365//365: Day 278 – Konami Classics Series Arcade Hits (DS) [PP]

"Nostalgia isn't slang for unrecognizable."

Feeling nostalgic isn’t a bad thing. Paying more money than you should for a few Konami arcade hits thrown in with a dozen complete throw-away padding titles, isn’t. Packing together 15 arcade titles released by Konami throughout the early 80′s might seem like a worthwhile investment, but when nearly every title in the pack is either unrecognizable or just plain awful, the execution falls flat. Titles such as Contra, Gradius and Horror Maze provide a decent amount of entertainment, especially since I’ve never heard of Horror Maze before this compilation, even if I was born in 1980. The rest of the package, not as much. The broken, downright embarrassing title Basketball should not have even been considered for this pack, with its nonsense gameplay and limited engagement. Games like Poonyan and Rainbow Bell draw more yawns and less curiosity to play it more than once ever. Shao-Lin’s Road and Time Pilot are engaging enough, and might have you come back once or twice, but they fail to exert any sort of incentive for you to give them much of a play-through. Even with the ability to change various setting with each arcade title, they do not add any value to the overall package. Konami Classics Series Arcade Hits is one trip down memory lane that isn’t worth spending the time or money to go on. With so many other places that you can find arcade classics from numerous companies, you’d be better off tracking those down.

From the obscure, to the obtuse, the line up of games fails to captivate, for the majority.

Rating: 4.5