(Many gamers also bemoan the absence of the likes of Pac-Land and Pac-Attack, which have appeared in previous collections, but those are at least very different games that just happen to have the Pac name attached to them. The arbitrary exclusion of certain games has always been a baffling aspect of the Namco collections - why Xevious but not the tweaked, identical-hardware Super Xevious? Why Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man and Pac-Mania, but no Jr Pac-Man? GOOD THING: Along with Galaxian and Galaga you get (via unlocking) Galaga 88, the fourth game in the Galaxian line, which makes its any-format debut in a retro pack.īAD THING: But no Gaplus, the excellent third Galaxian game. The third wave of Galactic Dancin' is still one of the loveliest bits of any videogame. And as with Pac-Man, both the "bezel" graphic from the Super Game Boy version and the various optional pieces of side-area artwork from the PS1 version are gone, leaving great empty swathes of black screen. at the expense of the famous and evocative opening fanfare, which now sounds tinny and cheap, as if they'd copied it across from the NES version. They've also fixed the background sound, which used to play much too fast.īAD THING. No longer do you have to play it all shunted off to the left of the screen with a fat grey score bar down the right - the display is properly centred with the score at the top where it should be. GOOD THING: As with Pac-Man, Namco have finally taken the opportunity to improve the long-standing bad port of Galaxian. Remember, viewers - it's "Galaxian", not "Galaxians" plural. New is a far better game, and appeared alongside normal Rally-X on Museum Volume 1, but is missing here. Similarly, you get Rally-X but not New Rally-X, the hastily-tweaked arcade "sequel" that came out almost immediately after the original failed to attract the success Namco were hoping for. GOOD THING: You get Sky Kid, a splendid little 1985 coin-op which only appeared previously in the rare "Encore" pack for the PS1.īAD THING: But not Sky Kid Deluxe, the follow-up from a year later that ran on the same hardware and would have been no effort at all to include. T here's going to be a horrible incident in a moment. (Oh, and your settings, along with your high scores, get saved automatically.)īAD THING: The option from the PS1 Museums to fill the empty areas at the side of the screen on "vertical" games with nice artwork from the coin-op cabinets is gone, as is the (non-optional) "bezel" artwork present on the old version of Pac-Man. GOOD THING: As with all the games in Anniversary, and unlike in previous collections, Pac-Man's display can now be properly resized to occupy the full height of the screen, putting paid to some of the hideous borders encountered on earlier versions. At last that's been sorted with a nice, smooth version that sounds right.īAD THING: The dots are still the wrong colour. 1 on the PS1 has featured the exact same abysmal port, with choppy movement, bad animation, and wrong colours and sound. Every Namco retro compilation since Museum Vol. GOOD THING: Finally, at about the 12th time of asking, they've done a halfway-proper version of Pac-Man. Pictured: the absence of attractive "bezel" artwork at the sides. (Neither game yet running in a satisfactory manner in MAME.) It's strictly old-school all the way, and gamers such as your reporter, with a hankering to finally get to play Xevious Arrangement and Rally-X Arrangement in the comfort of their own homes, are still plum out of luck. You get Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Galaxian, Galaga, Galaga 88, Pole Position, Pole Position 2, Dig Dug, Mappy, Bosconian, Xevious, Dragon Spirit, Rally-X, Sky Kid and Rolling Thunder, some of which haven't appeared on collections since the original six-volume Playstation series.īAD THING: Sadly, none of the excellent updated "Arrangement" versions (of Pac-Man, Galaga and Dig Dug) which appeared on the last collection for Xbox and PS2 show up this time round, and nor do the other three games which got "Arrangement" coin-op releases in 1995 (Xevious, Rally-X and Mappy). GOOD THING: This new compilation offers 16 different games (two of them requiring extremely cursory "unlocking"), the highest number of any Namco retro pack so far. Rolling Thunder, still one of the most elegant-looking arcade games of ever. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this still isn't the definitive Namco retro collection, or anywhere remotely near it. You have to admire their gall in still milking the same cow, 11 years after the first Namco Museum.īAD THING: As usual, what they give with one hand, they take away with the other. GOOD THING: Namco have released yet another compilation of their early arcade hits, featuring Pac-Man and Dig-Dug and Galaxian and Pole Position etc. Namco 50th Anniversary (PS2/Xbox/GC/PC, currently US/Jap only)
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