That’s right folks, it has been 50 years since Masaya Nakamura founded Namco on the revenue generated by a couple of kiddie-mechanical-horse rides located on top of a Tokyo department store. And as Namco celebrates its golden anniversary, it is going to its classic-arcade catalog of titles for a compilation to exploit … uh, I mean, commemorate half a century in business. Namco Museum 50th Anniversary once again trots out some of the greatest arcade titles that gamers ever played standing up in a darkened room. Unfortunately 50th Anniversary does not add much over the 2001 Namco Museum release and the series still has an appalling lack of historical extras. But since these are games that laid the foundation for many of the gaming experiences we enjoy today, they definitely deserve a look.
As I have said before when reviewing older games emulated for new systems, I will not actually judge the quality of the games themselves. They were executed on years-old hardware for an audience that no longer exists. Their place in the video gaming pantheon is set and what we might think of the quality of their game-playing experience today is irrelevant. What we can look at with these compilations is the selection of games, the quality of their emulation, the player interface and any extras the disc may contain.
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary sports 14 classic arcade games from the 1980s. The distinguished honor roll consists of Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Rally-X, Pole Position, Pole Position II, Xevious, Dragon Spirit, Bosconian, Rolling Thunder, Mappy and Sky Kid. Undocumented on the package is the fact that two additional games, Pac-Mania and Galaga ’88, can be unlocked for play by achieving set scores on some of the games in the compilation. With this roster of games, Namco Museum 50th Anniversary easily beats any single previous Namco Museum compilation handily for quality and quantity of selection. These games are indeed what made Namco the powerhouse it is within the video game industry today.
After stumbling badly with Midway Arcade Treasures 2, it is good to see that developer Digital Eclipse is right back on top of its form in emulating games. All of the games play comparable to their arcade counterparts and look pixel perfect. Even the sound, which has often proved the most difficult element of early games to emulate, is of the highest quality. Don’t think you can ask much more in the emulation department.
Control is spot on and uses the modern console controllers well. The only real complaint is the lack of a true 4-way controller for the great maze-chase games. In the arcades, games like Pac-Man and Dig Dug had joysticks that only recognized up, down, left and right. Ever since these games have been coming home, the more adaptable home console controllers, with their ability to recognize diagonal movement, have been a bit of a problem for games that were meant to recognize only four directions. Inadvertently hitting a diagonal command like up-right tends to confuse the program since it does not know whether you meant for your on-screen character to move up or turn right. But since this is a problem that has been around as long as there have been arcade adaptations for home systems, I really can’t fault it too much here.
The interface for selecting games to play has been improved over previous editions of Namco Museum. Now the player selects the desired game in a cyber representation of a 1980s arcade to the accompaniment of period-appropriate music. The first time I booted the game and Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s Come On Eileen (one of my favorites from the period) started playing, I knew this was good. In a nice touch, the Pac-Mania and Galaga ’88 games have “Out of Order” signs on them until they are unlocked.
Now we come to where Namco Museum 50th Anniversary fails miserably: historical extras. Remember what I wrote about Masaya Nakamura founding Namco in the first paragraph? Well that is more history of Namco than you are going to get in this whole package. For a compilation that is supposed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a company, I find it unforgivable that there is no company history presented. If the games are meant to represent the company, they only go back 25 years. There is no history of the individual games. No developer interviews. Zip. Nada. For future reference, check out the recent Atari game compilations. Despite my personal feelings that Infogrames/Atari generally puts out an inferior modern-game product, they definitely know how to do a compilation and consistently have great historical extras. Even the Midway Arcade Treasures series, with the inferior production quality of their developer interviews, does a much better job than Namco.
I suppose the bottom line is what you want from this title. If you want to play some of the most influential arcade games ever made, well-emulated versions of them certainly are on Namco Museum 50th Anniversary. And there are some lesser-known classics here as well. On the other hand, if you were hoping to get some historical insight into a company that has been around 50 years and in the latter half of its existence adapted very successfully to the new video game medium, forget it. This disc offers nothing. So it succeeds on one side and fails on the other. That earns it a terribly average “C” score.
