Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: Namco
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Release Date: August 30, 2005

Another year brings us another retro games compilation from Namco. This one is in theory celebrating the 50th anniversary of Namco's founding, long before they were a company that made video games. In actuality it's just this year's Namco Museum iteration, and like most reissue bundles, has its good and bad points. How you feel about it is likely to depend on how well the port of your favorite game on this collection turned out.

The build this article looks at is very, very partial. Three of the games listed on the menu screen (Xevious, Pole Position, and Pole Position II) weren't playable in this version. The code appears to have been ported over from an Xbox build, because commands for activating Xbox Live (!) appeared on the main game menu. There were some other bugs, too, like difficulty levels and other options not being selectable, and customization controls not working. These are all issues that should be ironed out before the final build, of course, but it does mean that there's a lot of the game that simply can't be talked about right now.

Playable games from this build were Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Galaxian, Galaga, Galaga '88, Dig Dug, Rolling Thunder, Rally X, Bosconian, Dragon Spirit, Mappy, and Sky Kid. Each port was designed to look "arcade perfect," complete with original interface graphics and tapping the L1 button to "insert credit". For games with non-standard displays like Pac-Man and Galaga, an area of the screen that matched the original display ratio of the arcade cabinet was used. This is good from an authenticity standpoint, but does mean that these games have visibility problems when played on small TV screens.

One of the odd things about this collection is that the most common games - Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, and Galaxian - show up in particularly poor form on this collection. While the games are arcade-perfect in terms of graphics and sound, the controls are far more sluggish and unresponsive than they should be. Galaga and Galaxian are also hampered by a slower rate of fire from the main ship - you can pound the cross button all that you want, but you'll never get the shots to emerge as quickly as they would in an arcade cabinet. This makes both games somewhat unplayable, at least as intended.

The good news is that most of the rarer games on the disc are in top form, so perhaps the ports of the common games simply have some work left to be done on them before release. This doesn't explain why Dig Dug and the oft-ported Mappy are present in arcade perfect form, but a preview can only hope to understand so much. Perhaps the art of porting these games is somehow more easily perfected.

Bosconian was probably my favorite of the games on-disc, and possibly the rarest. The original arcade Bosconian wasn't one of Namco's bigger hits, and most Bosconian machines ended up being turned into Galaga cabinets. This aside, Bosconian is still the first game created with a continue function, and one of the first to incorporate synthesized voice acting. The voice as represented in the port on this disc is amazingly authentic to the arcade game, scratchy and distorted. Gameplay in Bosconian is unusual for the era, incorporating objectives that can be fulfilled in any order and map exploration. Basically, your Bosconian ship stays at the center of the screen and shoots lasers out of its front and end; you can move it in eight directions, which actually just scrolls the map around you. Each level presents you with 20 little green space stations you have to destroy, and hordes of debris and enemies that you have to avoid if you want to do it.

There's other obscure goodies present, like Dragon Spirit, a top-down vertically scrolling shooter where you play as a fire-breathing dragon that's dueling demons instead of the usual space ship. Rolling Thunder is an early side-scrolling action game, where you guide a secret agent armed with nothing but a gun and the ability to enter doors through a horde of bad guys who look sort of like festive Klan members. Galaga '88 is a rare version of Galaga that's been given an amusing graphical facelift, and some variations in the kinds enemies you shoot down. Rally X is similar to Bosconian in terms of how the map works, but you navigate a car through a maze to capture flags while outracing enemy cars. Finally, there's Sky Kid, in which you play as a kid who flies a plane through an obstacle course of enemies. Your plane can only move up or down, and you can only shoot at targets beneath you by flying downward.

Pac-Mania is probably the single title that will create the most online buzz, as it's one of the most obscure games to star Namco's ever-hungry mascot. It's also distinguished as the final Pac-Man arcade game, with isometric 3D graphics and a Pac-Man who could jump over ghosts and walls. It's not one of the best Pac-Man games, or even a particularly good one, since the maze you move Pac-Man through is set up such that you can only see a small portion of it at any time. Grabbing power pellets is pointless unless ghosts are chasing you, because you can't see the entire map and can't know where your adversaries are. The game's AI is also noticeably poorer than even the AI in the original two Pac-Man games. Still, this isn't a game that's ported frequently, and it's interesting enough when you have the option of playing something more fun.

If the ports of the classics can be brought up to speed with the ports of the arcade rarities, then the 50th Anniversary collection will be the best Namco Museum to date. Bosconian and Rally X are almost worth it by themselves, but no retro fan will want to pass on the surprisingly elegant port of Galaga '88. Dragon Spirit and Rolling Thunder make the package irresistible. Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Collection will street at the end of the month.