Namco Museum DS review

A poor translation of the classics

Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

So no matter how much you love the classics, know this: You're going to have to put up with some compromise to play them on the DS. Almost as a gesture to make up for it, you'll find tons of sound tests and "Hardcore options", which let you monkey with the original dipswitch settings that you'd find on the circuit boards inside the original machines - pointlessly accurate considering most DS fans don't care about the tech that gave birth to Xevious.

The eighth game in this collection, Pac-Man Vs., has been rescued from a life of complete obscurity as a GameCube bonus that came with Pac-Man World 2 (ugh), and it works even better on DS. One player controls Pac-Man; the other three control ghosts. Ghosts can only see the maze around them, but Pac gets a standard player view of the whole playfield. You'll need at least one other human to play, but with four, it gets truly interesting and cut-throat, since the honor of being Pac-Man gets passed around based on score and performance. It's worth revisiting.

More info

GenreArcade
DescriptionYou're better off dragging your GBA Namco Museum out of the closet, because these DS editions of the oldies got squished in translation.
Platform"DS"
US censor rating"Everyone"
UK censor rating""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
More
CATEGORIES