Konami 80's Arcade Gallery


Konami 80's Arcade Gallery is a compilation of arcade video games, originally released to Japanese arcades in 1998. It was later ported to the PlayStation in 1999, which was also released in North America as Konami Arcade Classics.
While many compilations on home consoles predate Konami 80's Arcade Gallery, it is one of the earliest examples of an arcade reissue of classic games, being preceded only by the Namco Classics Collection series. It is also, to date, one of only two arcade compilations with both a coin-op and consumer release.

Development

The collection was developed for the System 573 arcade system - hardware based on the Sony PlayStation architecture. This made the collection easy to convert to the PlayStation home console. A look into the software's readme files reveals notes that the original ROM data was used to obtain assets for the reprogrammed games.
While the arcade version had an attract mode for certain games, it was replaced with a movie that was created specifically for the home version. In addition, the North American localization got a small history feature, which gave brief blurbs of facts about each of the included games.

Release

It is speculated that the arcade version of this compilation only saw release in Japan. There is evidence from the MAME project that there were several overseas releases planned as Konami 80's AC Special.
The PlayStation home ports were released in Japan and North America, but not PAL regions.

Games Included

Chris Charla reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for Next Generation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "They were fun then, they're fun now, and with 10 games included, this package is an excellent deal."