PixlBit

Wacca, wacca, wacca. If the sounds of Pac-Man make you nostalgic for a time when arcade games munched your quarters like the pizza shaped hero did pellets, here is a well-priced collection. Namco Museum Megamix is a collection of 24 games; eighteen classic arcade games and six modern revisions. Though the new games lack the heart and meticulously balanced gameplay of their older brethren, they do offer some brief multiplayer fun. The old games show their age, but there is so much stuffed into this game, it's a great value for its bargain bin price.

The games included, completely with description and rating are:

• Bosconian, a free roaming spaceship game - 2/5 stars
• Cutie Q, an Arkanoid-meets-Pinball style game - 3/5 stars
• Dig Dug, digging and blowing up dragons, a classic - 5/5 stars
• Dig Dug 2, top down version of Dig Dug, not as much fun though 2/5 stars
• Galaga, a classic top down shooter where aliens can steal your ship - 4/5 stars
• Galaga Remix, point at stuff with the Wii Remote, worst of the bunch - 0/5 stars
• Galaxian, an original top down shooter, aliens dive bomb you and the music is great - 4/5 stars
• Gaplus, a more advanced version of these shooters, steal the aliens ships - 3/5 stars
• Gator Panic Remix, simplistic whack-a-gator - 1/5 stars
• Grobda, a tank game, force field included - 4/5 stars
• Grobda Remix, the remix of a tank game is still fun - 4/5 stars
• King & Balloon, my favorite shooter I hadn’t played. Aliens are replaced by balloons who try to carry your king away. The sound effects are hilarious, when they take him he says “Bye Bye!” - 4/5 stars
• Mappy, a mouse in a maze of a house stealing stuff - 2/5 stars
• Motos, knock balls off a stage, king of the hill style - 4/5 stars
• New Rally-X, cars in a maze, collect flags without running out of fuel - 3/5 stars
• Pac & Pal, this is Pac-man with no pellets and but has doors with keys - 1/5 stars
• Pac 'N Roll Remix, a remixed 3D Pac-man with much less maze - 1/5 stars
• Pac-Man, the classic maze game - 5/5 stars
• Pac-Mania, a fixed-view 3D Pac-man but slower - 1/5 stars
• Pac-Motos, a remixed version of Motos, stay on the stage while things try to knock you off - 4/5 stars
• Rally-X, cars in a maze being chased by other cars - 3/5 stars
• Rally-X Remix, a remixed version of Rally-X but with fewer cars chasing you - 1/5 stars
• Super Pac-Man, Pac-man with keys and doors and pellets - 3/5 stars
• Xevious, a top down shooter with a scrolling background, this time over land - 4/5 stars

I was surprised how similar these old games were to each other. I often think modern games stick too closely to genres, but the same holds true for the classics. I guess if something's not broken don't fix it, just change the palette. These games can be categorized into two basic groups, games that are a maze like Pac-man, and games where you’re a space ship shooting slowly descending aliens like Galaxian. The redundancy wouldn’t be noticeable unless you played them back to back, like in a collection of games.

The old school graphics get the job done - they are cool in a retro kind of way, but they definitely lack significant animation. The remix games imitate the bright colors of the classics, but here it seems like overkill.

The sound holds up the best of anything in the package. It may just be mechanical tweets, but that’s what evokes the strongest fond memories. Hearing the king say “Help!” as he is taken away by a balloon is what makes that game worth playing.

The gameplay also stands the test of time. It’s the little things like Pac-man going slower over pellets than empty space that show a lot of thought went into making these games fun.

I do have my gripes about the collections layout though. You are a little Pac-man that must walk to a door in order to play each game. It is fun to just roam around in this hub world, but to play a game you have to remember where it is. This isn’t too bad, but a menu system as a backup would have been a nice touch. Worse are the menu controls when you’re in a game. To exit it you have to press A to get to the menu, then C to select "Quit Game," A again to bring the menu back up, then A to select quit. In the remixes B is a select button instead of a back button. It often took more than one try to quit a game.

Though the layout is problematic, a lack of online leaderboards is a bigger issue. Since this isn't really an arcade, you don't really have anyone to compete with like you did in the old days. This really cuts down on the replay value of the game, because taking on your own high scores isn't all that much fun.

Namco Museum Megamix is a great game to buy a nephew or young cousin. Sure, it may be a cash grab by Namco as they released a very similar 14 game collection for the Wii three years ago. But, it’s cheap, there’re a lot of different games, and you can tell your young family member how it used to be in the good ol' days.