Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits is a video game compilation of Williams Entertainment's early arcade games from the golden age of arcade games. The title was created by Digital Eclipse, who developed a compiler to emulate the arcade games' source codes in order to recreate all aspects of the originals. Initially released for home computers in 1995 as Williams Arcade Classics, the compilation was ported to numerous console systems soon after. While most ports were published as Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits, the title was changed for several releases. The Sega Saturn version was released as Midway Presents Arcade's Greatest Hits, the handheld Game.com system was published under the original Williams Arcade Classics name, and the Dreamcast port was titled Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1.
The compilation consists of Defender, the publisher's seminal horizontal shooter; Defender II, the former title's updated sequel; Joust, a cooperative action game featuring knights on large flying birds; Robotron: 2084, a multidirectional shooter set in a fictional future world where robots have revolted against humans; Sinistar, another multidirectional shooter in which the player battles a giant anthropomorphic spacecraft; and Bubbles, an action game where the player uses a bubble to clean a kitchen sink. Historical information and developer interviews were also included. A few ports omitted Bubbles from the collection as well as the additional historical content.
Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits received a mixed reception by gaming publications, with the earlier releases praised more and the later Dreamcast version receiving considerably less favorable reviews. The selection of the titles—except for Bubbles, which received a wide range of responses—were frequently praised, as was the quality of the emulation. Defender, Joust, and Robotron were frequently lauded as the stand-out games in the collection. While the anthology's nostalgia was a frequent point of praise, the original arcade audiovisuals were often described as dated and critics recommended Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits predominantly for fans that grew up with the originals in arcades. The compilation was followed by the Midway Arcade Treasures product line, of which the first volume includes much of the same content among additional retro arcade games.
Overview
As a compilation, Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits features several action games from Williams Electronics' early catalog from the golden age of arcade video games. From a selection screen, players can choose one of five to six games, depending on the platform. The anthology includes Defender, its sequel Defender II, Joust, Robotron: 2084, and Sinistar. Bubbles is included on the home computer, PlayStation, Saturn, and Dreamcast platforms. The same versions include background information and old promotional materials about the games as well as interviews with the original arcade developers.
Defender is a 1981 horizontally scrolling shooter game developed by Williams Electronics for arcades. The game is set on an unnamed planet where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Defender II, also known as Stargate, is the follow up to Defender released the same year featuring updated gameplay based on its predecessor. Joust is an action game featuring two-player cooperative gameplay that was released in 1982. Players assume the role of knights armed with lances and mounted on large birds, who must fly around the screen and defeat enemy knights riding buzzards.
Robotron: 2084 is a multidirectional shooter released in 1982 where the player must fight against endless waves of robots, rescue surviving humans, and earn as many points as possible. The game is set in the year 2084 in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans in a cybernetic revolt. Sinistar is a 1983 multidirectional shooter game in which the player controls a space pilot who battles the eponymous Sinistar, a giant anthropomorphic spacecraft. Bubbles is a 1983 action game where the player controls a bubble in a kitchen sink and must progress through levels by cleaning the sink while avoiding enemies.
Development Williams Arcade Classics was developed by Digital Eclipse for home computers: Macintosh, Windows, and MS-DOS. Digital Eclipse's president, Andrew Ayre, served as the title's producer while Brian Johnson, from Williams Entertainment, was the product manager. Williams' director of marketing, John Fowler, decided to release the compilation in order to appeal to people who had played the games as children. He expected that many of the people, who had become adults and parents since the games' original releases, would want to share their arcade experiences with their own children. Additionally, Williams' vice president of third-party development, Mike Rubinelli, felt this was an opportunity to introduce their popular classic games to new players. He believed that despite changes in video game trends, the elements that make games successful remained unchanged.
Digital Eclipse's team handled the bulk of the production. The developers obtained the original source code for the arcade games and aimed to accurately recreate them. To achieve this, the team chose to emulate the arcade hardware in order to replicate the original games' subtleties they felt encapsulated their unique gameplay experiences. Although computing hardware in the 1990s was more advanced and powerful than that from the early 1980s, remaking the source code for contemporary hardware requires programmers to reproduce every idiosyncrasy from the original, including unintentional software bugs, with a high attention to detail. The lead programmer, Jeff Vavasour, created a compiler that emulated the entire chipset of the hardware used in Williams' arcade games, including the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. William's early arcade games use hardware similar to that of Defender, its first video game. The emulation allowed the games to run in fullscreen mode without impacting the games' speed. However, alterations were necessary to account for a portion of the arcade monitor that was intentionally unused. The original Williams arcade releases feature an "overscan" area that the developers left devoid of content, resulting in a smaller game screen dimension.
