Play Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Online

Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2001, developed by Digital Eclipse. It was a solid collection for its time, arriving when the GBA was establishing itself as a serious handheld. This compilation gathered several coin-op titles from Midway's back catalog, offering a portable version of games that were originally played in noisy arcades.

You control different characters depending on the game, from a spaceship in Defender to a stick figure in Root Beer Tapper. The main objective is simply to survive and score as many points as possible, just like in the original arcades. Signature mechanics include the frantic, multidirectional shooting in Robotron: 2084 where you control movement and firing separately, and the methodical, screen-by-screen clearing of Joust where you flap to stay airborne and knock opponents off their mounts. The pacing is generally fast and the difficulty is unrelenting, a direct carryover from the quarter-munching design of the 80s. Playing it feels like holding a compressed, challenging piece of arcade history in your hands.