iOS (iPhone/iPad) User Reviews

Controls stink. Not sensitive enough. Graphics good, but the whole point of these games -- especially Defender and Joust -- is the controls. At a minimum, they could have allowed you to hook up a keyboard. But searches of app and website instructions were silent on this.

For those looking to enjoy their old arcade favorites, anything that promises to let you play those old greats again sounds good...nearly irresistible. Defender, APB, Spy Hunter and many more, most tied to great memories of time in an arcade. That's why I went and downloaded Midway Arcade, and why I bought one of the expansion packs. Unfortunately, the game falls far short of the promise. Let's run it. On the plus side, these are faithful recreations of old games, with graphics just like the arcade-edition originals, sound that is genuine, and gameplay that, for better and worse, is spot on to the originals. It's just like having a copy of the original arcade editions, albeit with a smaller screen. But there are downsides. For reasons that are completely alien to me, WB decided to go with gyroscopic steering control, which on a top-down game make no sense whatsoever and, with sensitivity and precision as poorly implemented as they are, they wreck great games. Attempting to control games like Spy Hunter is difficult to the point of wanting to give up. A five out of ten is very fair, particularly that these games are not free and are poorly implemented. I doubt an update is going to come out to change the control scheme, but who knows? Stranger things have happened. Until then, though, it's five out of ten: games faithfully recreated, but nearly unplayable.