NAMCO Museum
A big thing I want to do with this blog is talk about games that I have little interest in. Okay, that may not be the best lead in for this but hear me out. I want to talk about specific games or specific gaming topics that I find interesting or have respect for but don't really enjoy playing or engaging in. Today's topic is a perfect example of this. NAMCO is one of those storied developers. They have pretty much been around since the birth of the video game industry. And while I respect what they have done for this industry I just don't enjoy playing their games all that much and that just.. feels.. wrong. Those who follow the podcast know I love video game history so it surprises me even more that I don't enjoy their games. But with all that said, the NAMCO Museum games are surprisingly fun and totally worth a visit. Especially for you video game history fans out there.
I want the next couple posts that I write to cover the various volumes of the NAMCO Museum series. However, I am honestly not 100% sure there is enough to talk about in each volume that can fill a blog post for each volume but dammit I am going to try. So for today we are going to begin with NAMCO Museum Volume 1.
The first volume of the Museum series consists of 7 different classic NAMCO games. Pac-Man, Bosconian, Galaga, Pole Position, Rally-X, New Rally-X and Toy Pop. Like I said I'm not the biggest fan of NAMCO's classic titles and if this series was just a compilation of those titles I wouldn't be all too impressed with it. Besides since some of these games are so iconic I will probably do episodes of the podcast on them and dive further into their history. But what makes the NAMCO Museum series stick out is the literal museum aspect of it. In this compilation series you can either chose to play the games or you can chose to “visit” the NAMCO Museum. If you select the museum option from the menu the game will let you explore the museum in first person. You wander around looking at all the exhibits it has to offer. Not surprisingly there is an exhibit for each game on the collection and as boring as this sounds the museum was the most interesting part about the entire game for me.
Before I dive into the museum in full you can see a full video of the museum tour for NAMCO Museum Volume 1 HERE.
In each exhibit you will find scans of promotional material, instruction cards, sprite libraries and more for each of the games in the collection. At the end of each exhibit they have a 3D rendering of what the arcade cabinet for each game. You can then walk up the cabinet and play the game there! It's a crude representation of an arcade but it is still pretty cool they would add something like that. In the video linked the player starts out in the exhibit for the game Toy Pop.
Prior to researching this I had honestly never heard of this arcade game before. It was released in 1986, which was 3 years before I was born so it was out of arcades by the time I really got to experience it. On a side note I also did not really go to arcades at all as a kid which probably contributed to me never seeing this game, so that's two strikes against me. The first thing you are able to view in this exhibit is a sales promotion pamphlet from 1986. You can then select a larger version of the scan and zoom into various points and take a good look at it. Sadly since this is a PS1 title the scans are NOT really the highest quality. The player then progresses and views Toy Pop stationary, a POP card (which was a card placed on the side of the arcade cabinet), an instruction card, finally a tip book that offers tips on how to get better at the game and finally a picture scan of the actual arcade board that was inside the cabinets.
Each game's exhibit has different things like these on display. And while I find this interesting I don't want to bore all of you. I mean where is the fun in mean just describing what's in a video when I already provided a link to watch it. After writing all of this I'm really starting to realize that there isn't much insight I could provide for the other games in this series. But if this type of thing would interest you reach out to me! I would be happy to write more posts about this series. You can see all my social media links at the bottom of this web page or contact me via the contact page on this site.
It is honestly amazing to me how much detail they put into these museum segments. The first volume was released in 1995 and as someone who likes video game history a great deal I can't help but love that NAMCO took to the time to document and archive all of this. Unfortunately not every game developer takes the time to do this and a lot of video game history is lost. But thankfully NAMCO preserved it and I am looking forward to diving more into their museum series personally. Whether it be for the blog or just for fun!