's essentially Cruis'n World crossed with Wave Race, and frankly that's awesome. You controlled the boats with a throttle(which could be used for jumping) instead of pedals, and the boost button was on the handle, and four cabinets could be hooked together.
Strangely enough, the N64 version was the only one to bring the 4-player support home, even though the Dreamcast version had the superior looks. A couple of years later, America was hit with the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, after which it became politically incorrect to portray New York in a post apocalyptic look. Hydro's secret track New York Disaster, featuring a meteor stuck New York (including Late Show with David Letterman marquee floating in the water). Hydro Thunder marked the last great arcade racer of the 90s, and it sent the era out with a bang.
The year was 1997. Midway had nailed arcade Basketball. Midway and Atari Games had nailed arcade Hockey. Now the time had come to nail arcade Football. But how could they? By now, people expected their sports games to be officially licensed. All the real contenders had a license. It just wasn't fun without one. Sure, Midway could do another game like High Impact to possibly decent success, but could Midway Games go big time and convince the notoriously conservative NFL to sign on to a violent, bone crushing, cursing, screaming, and gut busting rendition of fast-action arcade football, especially after nearly a decade of successful and popular sims like Madden, NFL Quarterback Club, and NFL Gameday that sought realism and the NFL's approval? Nobody really knows what kind of pitch Midway made to get the NFL on board, but somehow they pulled it off.
NFL Blitz was to 90s kids what Tecmo Bowl was to 80s kids. As video games advanced, football games became more and more complex. Midway distilled the game to its essence and simplified the controls to three buttons: Pass, Tackle, and Turbo. You could preform any main game function with those three buttons. As with all Midway sports titles, the announcer was just as memorable as anything with such broadcast unfriendly comments as, "What the F*** was that?!?" after some outlandishly brutal late tackles. Yearly revisions introduced roster updates and 4-player options, as well as polished visuals, but the brutal arcadey gameplay never weakened. When the arcade game came home a year later, though it was a multiplatform release, the PlayStation unofficially became the home of serious Madden gamers, and the N64 became the home for 4-player Blitz parties.
It was a brilliant mix. Blitz brought all the attitude and punishment you could ever want in a fantasy NFL game. Unfortunately, this would eventually be the series' demise. The conservative heads of the NFL could only tolerate Blitz for so long, regardless of popularity. Beyond NFL Blitz 2001, concessions in the presentation were demanded and the brutal action, trash talk, outlandish announcer, touchdown celebrations, late hits, and general attitude of the game was dialed back until eventually with the release of Blitz Pro for home consoles, NFL Blitz had become a sad imitation of the very sims it was originally meant to be an alternative to.
Perhaps the NFL was happy, but gamers weren't and the series died a quiet death. Soon after (in one of gaming's darker days), EA snagged an exclusive NFL license and killed all the competition basically for good. Supposedly the NFL was tired of negotiating with various license holders, but more likely it was due to EA willing their play by their rules and their ability to add however many zeroes to the check necessary. EA later tried to bring back the arcade play style with their half-hearted NFL Tour, but with the restrictions under which licensed NFL video games are imposed combined with EA's general lack of interest in arcade sports, it was really just Madden-lite, further cementing the fact that EA really didn't understand what made Blitz so much fun. After EA monopolized the NFL license, Midway tried to revive the series without a license in the form of Blitz: The League, but to mixed results. The glory days were past, the ultimately, so were the days of arcade football.
The Rush series is likely the last truly great series of video games to come out of Atari Games, and also one of the true highlight racing series of the late 90s for its insane air time. Here's a series that knew it was an arcade racer, and flaunted it freely. Rush was about driving your flying brick (and yes, those cars steered like bricks) off the hills of San Francisco at 150mph just because you could. The original Rush and its lime green cabinet was released in 1996. You could find one in most arcades, and every Chuck E. Cheese across the nation. The tracks spanned all of the trademark Frisco's landmarks. Yet the real thing that made Rush stand out from the pack was its emphasis on shortcuts. It took a quick eye to see them, but if you could turn in time, you could destroy the competition. But it was hard to make those turns because the cars were fast, and the steering was really loose. Flinch and you explode in a fiery ball of failure.
The next year an update was released in the form of San Francisco Rush: Alcatraz Edition which added a stunt heavy psycho track titled: The Rock. This set the series on a new track with an emphasis on tricks that beget is own small sub-culture. Suddenly it was just as much fun to attempt mad tricks and stick the landing as it was to race. The next game in the series reflected that
change of focus. The next installment hit the N64 (a trend for Midway) and featured the brand new Stunt Track. Sure, it was almost like driving around on the beta physics testing track, but that was the fun of it. Do something crazy, then stick the landing. When the next installment hit arcades in 2000, Midway went all out. Cars in the futuristic setting of Rush 2049 featured extending wings on all cars that allowed you to glide through the air performing INSANE flips, twists, turns, and landings. The track design was mad, and the arcade game featured online tournament connectivity. Rush 2049 was far ahead of its time...perhaps too far, because the cabinet was expensive as hell. The game saw even more rave reviews when it came home to Dreamcast with one of the best ports ever (and of course, N64 got a respectable conversion as well, with a totally different soundtrack due to cartridge memory restraints). There was a planned sequel in development for 2000 entitled Hot Rod Rebels that reached prototype status, but was shut down after Midway closed their arcade division and began their long decline. It's actually still known to exist. There were to be eight tracks, but only six were finished, and only three of those have textures plus the car logic was never finished.
A few years ago, Midway attempted to give Rush a street image and move the setting to Los Angeles. All that really did was make the series feel like a cheap and skanky copycat of Midnight Club. Rush faded soon after, but not without leaving a legacy of high flying super jumps and several kick-ass games.
That brings us to the end of our look back. There have been other games in Midway's past worthy of mention, but it was truly the arcade classics that Midway will be remembered for. In the 2000s, Midway began a slow decline into obscurity that eventually ended with the company going into the red for quarter after quarter until the recent purchase by Warner Bros., likely solely for the Mortal Kombat series and classic IP. All of their development studios have been closed or sold. Their original IP will live on in classics compilations, while their sports titles will probably fade away into the bowels of legal limbo hell. That's quite sad, because today there is nobody left in the gaming biz that understood arcade sports like Midway.
Sports sims have always been the highest selling genre around, but there's a bunch of us out there that like to take advantage of the freedom video games give us. We don't want to live a virtual simulation of real life. We want to throw flaming basketballs, run over livestock on every continent, crush receivers five seconds after the whistle while trash-talking, and rip the spines out of our rivals after plowing a hook through their chest (messed up? Yes, but it's fuuuun). Sometimes we take ourselves, and our video games too seriously. Midway understood this, and their passing will long be felt by those who loved "Big Badass American Games." Rest in peace Midway Games. It was a fun ride.
November 20, 2009
