I will start a sentence. Everyone who can supply the correct ending go to one side, and those who are stumped go to the other side. Ready?

"Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right . . ."

Okay, those who knew the legendary "Konami Code" can read the following paragraph and scamper off to the store. Everyone else stays.

Konami Collector's Series enables you to play six of Konami's classic arcade titles on your Game Boy Advance in all their classic glory. Frogger, Scramble, Time Pilot, Gyruss, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, and Rush'n Attack have made the port more or less intact. Unlike previous home versions, these are nearly arcade-perfect. That was enough to sell me, but when I tried out the "Konami Code" on each game . . . well, things got even more interesting. Now run along.

The rest of you mugs pull up a chair and get ready for a whirlwind tour of the six titles on this cartridge - six titles that made the arcade in the Eighties a fantastical but nerve-wracking place. To add to the feel, you may want to rest a cigarette on top of your GBA and drop a nacho on the floor. Lining up quarters across the tiny handheld screen is not recommended, however.

Arcade 201

The games in this collection were released to arcades between 1981 and 1985, after the Golden Era of Space Invaders and Centipede, but well before the market drowned in 2D fighters. They were all designed to elicit a steady stream of coins, so none of them is exactly a breeze.

Frogger is the most famous of the group. Loved by women, children, the old guard, and LCD game manufacturers everywhere, this classic is one of the most instantly accessible video games in the history of the art. It is one of the few games to control with one joystick and no buttons. The beauty of it is that almost anyone can get the frog home the first couple of times, and most people will stick with trying to get it there the next few times as well. It is only after that that the player begins to perceive the speeding cars and the floating alligators not as friendly sprites, inviting them to have a good time in a candy-coated version of our reality, but as instruments of demented programmers who hate women, children, the old guard, and pretty much everyone else - programmers who laugh as you pump in token after token only to drown or be flattened by a semi. Ah! All is as it should be.

Maybe old-school developers weren't about hate after all. Maybe it's just "tough love." If so,Scramble is about as tough as love gets. One of the first side-scrolling shooters, this game is hard by today's standards. Along with the requisite shooting and bombing, you must also contend with your ship's gas-guzzling ways by bombing fuel tanks that show up along the ground. Of course, once you reach the end, the game just throws you back to the beginning and ups the difficulty. 'Tis indeed a thin line.

Time Pilot is probably the easiest game in the collection. Pilot your aircraft through various stages in history and one future stage, ridding the skies of baddies native to that time period. The screen scrolls in all four directions while keeping the player's ship in the center.

Gyruss is a space game with a Tempest-like perspective. Enemies fly towards the center of the screen and then radiate outward. Your ship travels the perimeter of a large circular area and shoots inward. The game progresses from the outer edge of the solar system toward a climactic boss battle to save the Earth.

Arguably the gem of the collection, Yie Ar Kung-Fu is a one-on-one fighting game with a lot of character. Jackie Chan clone Oolong is the only selectable fighter (at least he was the only one selectable in the coin-op version [wink, wink]), but there is, literally, a ton of opposition. This game is a showcase of martial arts weaponry. Opponents will come at you with everything from nunchuks and throwing stars to tonfas, clubs, and swords. The music and graphics also add immensely to the classical Chinese feel. If you want to see a weapons-based fighter with a "traditional" East Asian motif that hit the arcades about eight years before Samurai Shodown, here it is.

Rounding out the list is Rush'n Attack, a side-scrolling carve-'em-up with a mission. Playing this game, we learn a) Soviets are bad, b) a Soviet soldier can kill a Green Beret with any form of physical contact whatsoever, c) a well-placed rocket will continue with no degradation in trajectory or speed through a group of a half-dozen or more Soviet soldiers, who also tend to travel in straight lines. So much for the social studies lesson.

"Please deposit coin and try this game."

If you purchased the Konami Antiques disc for the import Saturn, you were probably happy to get to play some of the old Konami titles, but disappointed that only the MSX versions were released. Certainly the Saturn could have handled the arcade Gradius and Knightmare. This group of six games is not a definitive collection of classics, but it is the start of something big.

So we might get a Konami mega-disc with 100 games on the PS3 or the Xbox 4, that shouldn't stop you from grabbing this cart if one or two of the titles appeal to you. You are more likely to appreciate each game and face up to the challenges in this format, where there aren't ten other similar games to turn to once you get stuck.

The games may be a bit maddening to those used to latter-day cakewalks, but the most frustrating aspect of KAC is the lack of a save feature for high scores. It's not that much of a bad point, and I suppose having your records vaporize whenever the power is turned off is authentic to the arcade experience, but it still would have been nice to post your initials and have them mean more than a temporary triumph.

Other than that minor complaint, there was little to detract from my enjoyment of this cart. The games were wisely selected, and the hidden extras (note the plural) for each game were super, especially if you have a link cable (no second cart needed).

Lesson over. Dismissed.

· · · Nick