A while back Capcom released an arcade game collection delivery system in a manner similar to the GameRoom for the Xbox 360. This collection however, would contain only Capcom arcade games, with a number of releases over the course of a month. The games could be purchased individually or in packs. This is one such pack, the 1984 pack. It contains the games 1942, Pirate Ship Higemaru, and SonSon. Do these games from Capcom’s early days hold up? Read on to find out.

The first game in this pack is 1942-The Battle of Midway, and being the first in the series, the game is a very basic shoot em-up. 32 Auto scrolling levels that sort of play out like Galaga and Galaxian where there will be waves of enemies, but they come in bursts rather than a cluster. Also, there are power ups for destroying all the red airplanes on screen. These power-ups can make your shot spread and strength more powerful. Alternatively, you can get little airplane helpers that also extend your firepower, although they can take one hit and go away. Other than just dodging fire, you can also perform a loop to avoid fire, and these can be used up to three times by default. The game does not have anything in the way of bosses, although there are larger ships that take many hits before being destroyed. One hit from the enemy kills you though. This game is decent but comparatively weak to its successors. The levels have a lot of noisy sound effects with no music, and it sounds like you are listening to a military drill. The gameplay is also not as developed as its immediate successor, 1943. Screen size is also an issue, as the screen is very small. It can be adjusted, but even at its largest it’s still small. But playing any of these games in fullscreen just makes the game look ugly and there is some cropping issues.

Pirate Ship Higemaru is the next game in the collection, and it’s a cute action game where you play as a sailor on a pirate ship. Your goal is to clear the screen of all the other pirates. You do this by picking up objects and throwing them at the pirates. Some objects have different properties or hidden items that give you bonus points. Some items are power-ups that can give you more time or invincibility. This is important as enemies will kill you in one hit. Sometimes the enemies will hide in objects and will need to be knocked out of them before you can eliminate them. The screen is nice and large, with the sprites very easy to see. The music and graphical presentation are simplistic but cute.

The last game on the pack is SonSon, and it is the game that has aged the best out of the pack. In the game, you play as little monkey boy that shoots enemies in an auto scrolling, multi-platform side scroller. You can collect fruit for extra points, and sometimes you can uncover hidden fruit for even more points. If you collect enough fruit, you can get a power up to make all on-screen enemies to turn into more food for even more points. A very simple, but fun score based game. You can also do two player online or locally. Finding someone to play with will be a challenge as there doesn’t seem to be many players out there. Just like with Pirate ship Higemaru, the screen size and music are decent.

As for the presentation of the collection itself, you can also access un-lockable art galleries, do score attacks to submit scores to the leader boards, or play a casual mode for newcomers. There are also training modes that let you practice older levels, but at the cost of disabling the earning of trophies. Little manuals that tell you how to play are also available. You can even adjust the DIP switch settings to turn on free play or alter the number of lives or difficulty. Also you can share your gameplay to Youtube after having a replay encoded. But this feature isn’t worth it. The encoding is awful with low bit rates. The video will be encoded at 240p and it will look super blurry. Not good, just get a dedicated game capture card instead.

This pack has at least two interesting games that have aged well in Pirate Ship Higemaru and SonSon. They also are kind of a nice history lesson for those interested in seeing what some of Capcom’s earliest titles looked like. There are better games in the collection to try though.

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