Despite working with more advanced hardware, the team still found emulating the original hardware challenging, specifically getting Joust to operate at an acceptable speed on the Windows 3.1 operating system running at 20MHz. Vavasour considered accurately emulating the audio an obstacle as well. Because the computer hardware at the time could not simultaneously emulate the games and synthesis the arcade sounds in real-time, Vavasour instead used a "pre-processing" technique to save an audio file to the computer's hard drive to be played when needed. The emulation software he created allowed him to isolate the individual sounds and their respective event triggers. With this information, the team created audio files from those sounds and adjusted the emulator to play the prefabricated sound at the appropriate time during gameplay.
When selecting the titles to include, the developers focused on highly recognizable games that would catch consumers' attention and aid in sales. Technical limitations were also a factor; as a general guideline, Vavasour aimed to develop on hardware that is ten times more powerful than the original in order to properly support the emulation's computing overhead. However, because several of Williams' games used similar hardware, the team was able to easily add Bubbles, a more obscure game, as a bonus title. Bert Monroy created the graphics used in the opening sequence featuring the arcade room, and Vavasour created the opening's animation. Game testing was handled by Williams' team of testers. Digital Eclipse conceived the idea to include supplemental materials and video interviews, something they would repeat for future projects. Chris Charla and Jon Synder of Flying Rhino Productions conducted the Behinds the Scenes interviews with the original arcade creators. An outside company, Midnight Design, handled the multimedia post-production for the Behind the Scenes portions. GT Interactive Software Corp. published the CD version for Windows machines. Previously in 1994, Williams Entertainment's subsidiary Midway Games entered into an agreement with GT Interactive Software to distribute Midway's PC titles.
Console ports
After the home computer release, the developers ported the anthology to home console systems. The first port was to the PlayStation in 1996, with Ayre and Johnson returning as the executive producer and product manager, respectively. George and Peter Phillips handled the programming, while Vavasour shifted to an assistant producer role and consulted on arcade hardware. The PlayStation version contains a hidden CD audio track featuring sounds from Mortal Kombat 3. Video game magazines reported on it as a hidden tip, with Terry Minnich of Electronic Gaming Monthly baffled at the inclusion, speculating that it could be a clue pointing to another easter egg.
Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) versions were also published in 1996, late into their respective console life cycles. Vavasour redesigned the selection screen and converted Defender, Defender II, Joust, and Robotron to play on the SNES. Christopher Burke converted Sinistar as well as programmed new features for the game. John Kowalski was responsible for converting the audio for the Nintendo console. The original arcade sounds were produced by a computer algorithm that fed data into a digital-to-analog converter. To match the audio frequency of those sounds, Kowalski wrote a translator program to convert the arcade's source code into the assembly language version used by the central processing unit for the Super Nintendo's audio subsystem. Nintendo of America promoted the game in a Nintendo Power magazine preview that highlighted the quality of the classic games' reproduction and the reduced list price due to the smaller memory requirements of the Game Pak. A few months later, the magazine featured a multi-page overview of strategies for the anthology's games.
For the Sega Genesis port, Dan Filner converted Defender, Defender II, Sinistar, and Robotron as well as adapted Vavasour's selection screen, whereas George Phillips converted Joust. Digital Eclipse approached Filner, who was employed at Equilibrium, Inc. at the time, about working on the project and provided him a Genesis development kit as well as the source code for Defender. After reviewing the code, he began to cross-translate the original Motorola 6809 assembly code into assembly code for the Genesis's Motorola 68000 microprocessor. Filner completed the port of Defender in two weeks, after which the company successively assigned him to convert Stargate, Robotron, and then Sinistar. Peter Phillips and Terry Coatta adapted the audio to the Sega Genesis. Monroy again created the selection screen's artwork and external company Image Impressions converted the bulk of the title's visuals for both 16-bit ports. Williams promoted the Super Nintendo and Genesis ports at the 1996 E3 trade show, announcing a fall 1996 release window.