That certainly explains why the San Francisco Rush pair are considered Midway games as they were part of the same overall operation, but we can only assume that the old Atari arcade games that have appeared on all the previous Midway compilations are present because of the old rights ownership pass-the-parcel. WMS then reinstated the Atari Games name (alongside its Midway brand), but when Hasbro claimed ownership of the other Atari name in the late '90s, Midway (having bought itself out of WMS) agreed to rename Atari Games in 2000 to Midway Games West. In 1996 Time Warner Interactive was sold to WMS Industries, owner of Midway at the time. Pass the Atari parcel Rush - The Rock: Funny how this shot doesn’t communicate how bad this looks in real life.Įssentially, the Atari Games associated with arcade games (as opposed to the Atari that made the ST, Lynx and Jaguar) gradually became wholly owned by Time Warner (and ceased to exist as a name). So, how can this be? It's a slightly complicated tale of changing ownership and corporate pass-the-parcel, but here's the abridged version of why Atari games keep cropping up in Midway compilations. One of the others (Super Off Road) was by Leland Corp, leaving just two (Hydro Thunder and Off Road Thunder) as genuine Midway-produced games.
Checking out the contents of this eight game pack, five of them were produced under the Atari banner, namely Badlands, Race Drivin', Stun Runner, San Francisco Rush: The Rock - Alcatraz Edition, and San Francisco Rush 2049. The first thing to get to the bottom of is exactly why Midway is continuing to mislead the public over its arcade heritage. Having just trawled through the annals (or should that be anals?) of Tecmo's 'classic' retro history, we were in no mood to be fobbed off again with a pile of stinking detritus masquerading as jolly retro fodder - so forgive us if we're just a little stroppy with Midway's latest collection of old long-forgotten hits. Morning retro campers! Welcome to barrel-scraping territory where everything's a 'classic' and a 'treasure' if it, you know, it once appeared in an arcade.