At this point, Namco Museum was a series with multiple volumes on the PlayStation, each featuring six classic Namco arcade games. The six chosen for the N64 are a particularly strong selection, with some very popular games – not having a volume number is also an indication that this was intended to be the only collection.

One thing that makes a compilation strong is what it does outside of the games. On PlayStation, the Namco Museum Volumes include a 3D museum to walk around, with plenty to look at and read about. It’s a great presentation that makes the package feel much more alive.

On N64, you have a grey menu with the six games to pick from. That’s it. You can adjust a few settings within each game (with a little nice touch where you can see what DIP switches you’d need to set on the actual arcade), and nothing more. It’s extremely bare bones. So, the games, then.

Pac-Man

Pac-Man features a large frame which is a bit too busy and distracting, having far more colour than the game itself. I’m no Pac-man expert, but this feels like Pac-man, and seems like a good conversion. I don’t think I need to explain much more, as everyone knows Pac-man.

Ms. Pac-Man

The sequel to Pac-man, with some more varied maze layouts and cleaner graphics, so it’s just a slightly better Pac-man. This game is now missing from more modern Namco arcade collections due to rights issues, with the character being replaced in other Pac-man remakes.

Galaga

The placement of Galaga on the menu is strange, as it’s a sequel to Galaxian, but it’s placed first. This takes the first space shooter game and turns it into more of its own thing, with enemies that move a lot more, and some more distinctive patterns. The fire rate is also massively increased.

Galaxian

A shameless rip-off of Space Invaders. The biggest difference it has going for it is that some enemies will break formation and come at you on their own.

Pole Position

One of the original racing games, first complete a qualifying map, and then try racing. I always found that I kept overtaking people but still didn’t last long.

Dig Dug

Dig around to hunt for enemies, making them explode with your balloon pump weapon. You can also use rocks to take out enemies or, if you’re not careful, yourself.

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If you only had an N64 and really, really wanted to play these arcade classics at home, then this was an acceptable option. However, this was an incredibly bare bones collection, especially when assets they could have used already existed in other Namco Museum collections. On top of that, it couldn’t even save high scores to the cartridge – you needed a Controller Pak. This was likely done for the same reason why so much stuff was missing: to fit the game on the cheapest cartridge possible.

Poor

It’s difficult to see how they could fail with six such ground-breaking arcade titles packed onto the cart. Gloriously simple maze-’em-ups Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man need no introduction. Pole Position wasn’t the first 3D racer, but its speed and colour easily made it the most exciting. Galaga and Galaxian took Space Invaders and – impossibly – made it better. And Dig Dug provided primitive 2D monster-squashing action. The N64 conversions of all six are nigh-on perfect.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #44. Review Scores: 70%

Remake or remaster?

There are much better collections of these games.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Namco Museum 64.