Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Collection

This collection contains the following Namco games from the early 80s:

• Pac-Man
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Galaga
• Galaxian
• Dig Dug
• Rally-X
• Pole Position
• Pole Position II
• Xevious
• Dragon Spirit
• Bosconian
• Rolling Thunder
• Mappy
• Sky Kid

I find the selection of games a mixed bag. While you have names like Galaga and Pole Position that are so iconic people will buy the collection just to play them, other included titles just seem like so much filler. Perhaps someone out there fondly remembers Mappy, but I glide right past it on the menu. But no matter how you feel about an individual title, they're all there just as you remember them, in all their pixilated glory.

Gameplay

The games are what they are; you're not getting Doom 3 here, but playing them is just as fun as I thought it would be. I can picture this being a great game to play with a bunch of friends. You can bet we'd all be arguing over who got to play first. Most games come with a few option settings, such as changing the number of lives you get each turn. This can be handy as long as you remember to do it before selecting your game. Unless you're a Ms. Pac-Man master, and then you won't need five lives instead of three anyway. The controls are simple, fitting the fact that these games were originally played with a joystick and perhaps a button or two. Any movement in a game is accomplished through using either the arrow keys or analog stick. The buttons are used for actions like shooting in Galaga or shifting in Pole Position. I found using my thumb on the analog stick to be the easiest control option, while my husband preferred actually placing the controller on the floor or his knee and using the analog stick in a joystick fashion.

Games in the Collection

This collection contains the following Namco games from the early 80s:

• Pac-Man
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Galaga
• Galaxian
• Dig Dug
• Rally-X
• Pole Position
• Pole Position II
• Xevious
• Dragon Spirit
• Bosconian
• Rolling Thunder
• Mappy
• Sky Kid

I find the selection of games a mixed bag. While you have names like Galaga and Pole Position that are so iconic people will buy the collection just to play them, other included titles just seem like so much filler. Perhaps someone out there fondly remembers Mappy, but I glide right past it on the menu. But no matter how you feel about an individual title, they're all there just as you remember them, in all their pixilated glory.

Gameplay

The games are what they are; you're not getting Doom 3 here, but playing them is just as fun as I thought it would be. I can picture this being a great game to play with a bunch of friends. You can bet we'd all be arguing over who got to play first.

Most games come with a few option settings, such as changing the number of lives you get each turn. This can be handy as long as you remember to do it before selecting your game. Unless you're a Ms. Pac-Man master, and then you won't need five lives instead of three anyway.

The controls are simple, fitting the fact that these games were originally played with a joystick and perhaps a button or two. Any movement in a game is accomplished through using either the arrow keys or analog stick. The buttons are used for actions like shooting in Galaga or shifting in Pole Position. I found using my thumb on the analog stick to be the easiest control option, while my husband preferred actually placing the controller on the floor or his knee and using the analog stick in a joystick fashion.

Negatives

The packaging bills an eighties soundtrack as a feature of the game, but these songs only appear in the menu, not during any of the games. So unless you want to fire up the PS2 and scroll through the menu for a couple of hours, it's really not that big of a deal.

The load times are unnecessarily long for games that require very little processing power. I don't think that my PS2 should take longer than one of those self-contained plug-and-play controllers to load a game like Pac-Man.

Bottom Line

Overall, this isn't a perfect collection, but it provides a decent amount of entertainment for $20 or less. However, the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Collection definitely hinges on its nostalgia factor. If the thought of playing Dig Dug again doesn't get you excited, or you're saying, "What's a Dig Dug?" you should probably pass on this one.