It's a side-scrolling shooter in which our hero can duck, jump and shoot at the bad guys with guns. Rolling Thunder - This is one of the games that has never seen a compilation release before the 50th Anniversary Namco Museum. The difficulty is also pretty severe early on, but power-ups you can find by bombing ground targets help to make it a little easier. The graphics for this game are actually pretty impressive for 80s arcade hardware. The graphics are simple, but the gameplay is what made this one a classic.ĭragon Spirit - A Xevious clone with a dragon instead of a fighter plane. Xevious - The classic top-down shooter where your Solvalou fighter needs to shoot enemies from the sky and bomb threats on the ground. The game was better remembered for featuring voice warnings, such as "Incoming Formation." It's relatively weak compared to other top-downs featured in this compilation, though. The graphics look similar to Galaga, but more things are moving around. This one is a good game to play if you need a Pac-Man break.īosconian - In this space shooter, you directly control your spaceship of the same name and fly around shooting at enemy bases while avoiding space hazards and other enemies. If you run out of gas before getting all the flags, you lose a life. You can drop a smoke screen to get them off your trail, but it costs fuel to do it.
Your blue car navigates around a maze-like track collecting flags, while the enemy red cars try to corner you and crash into you or make you slam into a rock. Rally X - Think Pac-Man, but with race cars. Here's a quick rundown of the other games in the compilation that you may have never even heard of. I'll assume that everyone has played Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaga, and Pole Position before and knows what's up with those games. It's too bad the music stops once you start a game, though.Įnough about the interface, let's talk about the games now. You'll let the game sit in the menu just to hear the music over and over again. Come on Eileen - Dexy's Midnight RunnersĪfter you press the Start button on the title screen, swoop into the virtual arcade setup, and start hearing those hits from the 80s blast from your stereo system (erm, boom box?), you can't help but smile.She Drives Me Crazy - Fine Young Cannibals.Here's a list of the songs in the game, which are sure to bring back as many memories as the classic games themselves: The game plays five songs direct from the 80s while you decide which game you want to drop your virtual quarters in to. And I'm not talking about some EA Trax garbage. What really makes you want to play around with it is the soundtrack. (As an added touch, Pac-Mania and Galaga '88 have 'Out of Order' signs on them while they are locked.)īut that's not all for the menu. All of the games are lined up next to each other just like arcades back in the day, and seeing all of them running in attract mode next to each other is pure awesome. If you scroll over to one of the Pole Position cabinets, for instance, you'll see exactly what it looked like in the arcades, with the attract mode running, the steering wheel, fat shifter stick complete with the boot, and even the racing stripes on the cabinet side panels and coin box. Instead of having a boring menu where you just select the game's logo and play it, Namco re-created a virtual arcade of sorts, with all 16 games being housed in its own facsimile arcade cabinet, complete with original control setup. The other cool thing about Namco 50th (and I mean cool) is the main menu for selecting a game.
The challenge adds a welcome level of value to the game, so there's something to achieve rather than just play the games that are there. While old grizzly vets can acquire these scores in their sleep, for some people it may present a genuine challenge to attain these high scores, bringing back the reason why the games were so popular back in the day. In order to play them you need to get high scores in their original versions that is, 40,000 points in Galaga and 35,000 points combined in the two Pac-Man games. These games are locked at the start, though. As nice surprise, two more games are available: The 3D Pac-Man game Pac-Mania, and Galaga '88. Here's the list of the 14 games that are initially available to play on this compilation disc:īut wait! There's more. Sure, Pac-Man, Galaga, and Pole Position are welcomed in any kind of re-release, but if that's really the only thing to offer in a game, then why bother? Thankfully Namco realized this problem and pulled out all the stops for their 50th Anniversary edition of Namco Museum. Compared to the recent Midway offerings, most of Namco's arcade compilations were a little disappointing.
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