Have you ever been to a restaurant or bar and seen a little gaming machine on the corner where people could use the touch screen to play simple games? Chances are that was a Touchmaster arcade machine, and they’re made by Midway. Midway’s made a couple of these Touchmaster collections on the DS, and recently I snagged the sequel for 20 bucks since I like to collect arcade compilations. And as I tend to do with these things, here’s a blog briefly detailing the games included in Touchmaster 2.

Normally when I talk about arcade collections I’ll include some of my memories playing those games. But I don’t have any fond memories playing Touchmaster games. Mainly because they’re found in bars, and I’m not a big fan of bars. There are two reasons why I don’t like bars much. One, you usually go to bars to hang out with friends and meet new people. Well, most bars are also really dark and loud. With my vision disability I don’t see very well, especially in the dark, so why would I want to go to a bar when I can’t see or hear people?

The other reason why people go to bars is to drink, which is something else I don’t do much. A lot of people think that I don’t drink at all, but that’s not true. I’m willing to share a toast with friends and family around the holidays and special occasions and such. But it’s still pretty rare. One reason is because I’m pretty picky about what liquids I drink, and most alcoholic beverages just don’t taste very good to me. But it’s not just spirit drinks, I rarely ingest sodas, milk, or juice either. I usually just drink water (yeah, I know, I’m boring). I think it’s been more than two months since I’ve had a soda, and I usually only drink those when I’m sick (the carbonation helps my sore throat feel better). When people who’ve known me for a while see me with a can of coke in my hand, they’ll sometimes ask if I’m sick! Plus, alcoholic beverages are usually kind of expensive, and why should I pay money for a drink that, chances are, I won’t like anyway? So that’s why I haven’t played too many Touchmaster games in bars.

The mini-games in the Touchmaster collections on the DS are pretty simple, casual fare. I guess they had to make the games easy to understand since most bar goers playing these games might be a little tipsy. Ha ha! The game saves your high scores and you can earn trophies for setting certain records, but I have no idea what the trophies do. Overall I don’t think Touchmaster 2 is a good as the first one, but neither games are worth more than 20 bucks anyway. The mini-games in Touchmaster 2 are split into five categories, with 3 to 5 mini-games in each. The categories are Cards, Action, Brain, Picture, and Puzzle. And here they are!

Cards
Card games never really interested me much. That’s why I never bothered to get Nintendo’s Club House Games on the DS. Needless to say, the card games on Touchmaster 2 didn’t really grab my attention, so we’ll go over these as briefly as possible.

Combo 11
You have to match two cards that total 11 in value. But they have to be next to each other. Matched cards are removed and you then make room for more until you use up the deck or there are no more moves left. Similar to the Monte Carlo game on Master of Illusion.

Carpet
Some of the rules in these card games weren’t explained very well in the game or in the instruction booklet, so I may not be describing them accurately. This one’s like Solitaire in that you match cards in piles by order of hand. But you get the cards from a field of 20, and that’s called the ‘carpet.’

Poker Slide
This one reminds me of the puzzle modes of Yoshi’s Cookie or Pokemon Trozei, except instead of matching colors, you match poker hands. Try to get as many good hands as you can by sliding around the cards, and then see how big of a score you got.

Triples
Here’s another game that I couldn’t understand the rules all the way, but I didn’t really try and give this game a fair shake since I’m not into card games. You have to match cards in sets of three hands or numbers, and can place them in four columns or holding points.

Speed Solitaire
Well I don’t really know what the difference between this and regular Solitaire is. And it’s not speedy or anything. Just regular ol’ Solitaire as far as I can tell.

Action
As depicted by the joystick icon, these are more arcade action oriented games.

Bowling
A simple game where you flick the ball with the stylus to knock down pins on the top screen. It’s really akin to one of those bowling games you can get on your cell phone (I used to have one called Pac-Man Bowling!). The Touchmaster bowling game isn’t bad as a quick five minute time waster.

Catwalk Caper
This one reminds me of those old single screen platformers like Donkey Kong or Popeye. Normally I like those kinds of games, but Catwalk Caper isn’t executed very well. You are a robber who can run up and down ladders and catch stolen loot from your partner in crime on the right side of the screen. On the left side some cops come and if they make it all the way to where your partner is, you get arrested and lose a ‘life.’ You can toss items at the cops to keep them at bay. Unfortunately, the touch screen play control isn’t very good and keeps things from being fun.

Billiards
It’s strange. Some video pool games I really enjoy (the one on Super Monkey Ball, NES Lunar Pool), but some I don’t like as much. I actually like this simple touch screen game of 8-ball because it’s easy to pick up and play. You just use the touch screen to decide where you want to hit the cue ball and how hard, and that’s it. The top screen has a handy top down view that’ll tell you the angle of your shots. Unfortunately, I stink at pool so I’m not so good at getting a high score on this one. Back in college in my freshman year, none of my friends had a car on campus so we hung out in the downstairs dorm lounge a lot and played pool. I even got my own stick for my birthday that year! Only bad thing is, I don’t know if it was because of my vision or I’m just a klutz, but I wasn’t very good at pool then, either!

