80s Arcade

I love the arcade classics from the 80s and 80s Arcade brings 33 of them to your Android phone for $2.99. Sound awesome? Well, it's only ok. First, I question the licensing of the games... is this legal? I seriously doubt 3D Studio has the rights to distribute the 33 original 'roms' that allow these games to be perfectly emulated for the low price of $2.99. But as I'm not certain of the I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (especially as I've purchased many of these games countless times over so I do own the right to use the 'roms'). Second, note the restriction on the controls and the fact that if you don't have a keyboard on your phone you'll need to use their Zeemote software. Again, I didn't test with the software that allows a WiiMote to be used with Android and maybe it works with that too, but if not then that stinks. It would be nice to standardize on one external joystick program instead of having six.

But the big issue is sound... it's delayed and in some cases horribly static-ey. For example, in Frogger I see my frog complete a jump and only then do I hear it hop. I have a hard time thinking a phone with a 500+ MHz CPU in it can't handle this when Dave Spicer was doing this on a 233 MHz PC 15 years ago. Still the games are fun and certainly playable even if the sound is messed up and there are some great here. Missing are Pac Man, Galaxian, and Galaga. At first I thought it might be a legal issue and fear of Namco, but Rally X is here so who knows? 3/5 stars for an average emulation job.