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A nifty collection of classics for GBA

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 21
Date: June 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm a 33 year-old arcade fanatic and happily recall my days in the arcades, even if I didn't play for long or play all the games. The classics never go out of style (hence the term "Classics") and Namco Museum is no exception. Sound is crisp and clear, with near authentic sound effects and gameplay just like the arcade versions. I'm a nitpicker though, so here are (just a few) gripes: In Pole Position, the "qualify" voice message is different and a few of the signs are not the same as the original. Galaxian and Galaga are finally together; I finally get to see the difference between the two! The only gripe with this is you need to play in sunlight or a light adapter, or you can't tell the diff between passing stars and a missile. These are just minor gripes and I'm sure Pole Position's changes are just customized alterations to get used to. So, whether you're home or on the go, play GBA Namco Museum, housing nicely restored classics on that surprisingly small cartridge!

Is That Galaga in Your Pocket...?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: June 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

It's like having my own portable Aladdin's Castle! If you don't know what that is you're too young to truly enjoy this collection. This is a great game(s)! Ms. Pac-man, Dig-Dug, and most importantly GALAGA! If you used to shovel quarters into these games as a kid, you won't be disappointed with this cart. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that there really should have been more games on the cart. C'mon, you expect me to believe that the simple pixels that make up these games take up all that memory? I suspect this will not be the only "Museum" cart that Namco puts out...but I'll probably buy those as well. I was also surprised at how addictive these games still are. My wife tapped me on the shoulder last night and said, "Do you realize that you've been playing 'Galaga' for 2 hours straight?". Can't get enough of the classics!

Almost but not quite

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: June 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Its fun to be able to play favorite classics and its even better when you can take it with you. Never mind that Namco could have easily placed more games on to one cartridge or even selected a different set of games to bring to the Game Boy Advance. For the most part, the game screens are too small to appreciate. Galaga is almost too dark even under good light. Dig Dug is entertaining but again the screen is just too small to get the most out of it. Ms. Pacman is the only game on the cartridge that allows for the choice of screen formats - fit to screen or scrolling. I highly recommend selecting scrolling since that makes it easier on the eye's and the added challenge of not knowing exactly where "Blinky" is going to pop up. Don't get me wrong, being able to carry around arcade classics in your back pocket is great, however, due to the small game screens and often too dark display, I found it more frustrating and neck breaking than I can appreciate.

Atari 2600 portable???

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: August 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I buyed this game mainly to have Ms. Pac-man and Dig Dug at the palm of my hand (by the way, its a kind of relief that there are adults like me that like to play those classic games AND have their GBA, because sometimes i feel weird playing this thing at the lunch time in the work :D )

The Ms. PAc-Man and Dig dug are beautiful translation from the originals (and they are as adictive too), the Gala???? games are not my favorites, i prefer the Space Invaders (and if it's the Space Invaders from the Atari, much better!) but they are fun to play and adictives nonetheless, the Pole Position is not so good, is hard to play and there are a lot of games better than this one, but is a nice addition.

The only (and fatal, i may add) flaw of this collection is the absence of batery backup to save the scores!, i don't understand this, because the goal of all of the games from the golden era of the videogames, is to make as much points as possible (and challenge your friends that they try to erase your record), but this is a great game for the olders like me and the nostalgia of those games are undennyable.

Great Games but Poor Conversion

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: May 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Namco Museum lets you play old Atari classics on your GameBoy Advance. These include Galaga, Galactica, Dig Dug, Pole Position, and Ms. Pac-Man!

This is of course a great idea in theory - I *love* some of these games. But while the games might be really fun to play on a big-screen console, they are REALLY tough on the tiny screen. For example, Ms. Pac-Man comes in two modes - a full screen mode and one that scrolls up and down showing you a partial screen at a time. The full screen mode has REALLY really tiny ghosts and characters, you can barely time your movements and often get stuck on walls. The scrolling mode is better in the sense that the characters are larger, but now you can easily scroll down into an enemy and the same character control issues occur.

On Pole Position, it's all about sliding left and right as your racecar goes around curves. With the arrow-control of the GBA, it's one light tap to make a hard turn. If you accidentially press too hard on the arrow, you smash into the side signs or nearby cars. It makes driving very difficult.

