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This collection of classic arcade hits lets you take a walk through history

The Playstation era was when companies started releasing anthologies of their past games. It was during this time that we saw Activision Classics (which included 30 Atari 2600 games) and Square's Final Fantasy Anthology. Well, Namco realized that they were also sitting on a goldmine of classic arcade games, so they decided to combine those games into a collection. This collection turned into a five game series! Namco was wise to stretch it out, milking it for all its worth.

The first game in the series, Namco Museum Vol. 1, was released in 1996 for the Playstation. It was developed by Now Production and published by Namco. Hold on, developed? What was there to develop? Well, as we'll see, this collection is more than just a few games thrown onto a disc; it also has a museum in which you can walk around and look at gaming history. Now that's cool! Museum 1 had seven arcade games from the early 80s: Pac-Man, Pole Position, Rally X, New Rally X, Galaga, Bosconian, and Toypop.

We're all familiar with the game Pac-Man. It's one of the most famous games of all time. You move Pac-Man around a maze, collecting power pellets and avoiding ghosts. If you grab a large power pellet, the ghosts turn blue for a short time and you can eat them for extra points. Pac-Man moves forwad on his own; you simply need to turn him at the right times. The game is simple and fun. Due to the fact that the screen is so long vertically, there are Pac-Man images on both sides of the screen.

Pole Position is a racing game, although you're really only racing against the clock. Your goal is to see how far you can get within 90 seconds. Turning is the tricky part. You only need to turn enough to get into the right position, then your car will automatically stay at that angle. It takes some getting used to. There's not much to this game. Apparently the point is to see who can get the farthest in those 90 seconds.

The next game is Rally X, which is a top-down car game. The goal here is to avoid the red cars (which are chasing your blue car) and grab ten flags. This is hard due to the fact that those red cars move fast and are good at zeroing in on your car. Also, you have to think fast because your car moves really fast; you end up zipping all over the place, usually trying to avoid those red cars. Rally X is by far the most primitive-looking of all the games in the collection.

Funny enough, the next game is New Rally X, which is the same as Rally X except there's only one red car chasing you and he moves slightly faster than your car. This one seems like a quick cash-in on Namco's part; apparently Rally X was a huge hit so they quickly released a sequel, but it's basically the same thing. However, it's still fast and hard.

We finally get away from the car games and move on to Galaga, which is a space shooter. In this game, enemies will swarm in and get in formation at the top of the screen. Some will then leave the formation to zoom downward and shoot at you. This is similar to Space Invaders. Being a primitive space shooter, you can't hold down the button to fire, and pressing the button over and over gets tiring (I'm just spoiled from modern games). This is definitely a classic.

The next game, Bosconian, is also a space shooter, but is very different from the previous one. Here you can move your ship in any direction and can hold down the button to constantly fire in front and behind you (and I was complaining about pressing it over and over!). Your goal is to destroy the enemy space stations, which you can see on the map on the right side of the screen. Along the way, watch out for enemy ships that will come after you and spiky space bombs (which are similar to those underwater bombs). This was one of my favorite games in the collection; it's very creative and different from the typical space shooters of the day.

Finally, we have Toypop, which is a much later game than the others (released in 1986). This game is reminiscient of Bomberman. You move around your character (who is a wind-up toy), shooting a weapon to open presents and avoiding enemies. Some presents will give you stronger weapons, such as blades or bombs, which you can use to easily defeat enemies and open more presents. Once all the presents are open, the door to the next level will open and you simply need to enter it to finish the level. To make it more challenging, you have a time limit, so open those presents quickly! This was a fun game and is certianly superior to all the other games in graphics and sound.

Playing these seven classics is certainly enjoyable. Honestly, I hadn't played most of them since they were before my time, so I was glad to do so. There is one problem, however: there's no way to exit a game after you start playing it, even if you have a Game Over. So you'll be hitting the reset button quite a bit, which is certainly annoying. Hopefully they fixed this for the other games in the series.

Playing the games is great, but Museum 1 gives you much more than that. There's a whole museum to go through! That's right, you can literally walk through a virtual museum (apparently you're Pac-Man walking around). You can enter a room for each of the seven games, looking at arcade cabinets, instruction cards, and other pieces of history. This will excite the video game historian inside you! Anyone nostalgic for arcade games or old games in general will enjoy looking at these primitive yet historic artifacts of gaming history. You can also visit the Lounge, where you can view exhibits, listen to music on the Juke Box, and check out the Record Book. All of this adds a whole new level to this collection.

Final Verdict--4 Stars: Recommended

While the games are extremely primitive by today's standards, they can still be fun to play, and looking at their history only enhances the experience. Even if you find these games boring, you can still appreciate how far video games have come. Whether you're an old gamer or rather new, Namco Museum Vol. 1 is a game which you should atleast look at and appreciate. It's a great collection. It would have been easy for Namco to simply throw together some games, but they decided to go the extra mile and give something to the fans, and that goes for all the games in this Namco collection series.

Join me every Saturday as we take a look back at all kinds of retro games, good and bad.