Rating: 5/10
It's not always widely known that some of the gaming brands we're oh so familiar with today extend back more than a few years. Nintendo, for instance, have clocked up a century, and Namco, purveyors of some of the most influential arcade games of all time, are up to fifty.
Sadly, they've chosen to celebrate the fact by jumping onto the shovelware retro bandwagon. It's sad, because although the games here are primarily important landmarks in gaming history, there's little effort been put into making this collection any kind of celebration. Instead, it's got a fancy-ish looking menu, hidden something like MAME back in the undergrowth there, and stuck the games on top. It's, quite simply, lacking any real love (and 80s tunes in the background don't count), and thus it finds itself quickly categorised in the cynical cash-in category.
Still, it's a good cynical cash-in. The games themselves are a welcome wander down proverbial memory lane, and most are available right from the off (although you need to unlock a couple of them). Highlights include Pac-Man & Ms Pac-Man, the wonderful space shooter Galaga and its precursor Galaxian, action platformer Rolling Thunder and the likes of Mappy, Dig Dug and Dragon Spirit too. We were less keen on Pole Position I & II, feeling those fell more into the category of 'important', rather than 'good'. And the pack is rounded off with Rally X, Spy Kid, the fun Xevious and Bosconian.
And, to be fair, all that equals not bad value, even if the majority have been cloned to death on the freeware and shareware scenes over the years. It's just such a pity that they realised that Namco archives also contain historical material, code we've never seen and promotional work that would have complemented the games fittingly, and served to make Namco Museum just that. As it is, it's just a disc with lots of games of it. And while that's fine as far as it goes, it's hardly the first time they've attempted to repackage and resell most of these.
For more information, visit Micromart.co.uk