Dig Dug is a great game, where you burrow in the ground and try to drop rocks on the heads of dragons. Is this Revenge of Smaug? Again, I love the game but the controls make it difficult. You can be planning a careful tunnel to a rock and end up off by a bit, making the tunnel useless.

Galaga and Galaxian are both classic space-shooting games. Galaxian is a "secret bonus" in that it's not mentioned on the box but is provided on the cartridge. I really love both of them, but the controls are just as sluggish and imprecise here. With Galaxian having the penalty of "only one shot on the screen at a time", those missed shots make a huge difference in playability.

If you have a regular console, I'd recommend these games on a differnet system. I love the games themselves! But the GBA version is rather awkward. Everyone I had try this out got frustrated very quickly.

Great memories - great game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: November 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is a fantastic port of some of my favorite classic arcade games. I've read a lot of reviews that complain about the obvious i.e. the screen is small (duh!) and sometimes the games are hard to view. I've also read a lot of complaints about how some of the games scroll because they do not fit the shape of the GBA screen. Personally, these complaints are minor because I expected the screen to be small but the graphics are picture perfect compared to the original arcade games. And the scrolling doesn't take away from the perfect gameplay.

So, what I can say is that the gameplay is exactly as I remember on all games. I bought this cartridge for Galaga and Ms. PacMan most of all, because to me, they are the most addictive and replayable. The sound and the graphics are dead on these replicas. Changing some of the options is a nice touch.

The only two complaints I have are related to some important old arcade standbys. First, you cannot play two-player, which is a particular bummer with Galaga, Ms. PacMan and Dig Dug. And second, the cartridge does not save high score and initials, which was your small token of satisfaction for dumping ten dollars worth of quarters into these machines. It would have been nice to keep track of my scores.

But with these minor complaints, I was very satisfied with this cartridge. 5 games at a great price! Now I'm waiting for Midway's Classics (Joust, Defender, Robotron, and Sinistar)...

Near Perfect Classics

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: June 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First of all - I hate it when people write reveiws of software that they have NEVER played - I mean this game isn't even out yet!!! Anyway, I HAVE played this (It was at E3), and it rocks! While similar to the PSX version, the programmers have made some changes to improve the games for the GBA platform. And yes, they are old games, but they are classic games, and they are STILL good - Galaga is a particular favorite. The people who slag off the old games are usually the people who don't have the skill to play them!

Also, Namco had another GBA game on show - PacMan Collection, which included Original PacMan, PacMan Arrangment, PacAttack (a tetris like game), and PacMania (an isometric scrolling PacMan game) - that looks really cool, I can't wait!

Buy it for Dig Dug only (3 / 5 stars)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: June 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Namco Museum This cart contains recreations of five 1980s Namco arcade games: Pole Position, Ms Pacman, Galaga, Galaxian, and Dig Dug.

Once past the title screens, you're presented with a simple menu that lets you pick the game you're interested in playing. While playing any of the games you can pause and change settings (extra lives, difficulty, etc.) or return to the main menu.

Both Galaga and Galaxian do a good job of recreating the original versions, but the programmers kept the original screen proportions, squeezing the playfield down to the left 2/3s of the screen. The right third of the screen is only used to track score and ships, resulting in a lot of wasted screen space. I'd have preferred it if they'd 'stretched' the screen proportions 50% horizontally so that the enemy ships were larger - because as it is the spaceships are tiny.

Pole Position looks great - almost identical to the arcade - but the steering inputs seem hyper-sensitive. The arcade version used an analog steering wheel (the further you turned the wheel, the sharper your car turned). Unless you steer with very light quick taps your car goes flying off the the shoulder of the road very easily. The developers should have made the steering less sensitive, or even allowed the user to adjust it somehow.

Ms Pacman is okay but could have been better done. You can choose either a tiny full-screen mode, or a scrolling mode that shows 2/3s of the playfield on-screen. (You can hit the shoulder buttons to force the playfield to scroll). I am a bit puzzled as to why the developers didn't simply turn the playfield 90 degrees sideways to keep the proper proportions - or simply 'stretch' the playfield to fit the screen.

