Namco Museum 50th Anniversary

While the game should have included at least a little bit of museum-quality extras, at $20 it's still a hard deal to pass up.

The large selection of titles is a great value for $19.99 and they are all still plenty of fun to play, however the lack of any sort of bonus material is inexcusable, and when you consider that the majority of these games have been released in compilations from Namco before, the game’s content simply doesn’t live up to its celebratory billing.

Despite the lackluster presentation, the games hold their own. Shooting for Galaga ‘88 High Scores is still as fun today as it was back in 1987.

In a day and age where Capcom and Midway (and to a lesser extent, Sega) are putting actual work into their retro game compilations, adding content that is fresh and interesting, and selling it all at an affordable price, Namco Museum 50th Anniversary comes off as nothing more than a cheap (no pun intended) joke. To top it off, half of the games aren’t even playable.

But this compilation serves up all their gaming hits and, apart from proving just how far, thankfully, gaming has come in the last 25 years, it also manages to deliver nostalgia by the bucketload.

All of these games are fun to spend some time with, to a lesser or greater degree, but none of them will keep you entertained for very long, making this a nice filler for an hour between the other games you're currently playing.

Namco's back catalog deserves better than this slapped-together cash-in.

The minimal presentation, weak interface and comparatively paltry selection of titles hardly seems worthy of a golden anniversary.

Only for the truly nostalgia-obsessed. [Apr 2006, p.74]

Where's the Namco background? Developer interviews? Designer retrospectives? It's a missed opportunity, and a massive disappointment.

These games should be kept out of the hands of youth so as not to show them how ignorant we were when we were young.