Stanfords Finest

I was passing HMV and saw this going for £15 so I said YES! As soon as it was in my hands I ran all the way home and slotted it in the back of my PSP like a crackhead with the first rock of the day. Similar to when you buy a new jazz mag, it was difficult to know where to start or finish especially when the line up consisted of 720, Gauntlet, Spy Hunter, Super Sprint and Paperboy…oh man. Incidentally, I seem to remember some of these titles being Atari games or am I just going a bit senile? Who knows or cares but I started with my ex-lover; Spy Hunter.

I have many a fond memory of playing this in a sit-down cabinet in a Canvey Island arcade on a few rainy afternoons. What a cabinet, it had a great seat and steering wheel and gear stick and how the hairs on the back of my neck would bristle as the theme from Peter Gunn would pulse around the cabinet as I gripped the wheel and shifted gears. So you can imagine my surprise when playing this version that the music was tinny and poor and lasted ten seconds as opposed to the arcades continuous loop. Plus it’s a trauma to control and it’s too quick and there’s no steering wheel and in short it’s not very good. Ditto Gauntlet which is largely unplayable due to the fact the screen is widdle and it is again difficult to control. Rampage has always been a bore, Super Sprint is impossible to play without the steering wheels as per the arcade as is 720 without that odd knob thing. Also collected on here are the first three instalments of the Mortal Kombat series and they are still as bad now as they were then. Never have such a poor series of games lasted so long and I don’t know why because we, the clever kids, were Street Fighting whilst only retards, Sun readers and outraged Tory MP’s experienced this dire punch-kick tedium. Other minor titles are as equally awful – I mean who could play Klax for longer than 30 seconds apart from menopausal housewives, the mentally retarded and three year olds? The only saving grace was Paperboy which is pretty playable and for this reason alone I would buy the collection but only if you can get it the bargain basement. Paperboy delivers 4/10.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.