Namco's classic arcade games hit the Game Boy Advance. Do they do the classics justice?
I do not know of many gamers who don't appreciate a good collection of classic games. Whether the classics be from the arcade, console, or even PC, it doesn't matter as long as the look and feel invoke the memories we once had while playing the original games. The latest platform to feature Namco's popular Namco Museum series of classics is the Game Boy Advance, and despite a few issues, it's quite a nice collection.
Namco Museum for the Game Boy Advance contains 5 popular and faithfully ported Namco arcade games: Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Galaga, and Galaxian. Each game definitely has some issues with being squished down to handheld level, with some games suffering more than the rest. The issues were all more or less expected however. Namco did through in some extras such as hints and tips for each of the games, along with adjustable difficulty levels and other assorted options as well.
Ms. Pac-Man gives you two screens options right from the get go. You can either choose to see the entire screen at once, which obviously makes everything quite small, or allow the game field to scroll around and follow your progress around the mazes, which is my person preference. The latter can occasionally cause you to run into a group of ghosts without realizing it. Other than that, the graphics and sounds are perfect.
Pole Position, also, looks and sounds 100% right. The screen size is no real issue, but on the other hand, the control is. Trying to replace the arcade original's analog steering wheel with a little D-pad just doesn't work as well as one would hope. Trying to accurately steer in-between vehicles moving at the extremely fast speed that PP does, can be frustrating. Especially since in the Pole Position series if you even touch another car, you just explode in place.
Dig Dug is perfect, with not a single issue or complaint. It looks, sounds and plays just like the original.
Galaga and Galaxian, while both being part of the same series of games, fare differently. Galaga's visuals are at a size where the game is just playable. Enemies and bullets are usually pretty easily identified, which is obviously important in a shooter. Galaxian however, is just a complete mess. Above all the other games in the Museum, Galaxian requires a vertically oriented screen layout. The GBA version is scaled down and reformatted to fit within the wide-screen horizontal format. As a result, the enemies and especially the bullets are teeny-tiny. Enemy shots are maybe 1 or 2 single pixels larger than the white moving stars which are found in the background. Not a good thing. The sound effects and music are both perfect, however.
While some of the games in the Namco Museum are a bit frustrating to play because of the screen size limitation, they are all faithful to the original arcade games. Personally, the game is worth it for Ms.Pac-Man, Galaga and Dig Dug alone. Those who can't live with a less than perfect Galaxian and Pole Position, may need to try before they buy.
