Namco Museum Vol. 3

"Another decent collection with a nice mixed bag of nostalgia"

Genre: Action, Classics
Players: 1 to 2
Dual Shock Compatible: No
Difficulty: Moderate

The third installment in the Namco Classics series presents a mixed bag of pleasant memories intertwined with West Virginian outhouse material.

Namco Classics Volume 3 begins by offering two original smash hits, Galaxian and Dig Dug. Both enjoyed incredible success after their introduction. Dig Dug featured a very devious plot considering it had such cute and cuddly characters. The premise was to go around and inflate your enemies and watch them explode like an over heliumized balloon.

Galaxian followed up on the Space Invaders craze by having enemy aliens to swarm and dive towards your spaceship. This was a very big gameplay element when it was first introduced. Eventually, Galaxian was followed up Galaga, the most successful follow-up game in video game history.

Pole Position II continued to offer near identical elements of the original Pole Position. The exception, your F1 car can travel at faster speeds and three new track were introduced.

Though the three previous games were highly successful classics, Ms. Pac Man is obviously the show stealer on Namco Classics Volume 3. Ms. Pac Man contains the basic gameplay elements of Pac Man with the exception that four new mazes and three entertaining intermission were added. It was and always will be fun going around in mazes gobbling up everything in sight.

With four decent to excellent retro games, Namco appears to have decided to toss several unknown games in order to fill up disc space. Two virtually unknown titles, The Tower of Druaga and Phozon, are included. The Tower of Druaga is a horrible game where a knight moves slower than molasses and who has an attack weaker than a 98 pound weakling. Rounding out the compilation is the puzzle game Phozon. It's premise is so boring and redundant that it could be used as a cure to insomnia.

These two games aside, Namco Classics Volume 3 is recommended for anyone interested in classic video games, especially fans of the Pac Man series. This disc is a steal for $20, especially for a few nice pieces of information located in museum mode.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99