Namco Museum

"Oh no, not again. Get this, but only if you haven't bought it before."

Disney trots out its old films every 10 years or so, to milk cash out of the new generations of kids who haven't seen them yet. Then they go back into Walt's Vault until the time of the next re-release, so that their value is artificially inflated because of scarcity. The laws of supply and demand don't get much clearer than that.

Anybody over 30 who is still playing games doubtless has some fond memories of Namco's arcade machines, many of which were licensed and released by Atari in the United States. Everybody, gamer or not, knows who Pac-Man is.

As a result, these aren't the freshest games in the world. You could argue that they've stood ''the test of time,'' but each entry in this Museum is small enough that there really should be many more games to play in this collection. We only get 5 for this set, each of which has a glaring flaw:

Ms. Pac-Man
The most popular of this set, Ms. Pac can still be found in modern arcades. Eat or be eaten, featuring scrolling (can't see the whole maze) or fullscreen (everything is squished).

Dig-Dug
Dig, pump, drop rocks. Scrolling only.

Galaga, Galaxian
Galaxian was pretty crude even in the 1980s, but Galaga is still played in modern arcades today. Trouble is, the screen is resized to the size of a postage stamp in these versions.

Pole Position
This game is the only one of the set which hasn't appeared on another portable platform before. One of the great ancestors of the modern driving game, PP was the first game that put the emphasis on speed rather than simply staying on the road. You can go offroad in PP a little bit, as long as you avoid the billboards all over the track. The horizontal widescreen display of the GBA is perfect for the game, but the digital controls are not. Still, this is a fair port because everything else seems to be intact.

Big Gripe #1 with GBA Namco Museum: Screen format.
Remember the Atari Lynx? There were a few games that required you to turn the device on its end to play. A sideways mode would have been great for 4 out of 5 of the games included here, though it would have made things a little awkward with the GBA SP.

Big Gripe #2 with GBA Namco Museum: Selection of games.
On the Playstation, Namco padded out its back catalog with 6 CD-ROM volumes (N-A-M-C-O and a Japan-only bonus disc) full of games, trivia, animations, and more. Apparently only volumes N and M sold well, so the favorites of those games were repackaged for other platforms like the N64, Dreamcast, PDAs, XBOX, GameCube ... and this collection. It's not really a ''museum'' anymore. These games are SMALL! The developers really should have included other Namco sleepers like Bosconian, Xevious, Pac-Man, Mappy, Dragon Buster, Grobda ... well, you get the point.

This was a wasted opportunity to do something very cool. Instead, the developers took the safe path and will still make plenty of money.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/03, Updated 02/03/03