Namco Museum (2017)
Slightly More Entertaining than the National Postal Museum
I’ve always been a sucker for compilation games. For the price of one game, you get four, six, fifteen, or one hundred smaller ones bundled into a single package. It’s like getting triplets when you were only expecting one kid, except you don’t have to worry about raising children, crippling debt, and sleep deprivation. For me, quantity matters so much more than quality, at least until I play through all the games and remember I’m stupid. Compilation games have ranged from the sublime (the Orange Box/Nintendoland/Wii Sports Resort) to the excrement (any no-name plug-and-play console), so I give myself slack for hoping for a good batch of games on one disc.
Retro collections—a specific breed of compilation games—have been more hit-and-miss for me. These games inherently prey on our nostalgia glands, sucking our monetary life force in exchange for a highlight reel of our childhood. Sometimes, these nostalgia leeches can create a symbiotic relationship with us, like with the Sonic Mega Collection or Rare Replay. In the case of Namco Museum, the relationship feels slightly parasitic, like the bond between an overweight man and a tape worm too lazy to do actual harm.
What is it?
The Namco Museum franchise has been around for over two decades now in an effort to reproduce Pac-Man more times than Nintendo re-releases Super Mario Bros. (with Skyrim being a close third in this race). This rendition of the museum offers 11 “arcade classics” for you to feed unlimited virtual currency and vie for a high score, either locally or online. Every game (except Pac-Man Vs.) features a “normal” and a “challenge” mode. The former is self-explanatory whereas the latter creates a unique scenario in-game for you to master. Apart from this, you’re given a slew of customization options, similar to those you would find in the ACA releases.
In this batch, you have Pac-Man, which is a lot like Pac-Man Championship Edition if it was made in 1980. There’s the gory beat-‘em-up, Splatterhouse, in which you fights ghouls, possessed furniture, and stiff controls. Galaga and Galaga ‘88 give you your vertical shooter action while Sky Kid crashes and burns trying to do the same thing from a horizontal perspective. Rolling Thunder 1 and 2 offer enough run-and-gun gameplay to make you want to play better renditions like Contra or Gunstar Heroes. The Tower of Druaga provides you with a walking simulator; Tank Force allows you to shoot things from an overhead perspective; and Dig Dug rounds out the package just to make sure you can recognize at least one more game by name.
Pac-Man Vs. stands as the single-most defining trait that separates this “Switch Museum” from past Namco Museums. Oh wait, never mind; it was also in the DS version. Well, this one is a fancy HD version of the original Gamecube game which made use of the GBA link cable. Offering asymmetric gaming before the Wii U could bomb on arrival, Pac-Man Vs. tasks one player to gobble up pellets as Pac-Man while up to three other players pursue him as ghosts. The Pac-Man player sees the whole maze (using one Switch system) while the ghosts have limited fields of view (using another Switch system). Whoever devours Pac-Man takes control of the yellow bugger for the next round, and rounds continue until someone hits a score cap.
Note: Two Switch consoles are needed to play the full-version of Pac-Man Vs. You can play the game on one console, but with this setup, everyone is a ghost, and you all compete to catch Pac-Man more times than your friends to reach the score cap first. Fortunately, you do not have to buy another copy of Namco Museum to play this game; a free download on the eShop allows the second Switch to join other local Pac-Man Vs. games.
What’s good?
- Pac-Man Vs. is awesome, provided you have two Switch consoles. I purchased Namco Museum solely for this game, which was a foolish idea, but hey, I’m able to play Pac-Man Vs. It’s not quite the rambunctious romp I remember it to be, but it still is the Mona Lisa of this Louvre.
- For high score junkies, you have multiple arenas to throw up your name. It may take you tens or hundreds of hours, and you may lose your job and house, but at least people will know xComet69x is the very best at Tank Force.
- If you eat, breathe, and shit nostalgia, Namco Museum has 11 games of pure retro goodness. Sure, nothing is remarkable about this collection, but you don’t care. You still live in the 80s, and anything that doesn’t have scan lines or pixelated graphics isn’t worth your rose-colored attention.
What’s bad?
- For those of you without nostalgia, there isn’t much here to enjoy. None of these games have aged particularly well, and their simple concepts are quick to grow repetitive and boring. Being that these are arcade games, expect cheap deaths and infrequent checkpoints. I’ll admit that I may be overly critical of these games, but when I’m given a game like Tower of Druaga (where the timer runs out faster than your character moves), I struggle to see how anyone but diehard fans can enjoy the classics.
- This museum is rather bare-bones. Older iterations of this series have included more games and more tweaks to the gameplay. Pac-Man Vs. is great, but when this is the major selling point of this rendition, I can’t help but feel Namco phoned it in with this entry. We’ll ignore that the series in general is just a bunch of phone calls.
- A Joy-Con/Pro Controller can’t replace an arcade cabinet’s joystick and button set-up. I’m not an arcade purist, but even I can tell these games are best played like they were in the arcade. Nothing recreates the old-school glory of Galaga like hunching over a cabinet, both hands resting on the controls, with the stench of sweat and teenage angst wafting through a darkly-lit room.
What’s the verdict?
Just like every shopping center has a Starbucks, every console needs its Namco Museum, and this Switch version is just about as indistinguishable from its cousins as the downtown Starbucks is from the mall Starbucks. Unless you fondly remember six or seven games from this compilation’s library, this entry need not be on your wish list. Eleven games for $30 is not bad, but you could also use that money to buy two or three games with more depth and content than all the Namco classics combined. The classics should certainly be remembered for their impact on the gaming industry; playing them is not as necessary.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 5
- Time Played: Over 5 hours
- Number of Players: 1-4
- Games Like It on Switch: Party Planet, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2