Capcom Coin-Op Collection Vol 1 – PC – Review

Anyone around my age can
remember the good times we used to have back in the 80’s packing into the car
and heading out to our local Chuck E Cheese or local arcade to spend all of our
allowance money on video games. Arcades at the time were doing pretty well,
since home systems hadn’t gotten to the level that they are now, but over time
arcades have been fizzling out and becoming a thing of the past. Well, Capcom
has released five of it’s top arcade hits which helped to define the industry at
the time for the PC and iPaq PDA for those of us who like to take a trip down
memory lane.

For those of you who are a
little young to remember the good old days of the 80’s, Capcom Coin-Op
Collection offers five titles to allow you to do anything from storming a
foreign land to search and rescue POWs to throwing on a suit of armor and
rescuing a princess from a demonic captor. While it’s easy to stop the review
here and say “well, they’re classic games so you know what you’ll get”, there
are some additions that were added in to maximize your enjoyment. The disk
includes five top titles that helped define arcade gaming from back in the day,
including 1942, Commando, Sidearms, Vulgus, and Ghosts ‘n Goblins. These games
were 2-D side scrolling or top down shooters, and offer a decent collection
based around fantasy, war, and sci-fi to help any classic gamer feel right at
home.

For starters, you can
finally save your game. Since these titles are pretty challenging overall, it
was easy to dump 10 quarters sometimes just trying to get past the first stage
while in the arcade. Now, you can save your game as you go so that you can
always hop right back in to try and take that boss down or get past stage three
instead of starting all over again. You can also take screen grabs, so if you
notice something amusing or want to capture your score to e-mail to a friend for
bragging rights, you can do that too.

Secondly, you can fully
customize each game to your liking including options like the number of lives
that you will get, the difficulty level, and sometimes even what stage you will
start on. This also includes fully customizing the keyboard commands, joysticks,
or the control pad that you are using. Heck, even playing games that only have
two different action buttons have a certain feel that you are most comfortable
with.

There is also the standard arcade one or two player
option here as well, so two people can join I the fun. You can also set it up so
that two people can use the keyboard at the same time or one uses a joystick and
the other a keyboard, or both using joysticks if both players are on screen at
the same time for maximum ability. If only one player is on screen at a time,
you can swap back and forth as expected.

The only thing that I was a
little disappointed not to get with Capcom Coin-Op was some of the historical
“extras” that some companies add in to their arcade collections. I remember
playing a Pac-Man collection and getting everything from info on how it got
started to photos of the cabinets and whatnot, and I would have liked to have
some of those informative things here too. While it won’t hinder gameplay or
anything, it’s nice to get a little trivia in sometimes, especially when you
happen to be a big fan of one or more of the titles.

Really the only reason why
someone wouldn’t like Capcom Coin-Op Collection is simply due to the age of the
games included. While people like me love to sit back and play some good, old
fashioned classic games from time to time, some people just can’t really
appreciate the enjoyment of them since the modern style has progressed so much
over the years in terms of graphics, sound, and gameplay options (no fault to
them). So, if you have an itch to travel back in time to the days of arcades,
Huey Lewis music, and fun titles that took umpteen hundred quarters from you,
Capcom Coin-Op could definitely be for you.

Gameplay: 7.9
Classic arcade
games usually had very simple buttons, and this one is no exception. Each game
consists of about two button commands, and each one is a 2-D Side Scroller or
top down shooter. There were some good options included too, like the ability to
adjust difficulty, save your game, increase the number of lives you get, or even
some allow you to select the stage that you will begin on.

Graphics: 8.0
Realistically, if
these games had just been released yesterday this would be much lower … but I
scored this based on the quality of the graphics from back in the day compared
to some other ones. In addition, these are the straight arcade versions, so you
can remember what these actually looked like while standing in front of a
machine. 

Sound: 7.3
Same thing here
as the graphics. The sounds were obviously pretty simple, but some of the games
like Ghosts ‘n Goblins really did a good job in capturing the music and sound
effects to try and maximize the experience. Most games consist of a lot of
shooting, and a lot of explosions.

Difficulty: Medium

Some of these games were very challenging, and the
addition of the save game option and ability to customize gameplay options and
the controls helped out in setting up the game the way that works best for you.

Concept: 7.7
These games were
some of the top ones in the industry, and they did a good job at the time of
being a little different from the typical maze munching or barrel jumping that
was so popular at the time as well. In addition, the added options were a good
bonus. 

Multiplayer: 7.5
Some games have
alternating turns, and some have both players on screen at once. These
games were all score based for the most part, so it’s obviously a lot more fun
to go in and play with a friend. They added enough options to help both players
be able to maximize their fun as well with the keyboard and joystick options.

Overall: 7.5
Great games, good
times. While these kind of collections don’t necessarily appeal to everyone, for
those of us who enjoy them they are a rare gem to get from time to time. There
have been some collections that have offered more additional “historical”
options in the past, but for good classic gaming it doesn’t get much better than
this. If you are a fan of the old days, go grab a copy and have fun.