Namco Museum DS

In terms of the games, Pac-Man and Galaga are the obvious standouts, truly deserving of their classic status and deserving of any videogamer's collection somewhere. Galaxian may have been massively superseded by Galaga, but still has a special place in our hearts, jolly little collect-'em-up platformer Mappy never seems to get the credit it deserves, while pioneering shooter Xevious possibly gets too much credit for what it brought to gaming at the time (mainly massive scrolling play fields and, for the time, colourful graphics) - despite feeling decidedly uninspiring in terms of the core gameplay. Of course, everyone will still argue to the death over what was really 'classic' and what wasn't, which is why we're still here talking about games which are, in most cases, more than 25 years old. Long may it continue.

The big news here, of course, is the inclusion of the former GameCube exclusive Pac-Man Vs. Originally released as a freebie within the forgettable R: Racing, it will go down in history as the 'big' announcement of E3 2003 - Nintendo's memorable all-time low-point in terms of direction and trade show excitement. On the other hand, it was a game which Shigeru Miyamoto and original Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani had a hand in, and was around in an era when gaming connectivity was still something of a novelty. The idea then was that one person played as Pac-Man (viewing and controlling the action in classic top-down maze fashion on the GBA), while the other three players used standard GameCube pads and viewed the action in full (albeit zoomed-in) 3D on the TV.

Fast forward five years, of course, and gazillions of us own wireless-capable hardware, such as the DS, which makes its belated appearance on the handheld all the more obvious - for one thing, it's a whole lot easier to set-up, and not a wire in sight.

There are plusses and minuses in the whole Pac-Man Vs story, though. You absolutely cannot play it as a one-player game (and never could). The option simply does not exist, so in order to make this work Namco Bandai has opted to ensure that your DS owning mates don't require a copy of the game to be able to play it - which, thankfully, rescues this from being a rather pointless exercise and turns it into something altogether more desirable.

Given that only about two people ever bought R: Racing [I was young and didn't need the money - Ed], the chances are you'll need a bit of background about the game mechanics of Pac-Man Vs too, so here goes. The premise is excellent, in that one player controls Pac-Man and goes about his usual pill-munching business, while up to three other players control the ghosts with the sole purpose of catching the arch chomper. If, say, you're only playing with one other pal, then the remaining ghosts appear as 'harmless disembodied eyes' (or grey ghosts, officially), changing to the colour of one of the player ghosts when touched and go after Pac-Man. If they catch up with the greedy gobbler, then the player who touched that ghost in the first place gets the points. If you're skillful enough to reduce the number of pellets on screen to 25 or fewer, Pac-Man becomes invisible to the ghosts. Mwahahaha. Once you clear a board, Pac-Man gets 1600 points and the chance to play on the next round.

Another twist is that ghosts can also pick up the fruit. This not only gives them bonus points, but temporarily widens the field of view, so helps when you're chasing after Mr Yellow Belly. So, if you catch Pac-Man you get 1600 points, and then have to play as Pac-Man in the next round. To cut a convoluted story short, the first player to hit a pre-determined point tally (7,000, then 10,000, then 15,000) wins.

As was pointed out back in 2003, the game only really works properly if you have the full complement of four players, and does burn out pretty quickly in terms of long-term appeal. The fact that Nintendo and Namco decided to bundle it with another game tells you a lot about how they felt selling it as a full-priced game, and, again, Namco bundling it within the latest Namco Museum release is another admission of its slightly niche, quirky, throwaway appeal. There's absolutely no doubting it's a fun, addictive little twist on the formula, but if you're effectively only buying Namco Museum on DS for Pac-Man Vs, that's a fairly hefty outlay. One day Namco Bandai will release Pac-Man Vs for a few quid via download on a platform all of us can access, but, for now, it's still burdened by being bundled alongside things most of us don't want. Last time it was the awful R: Racing, then the okayish I-Ninja in some territories, now it's a load of games we already own ten times over.