Beaned!
It’s a DS shooting gallery with paintballs. I was hoping it would be like the touch screen shooting games in Point Blank DS, but it’s not. The fun is hampered because there’s a delay from when you touch the screen and when the paintball arcs out to hit the target. You also have to avoid shooting the ‘good guy’ targets, but it’s hard to tell what those are sometimes.

Speed Demon
Best way to describe this game is it’s a touch screen version of Konami’s arcade classic Road Fighters! (I’ve got Sparkle’s attention) View the road from a top down perspective as you steer your car left and right to avoid other cars and pick up fuel to keep going. You get bonus points for ramming cars off the road, but that’s easier said than done since it takes so long for the other cars to swerve off the road after you hit them. Plus you have to be careful because if you hit them from behind when you’re going to fast, you’ll explode and it’s game over.

Brain
The games underneath the picture of a brain are puzzle games, I guess.

Super Mahki
Mahki was on the original Touchmaster game, and it’s a puzzle game that you’ve all played on Windows before, I’m sure. Different colored blocks are scattered about, and when you touch a set that match, they disappear and the blocks around them fill in the gaps. You have to try and clear out as many blocks as you can and leave as few leftovers as possible. The only difference in Super Mahki is the playfield is bigger and goes up to the top screen. Still a fun puzzler, though.

Dice King
It’s basically Bejeweled with colored dice. On the top screen they keep record of what you’ve matched up, and you get bonus points if you match up three of one kind in a row, four of one kind, a flush, etc. Fun, but I like the DS Bejeweled clone Zoo Keeper better.

Prismatic
At first glance, this looks a lot like Hexic on Xbox 360. The playfield on the bottom screen is the same: a bunch of colored hexagons. But you don’t rotate them or anything. Here’s how it works. On the top screen is a figure that looks kind of like a model of the solar system. Or a round abacus. Four different colored hexagons align in the middle, and you can match and clear blocks on the bottom screen that are the same as the pattern in the top screen. So if the top screen has red, red, blue, yellow, you can match up four hexagons in that pattern (tap to make matches), or less (for a lower score) by matching up red, red, or red, blue, or blue, yellow. When you make a match, the top screen spins again for another new pattern. Try and clear out as many hexagons as you can before running out of moves, and get a high score in the process. At least this one is somewhat creative.

Picture
Games under the camera icon are picture puzzle related.

View Finder
This is one of those ‘find the differences between two similar pictures’ games. Very similar to Namco’s own QuickSpot DS game. Of course, QuickSpot is much better and I highly recommend it if you can find it. The Touchmaster version isn’t as good because the pictures in it are less cartoony and it’s harder to find differences because of that. Plus, to find differences in QuickSpot, you circled them. But in Touchmaster, you just tap them and the game automatically makes a circle for you, which can accidentally cover up another difference in the picture! So yeah, get QuickSpot. Seriously, it’s fun.

Scavenger
This is one of those ‘find hidden items in a picture’ game. Kind of like my favorite part of Highlights Magazine. Unfortunately, the graphics aren’t very good so it’s hard to spot some of the hidden items in the pictures.

What Is It?
In this game, a drawn picture slowly reveals itself, and you have to key in and guess what the picture is. Try and guess as many as you can before time runs out. But it’s not very forgiving, though. One time the game drew a picture of a frog, and I guessed that and got it wrong. They were looking for ‘toad.’ Well, excuuuuuuse me, princess!

Picture Slide
This is just one of those tile slide puzzles to make a picture. I hate those! I can never do them!

Puzzle
The picture for the last category is a golden jigsaw puzzle piece, but there’s no Banjo-Kazooie to be found here! I guess these are puzzle games, too. Maybe Midway didn’t know where to put these so they’re miscellaneous. Who knows?

Rampage Empire
Man, Midway really did slap the Rampage license on everything! A million home console sequels to the arcade update (with no improvements or changes), a GBA Tetris Attack clone, and now Touchmaster! In this game, there’s a building on the left side of the screen and George the giant ape is on the right. On the building are letters and you can slide them around horizontally to unscramble words. When you make a word, George will punch that part of the building. Sometimes a helicopter or bus goes by with words, and you can unscramble them for bonus points. When you make all the words, the building falls down and George moves onto taller buildings with more letters. I never really liked word scramble games so I didn’t get into this one. I guess if I ever wrote a retrospective blog on the Rampage game, (which I won’t), I’d have to remember to include this one, too.

Spellwinder
This is kind of like a word find puzzle except you’re not restricted to going down, across, or diagonal. As long as the letters touch, you can spell words all over the place. I’m not very good at search and finds, yet I found this game pretty easy to spot words.

Catacombs
This is a maze game. Guide your little explorer dude around mazes with the touch screen and gather all the treasure that you can while avoiding enemies and traps. Kind of reminds me of a touch screen version of Tower of Druaga! This game isn’t as much fun as Pac-Man, though.

And that’s all the games on Touchmaster 2! Again, as I said before, it’s not as good as the first game, and neither game is worth more than 20 bucks. In the comments section, if you have any good memories about playing Touchmaster games in bars, please share them. I sure don’t have any! –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews