Namco Museum 50th Anniversary

The Ultimate Arcade Collection… No Coins Required!

NA release: 30th August 2005
EU release: 5th May 2006
JP release: N/A
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Namco (NA), EA (EU)
NGC Magazine Score: 15%
Mods Used: Widescreen None

The 50th anniversary of Namco seems like something worth celebrating, especially with their history in arcades and amusement parks. It should have been something easy – the PS1 Namco Museum games had digital museums you could explore with the history of the various games, so they could be combined, and they could even delve deeper by creating minigames based on their older amusement park attractions.

But that’s not what this game is about. There’s no history, there’s no extra stuff – not even some artwork. You just select a game from the menu and that’s it. The developers seemed more bothered about paying for music licenses so you can listen to songs like “Come on Eileen” for 20 seconds while you pick a game than about celebrating the games.

I’ve already covered a few of them multiple times so it’s pointless to talk about them again: Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Pole Position II and Pac-Mania. The games are all emulation instead of the previous ports and have only a few basic options you can change. There’s no arrangement versions. It’s al bare bones. This does have games I’ve not played before:

Rolling Thunder

A side scrolling on foot shooter. A lot of the game takes place in sections that have got two levels, and you can jump up and down between them. It’s a good early example of this kind of game, although you need to keep an eye on ammo.

Rally-X

Drive around a maze collecting flags and avoiding other cars. It’s like an empty, zoomed-in version of Pac-Man.

Bosconian

Fly around space shooting targets and avoiding obstacles. It’s similar to Sinistar, except that you can actually see what’s happening.

Dragon Spirit

A vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a dragon. You have regular weapons to deal with airborne enemies and bombs for ground enemies. It’s very difficult.

Sky Kid

A side scrolling shooter where you can aim diagonally up and down. The levels are short, but you need to make sure you pick up a bomb half way through and launch it to fully blow up a target at the end.

Xevious

Another vertical shooter, this one a traditional spaceship one. The NES version was included in Star Fox Assault, but this is the original arcade version

Mappy

Bounce on trampolines to reach different levels and find all the loot. A classic arcade game which has the same kind of addictive feeling as Flicky.

There’s some good games in here, but a large chunk have been in many collections by this point, and for something labelled 50th Anniversary, there’s no celebration at all.

Poor

And then the final insult: when you switch your GameCube on and off again, you’ll find that it hasn’t even saved your high scores. Which, if we were being polite, we’d excuse as an added dose of ’80s arcade authenticity, instead of the final nail in a retro coffin shoddily flung together by utter cretins.
Mark Green, NGamer Magazine #1

Remake or remaster?

There are better collections of these games.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to buy Namco Museum 50th Anniversary