Arcade's Greatest Hits
The Atari Collection #2

This emulator is a bit different for a couple of reasons.   First, unlike most other emulators that are freeware products, this one is a commercial product developed by Digital Eclipse, and marketed through Midway.   Midway is a long established gaming company bringing us recent arcade hits as NFL Blitz and Mortal Kombat.  Midway made arcade games as far back as the 70's with titles such as 280-Zzap, and Boot Hill. 

This emulator is written for DirectX, and requires Windows 9x. 

Screen capture of 720

The other unique aspect of this emulator is the history that is included.  The CD has information on the original coin-op classics including interesting facts, and photos of the games themselves.  A database full of scans of the promotional flyers is also included.

Screen capture of the Atari Collection #2 Graphical User Interface (GUI)

One other cool feature:  There is a very nice GUI included for launching the games.  It shows a picture of the original arcade game itself, and the promotional flyer that went with it.

Like the other emulators from Digital Eclipse, I found the emulation to be outstanding.  Other freeware emulators like MAME still do not have games like 720 or RoadBlasters working properly.  I found the emulation presented in this collection to be almost perfect.  I did notice come controller issues though.   I use a Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad, and I did have problems with control in RoadBlasters.  I had a hard time keeping the car on the road.

     
Screen captures of Vindicators, Paperboy, and RoadBlasters
Click on image to enlarge

This emulator features six of the classic Atari Games arcade coin-ops:

Paperboy
Gauntlet
720
Marble Madness
Vindicators
RoadBlasters

By the way, for those of you who are wondering what happened to Atari Collection #1, it is only available on some console video game systems at this time.  However, the Digital Eclipse homepage states that they are working on a conversion for the Atari Collection #1 for use on PC's, as well as a new Atari Collection #3.

Go to the Midway homepage

This is a commercial product that can be purchased in retail software
stores, or through the Midway web site.