The Namco Museum series lasted five games on the PlayStation, collecting old Namco arcade titles ranging from the important (such as Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, and Galaxian) to the obscure (do Toy Pop, Grobda, The Tower of Druaga, and Phozon ring a bell?). The Nintendo 64 edition of the line acts as a "best of" the museum tour , gathering together the premium classic games from the company's past: Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, Galaga, Galaxian, and Dig Dug.
Every gamer older than ten should be well familiar with the pellet-chomping, maze-running Pac-Man games, though some might not recall the other titles as clearly. Pole Position was the perennial racing game of its time, offering much-improved graphics to a genre that had seen the rudimentary-looking Night Driver not too much earlier. Meanwhile, Galaxian and Galaga were more stylish takes on Taito's Space Invaders, each having its own distinct variation on the theme (the first offered diving ships, while the second had enemies that could capture your craft in a tractor beam, for example). And Dig Dug? This little game remains hard to explain even today. Playing as what must be a gardener wearing a space suit, you dug into the ground to root out monsters (the goggle-wearing balloon Pooka and the fire-breathing dragon Fygar) either by blowing them up using an air pump or causing rocks to drop down on top of them.
The graphics and sound in the games are, of course, incredibly dated by today's standards, but, nonetheless, all remain almost as addictive today as when they first came out. Few classic-game collections come close to providing such a strong lineup. While many of Midway's compilations had a few standout titles, most that appeared were second-tier games or ones that didn't hold up to the test of time very well. The Namco Museum line for the PlayStation saw this even more than the Midway collections. And while some comps suffered from imperfect translations, the games on this one feel arcade perfect, save for some occasional trouble catching corners in Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man using the N64 controller. It's likely that you'll find at least one game among the six that will make the collection worth picking up for you, but it could certainly be all of them, making this the surest classic compilation to ever recommend.
