Video games - Namco Museum

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	Video games - Namco Museum

Namco Museum refers to the series of compilations released by Namco for various 32-bit and above consoles, containing releases of their games from the 1980s. The titles have been met with mixed reaction from the gaming press, but their apparent success has led to the series continuing for almost a decade.

The series began on the Sony PlayStation with the tentatively named Namco Museum Volume 1, indicating Namco's intent to make further instalments of the series. Indeed, the series ran until Volume 5 on the PlayStation 1, covering various games from the late 1980s, before moving onto the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube and Microsoft Xbox.

Namco Museum Volume 1

This was the first in the long series for the PlayStation and contained Pac-Man
(1980), Rally-X
(1980), New Rally-X
(1981), Galaga
(1981), Pole Position
(1982), Bosconian
(1981) and Toy Pop
(1986). Toy Pop was relatively unknown.

All of the games were faithful to the arcade originals - Galaga allowed for an alternative screenmode to compensate for the lack of vertical monitor, whereby the scoreboard was located on the left of the screen, or rotated the image 90 degrees if the user possessed a vertical monitor or was willing to risk placing the television/monitor on its side. Pac-Man allowed the same. Nonetheless, all of the games in this and other collections were "recreated" using the original source code. The games in "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection" were emulated using the original game ROMs.

While the control systems of six of the games were well preserved, Pole Position suffered in transition. At the time, the PlayStation's analog controller was not available and analog control was only possible by Namco's unpopular neGcon joypad.

The package also featured a "museum" mode where the player could walk through a virtual museum containing various curiosities surrounding the games including images of the mainboards, marketing material and conceptual artwork (all from the Japanese releases; neither this nor the others contain any American materials). For this reason, the games themselves are based on the Japanese releases, although for the U.S. the games retain their U.S. changes (i.e., Pac-Man is still "Pac-Man", as opposed to "Puckman"; the ghosts still have their U.S. names, etc).

Microsoft had already produced a similar product in 1996 under the title "Microsoft Return of the Arcade" for Windows 95 which was practically identical in contents and concept, also containing versions of Pacman, Pole Position, Galaga and Dig Dug, albeit recreated as opposed to emulated.

Namco Museum Volume 2

The second installment of the PlayStation series featured Mappy
(1983), Xevious
(1982), Galaga sequel Gaplus
(1984), Grobda
(1984) (a Xevious "spinoff"), Dragon Buster
(1984) and Super Pac-Man
(1982) (Cutie Q
(1979) in the Japanese version). It enjoyed similar success to the original, and contained a similar "museum" mode. The Japanese version also features Bomb Bee
(1979) as a hidden game.

Namco Museum Volume 3

The third PlayStation volume contained Galaxian
(1979), Dig Dug
(1982), Pac-Man sequel Ms. Pac-Man
(1981), Pole Position II
(1983), The Tower of Druaga
(1984) and Phozon
(1983). The first four were well-known in the U.S., but the latter two were relatively unknown. It contained the now-customary museum mode. This was the first in the series to receive general criticism from the gaming press, with serious questions being raised about the inclusion of the rather intensely difficult Tower of Druaga, even though copies of the compilation enclosed a separate hint book for the game inside the case.

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Video games - Namco Museum

Namco Museum Volume 1

Namco Museum Volume 2

Namco Museum Volume 3

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