Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

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VideoGameCritic
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Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby VideoGameCritic » December 31st, 2018, 3:06 pm

I'm a little disappointed with this. On the good side, there's a fine selection of classic arcade games including old favorites like Dig Dug, Pac-Man, and Galaga. Fine new additions include Splatterhouse and Rolling Thunder 1 & 2. Loved playing the arcade versions for the first time.

But there are issues. First, I had to agree to an endless EULA. WTF? the games are constantly prompting me to upload my rankings, which is annoying when your system isn't online. Next, where is the museum? Previous Namco compilations had all kinds of historical material, but this is pretty barebones. The user interface is terrible, and the Pac-Man Championship game? I think that series is past its expiration date. They keep making it more and more confusing.

There are some great games here but the overall packaging tarnishes the experience. Going to be tough to grade.

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Atariboy
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Re: Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby Atariboy » January 1st, 2019, 4:24 pm

It's unimportant, but just for the sake of curiosity and since I'm a fan of the franchise, I wanted to clarify that the original Rolling Thunder actually isn't new to the series.

Ignoring Namco Museum Encore for the PS1 since it was a Japanese exclusive (Essentially Namco Museum 6), it has actually been a semi regular inclusion since the PS2 days for the Namco Museum franchise. The PSP collection, the Xbox 360 collection, and the 50th Anniversary Collection for the PS2/GCN/Xbox all have included it.

Nice to finally see Rolling Thunder 2 escape the vault. And I'm happy that Splatterhouse is here. Almost bought the modern Splatterhouse game on the 360 more than once that includes it as an unlockable, but really didn't want to play through the 3D revival any.

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Re: Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 1st, 2019, 11:13 pm

Thanks for the info Atariboy! To be honest I kind of lost track of which games were new additions and which were old. Thanks for clarifying.

GameOfThrones
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Re: Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby GameOfThrones » January 2nd, 2019, 6:01 pm

I am looking forward to this review. The retro offerings have been very limp of late.

If you want a laugh go onto steam and search for the coleco collection but do not buy it. It sounds like the worst retro compilation ever.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5298 ... Flashback/

Herschie
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Re: Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby Herschie » January 26th, 2019, 8:13 pm

So first of all, as much as I love this forum, the search feature leaves something to be desired. How in the world are both "Namco" and "Museum" too common of words to search for? I was just playing the N64 Namco Museum, was debating starting an entirely different topic, and wanted to see if someone already started one. In the end, I decided to simply post in here.

That said, grab the N64 version if you can get your mitts on it. It's pretty awesome. I mentioned that the NES version of Pac Man was closest to the arcade, but apparently you can find a better version on the N64. Plus, you get the bloops and the blurps of the 1980s computerized sound effects, which I absolutely love. They even have that digitized voice in Pole Position.

I really wish I would have known about this after I saw "Pixels". As dumb as that movie was, I must admit it did make me want to go to the arcade.

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Atariboy
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Re: Namco Arcade Pak (Switch)

Postby Atariboy » January 27th, 2019, 4:01 am

I don't know if they have it left, but I bought Namco Museum 64 in December from GameStop for I believe $1.99 when I bought some used older SD cards for use in my Atari Flashback 9 and Legends Flashback systems (The AtGames stuff is finicky and doesn't seem to like newer SD cards even when formatted correctly and of smaller size).

Nintendo 64 also got a Midway compilation, which I got for Christmas back when it was new. It's basically the original Williams collection like the PS1 received, but with Stargate and Bubbles swapped out for Root Beer Tapper and Spy Hunter.


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