If you’ve been keeping up with our LEGO Dimensions coverage, you’re probably aware of how much we’ve been loving the game. In fact, when the base game came out, we gave it a whopping 4 out of 5 burritos. Since launch, our love for it has grown with every creative add-on level pack that’s hit shelves–including the Ghostbusters pack, which released in January. Considering how much we loved the Midway level in the base game, we were particularly excited for the new Midway Arcade level pack that launched earlier this week, on March 15.
The all-new pack comes with a buildable Gamer Kid minifigure, G-6155 Spy Hunter vehicle, and Arcade Machine. Also, like previously released LEGO Dimensions content, all three figures are playable in the game. The pack also unlocks more than 20 classic arcade games from Midway Arcade, including: Seven Twenty, Badlands, Blasteroids, Championship Sprint, Defender II, Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, KLA, Joust, Joust 2, Marble Madness, Paperboy, Rampage, Road Blasters, Robron, Spyhunter, SuperSprint, Timber, Toobin, Cyberball, Vindicators and Xybots.
We recently got a chance to sit down and chat with Mark Warburton, associate producer at TT Games. When we brought up the creativity of the original Midway model, he elaborated on how they took that idea and twisted it for the new level pack. He explained, “The idea now is that you are trapped in an arcade and all the characters from these classic games are coming to life. Not only do you have a traditional LEGO level, but you also have to hop into these classic games and beat a target in order to stop them. It’s a great way to introduce these games to a new generation of players.”
If you’re familiar with the main level, you’ll be happy to hear that the add-on shakes things up in a similar way.”We took a traditional LEGO game level and wove in these games to make it something very new and unique. One moment you will be bashing blocks and collecting studs, the next you will be smashing buildings in Rampage or saving humans in Defender.”
The cool thing is that, in addition to being touched on in the level’s story, the full games will actually be playable in their entirety in the Midway Adventure World–which is basically a free-play world that unlocks when you own a character/figure belonging to that universe.
“This offers a huge opportunity to explore the Midway back catalogue and really see how the industry has progressed. For players who are new to these games, it will be something new and totally different. Older gamers on the other hand, will be pleased to know that they have not been altered in anyway.”
He added, “So, once the kids are in bed, you can see if you can still hit that high score you managed years ago. It’s not as easy as you remember!”
Of course, including 20 different titles meant that mapping the controls to several different platforms was a bit of a challenge. “A lot of these games where designed with vastly different control schemes so we had to be a bit creative. In the end, I think we got the balance exactly right.”
On the success of the developer’s new venture into the genre, Warburton remarked,”It’s been an amazing year and it’s been great to see the response to what we have done so far. Seeing people all over the world build their own Gateways and have new adventures exceeded all our expectations. The cool thing about LEGO Dimensions is that we have built a system that we can continue adding on to as we see fit. This is just the start!”
It’s certainly great to hear that the company has plans to add to the system in the future. We can’t wait to see what they think of next!
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Image Credit: TT Games
