Awesome!

[A Black Falcon]

Prepare to Test the Limits of Speed and Catch Some Serious Air while Racing to the Finish Line in Eight of Midway's Greatest Racing Games Ever Midway Games Inc, a leading interactive entertainment industry publisher and developer, today announced the newest addition to the company's Midway Arcade Treasures franchise, Midway Arcade Treasures 3. The third installment in the successful Midway Arcade Treasures series, Midway Arcade Treasures 3 follows in the wake of million unit seller, Midway Arcade Treasures (2003) and the 2004 holiday hit, Midway Arcade Treasures 2. Scheduled to ship Fall 2005, Midway Arcade Treasures 3 is in currently in development for the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system, the Xbox video game system from Microsoft, and the Nintendo GameCube with a suggested retail price of $19.99.

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 includes: Badlands, Hydro Thunder, Off Road Thunder: Mud, Sweat 'N Gears, Race Drivin', San Francisco Rush The Rock: Alcatraz Edition, San Francisco Rush 2049, S.T.U.N. Runner, Super Off Road & Bonus Tracks Pack.

-- Andrew Burnes

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/588/588263p1.html

The only catch, of course, is that these will be the arcade versions... meaning better graphics than most of the home ports, but missing the additional features the home ports added... which doesn't matter for some of those games, but it matters a LOT for the Rush games and to a fair extent for Hydro Thunder (four vehicles and two or three tracks are console-exclusive)... still a very nice package, but it doesn't replace the N64/DC version of Rush 2049 for sure (because the arcade game has no battle or stunt modes, and perhaps also no coins... and presumably no (or much less) stat-tracking... leaving just the base racing game.

But still, it's an awesome collection, even if I DO have two Rush games and Hydro Thunder, in their more feature-rich home versions, already -- I mean, Race Drivin'? Super Off-Road (Ironman Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road? Great arcade game! I want it! :))? S.T.U.N. Runner? Rush 1 (home port didn't add nearly as much as Rush 3's port did, and Rush 2 was N64-exclusive with the exception of the Alcatraz track...)? Off-Road Thunder? Nice collection. :)

Of course, it's not complete. No Arctic Thunder (which I think was released on PS2 at least, perhaps explaining that) and no Cruis'n games, for instance... but the eight games in the collection are a pretty good overview of Midway's racing game history.

Oh yeah, and it'd be a really nice touch if they added splitscreen play for the games that had multi-system multiplay, like Hydro Thunder and the Rush titles... those games with no multiplayer would definitely not be as good.