Review: Arcade Classics Plus

===========================================================================
                 Arcade Classics Plus from Epic Marketing
                            By:  Jason Compton 
===========================================================================

Arcade Classics Plus, the CD from Epic Marketing, focuses largely on clones
and remakes (some faithful, some only remotely so) of legendary, classic
arcade games: the likes of Asteroids, Defender, Pong, etc.  There's even a
section for slightly more "modern" classics like Pendo and Lode Runner.

Like the Epic Collection, there is a custom GUI interface.  This one is
significantly more attractive to use and easy to navigate.  Unlike the Epic
Collection, not everything is DMS compressed, which is a welcome change.
Many of the files have documentation, which comes up in a scrollable window
when you select the file you want more information on...however, not all of
them do, so there's still some degree of guessing and testing to be done.
The interface lets you uncompress the archives to the directory (or disk,
for DMS) of your choice, and they can be run (by you) from there.

As classics collections go, I haven't seen a better one yet.  In all
honesty, the quality of many Amiga recreations of classic games is not the
greatest, so this is obviously reflected in what you get.  (I have yet to
see a decent light cycles game, and am at a loss to understand why nobody
in the world has ever done a clone of the original Tron 4-event arcade
game.) There are games that are without compare, however, and a special
section for Jeff Minter's own brand of classics, which to many would be
worth the price of admission in and of itself.  And for those not so
interested in pure classics, there's a collection of Assassins games disks.

Quite a lot of the games here are of the "Crash_Immediately_On_AGA()"
variety.  You have been warned...best not to uncompress to RAM: if you
value what you're working on currently.

Maybe it's the interface, or the theme, or the DMS, but I didn't find
myself quite as gleefully immersed in games with this disc as I did with
Games Galore.  It's still a more-than-decent collection if you find
browsing through Aminet's game directory a harrowing task at best.  I know
I do.

Epic Marketing
138-139 Victoria Rd.
Swindon
Wilts
UK
+44 0 1793 514188

Amiga Report Main Page Amiga Web Directory