By far the gem of the collection is Dig Dug. This version is almost spot-on accurate to the arcade version. The original Dig Dug was about 320 by 200, but the GBA screen is only 240 by 160. The developers have the playfield centered in the middle of the smaller screen, and as your Dig Dug character approaches the edge of the screen, the playfield scrolls over to the closest edge. Since most of the playfield is onscreen you can usually still keep track of the bad guys.

Overall, my impression of this cart is mediocre. I feel that Galaxians is too similar to Galaga to be counted as a separate game, so for your money you're only getting four old-style coin-eater games. I would really liked to have seen a few more games included for my hard-earned money. Unless you're a huge fan of Dig Dug, I can't really recommend the cart.

On the plus side, Dig Dug is extremely well-done - and this is one of the cheapest GBA carts available - so for Dig Dug fans this may be a cart worth buying. I rented this game from a local video store, and I don't think I'll be purchasing it.

Fun, especially for us "old schoolers."

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: October 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Okay, not to let my age show, but I can remember when I was a teenager, back in "the old days," when I would pump quarters into the table-top version of Ms. Pac Man at my local Dairy Queen. Pretty much the same for Pole Position and Galaga too.

Youngsters should keep in mind that these were state-of-the-art games back then. You actually had to go to the arcades, or somewhere that had arcade video games, to play them. Home game consoles of the time were things like the Atari 2600, and they did not have the power to faithfully reproduce what was in the arcades.

For those of us that can remember, these are accurate and exact translations of the original arcade games--sound and graphics. The only difference is the size of the screen these games are now being played on. Young gamers of today may find the graphics to be poor in comparison to games of today, and they'd be right, but these graphics were top-notch stuff at the time.

For $30, you get five games and that's quite a deal:

Ms. Pac-Man--More popular and more enjoyable than the original Pac-Man. Simple, yet highly engaging, even today. On the GBA you can play full screen (very tiny, but still works), or partial, scrolling screen--this reminded me of the old, table-top version I used to play.

Dig Dug--Dumb, stupid game that I didn't like then and don't like now. Every arcade seemed to have one of these back then--was it really that popular?

Pole Position--Ahh, yes, the original F1 racing game. I still get the chills when the annoucer says, "prepare to qualify..." I always liked the sit-down version better than than the standing one, though I seemed to do better standing. More of a racing-against-the-clock game than against others. The GBA version is accurately reproduced, right down to the always hard-to-control steering!

Galaga--One of my all-time favorites. Galaga took the idea from the original "Space Invaders" (now I'm really showing my age), and improved it immensely. Here, the alien ship columns attack you in swarms, instead of merely letting you shoot at them and not doing anything but drop bombs for you to avoid. Highly addictive and loads of fun. A real quarter-eater at the time.

Galxian--A second-rate version of Galaga. It was then and it still is now. No-where near as fun as Galaga. Takes a little bit of a different strategy during gameplay though as your rate of fire is purposely limited.

All in all, a pretty decent collection. I'd have preferred something other than Dig-Dug and Galaxian (Sinistar and Joust anyone? I think they're Midway properties, though), but quite frankly, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga and Pole Position more than make this game worth getting. Happy gaming!

Nice Rendition of Classic Arcade Games

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for my 9 year old (and to try them out myself). These games were the ones I used to play in the arcade as a kid and are certainly nostalgic to anyone who played the arcade in those days. Plus, its a nice to have for the GBA as it offers 5 different games in one cartridge.

The games are exactly as I remembered them and they are still fun. Yes, the games are simple. Yes, the graphics don't compare to other games currently on the market. However, their simplicity is one of the reasons I thought my daughter would appreciate them. They are the types of games you can just dive into and play without reading the instructions or spending time learning complex controls. They offer a nice change of pace to some of the more complicated contemporary games and are quite suitable to older arcade era folks and very young players.

The only drawbacks are that high scores are reset to zero once to turn off the GBA and the screen size is smaller than what I would have liked.

Overall, I would say this is a fun, simple and nostalgic addition to anyone's GBA collection.

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