The world of portable gaming has taken a giant leap.
Here's a column for all you video game marks out there. Just recently I managed to get a Game Boy Advance and a game for it, Namco Museum. The first subject I'm going to touch is the GBA itself. It is, without a doubt, the greatest portable system ever. There are people out there who whine and moan about Game Boy graphics not being as good as the Nintendo 64's, but what do you expect? The d@mn thing fits in your pocket, so don't expect to go through some sort of virtual reality experience. But the rest of you are going to love it, except for a few drawbacks. First of all, the games are pretty expensive as far as portable games go, ranging from $30-$40. Fortunately, the GBA plays all regular Game Boy games, but there's two different ways you can view the screen. The GBA screen is 40% larger, so you know it's going to look different when playing old titles. You can make the screen appear the same size as the Game Boy Color's, but if you do this the screen looks like a small square in the middle of the actual screen, which is kind of awkward. You can also stretch out the screen by pressing the "L" button, which makes it look 40% larger, and you can imagine what a 4 megabit game looks like when stretched out like that. Another thing is that the screen seems a little dim. From the games I've played so far, it seems you'll need a good amount of light to see it. Luckily, you can always get a wormlight like I did if you have any problems with this. And then there's the button arrangement. The "L" and "R" at the top give you the feel of playing an N64, but for some reason the A button is to the right and higher than button B, rather than below, which has been the case with previous Game Boys. This takes some getting used to, but you'll get the hang of it.
Seriously though, those are the only real drawbacks of the GBA. If you can get past all of that, this system has some major advantages that will make you squeal like happy pig. For one thing the batteries last a lot longer. Remember the Game Boy Color's long lasting battery power? Nintendo Power magazine said 2 batteries for the GBC will go for 10 hours, although I found brand name batteries like Duracel and Energizer to last a lot longer than that. Now NP is saying that the GBA will last 15 hours on a set of 2 batteries. It doesn't take an algebraic genius like me to figure out that GBA's batteries last ONE AND A HALF TIMES LONGER than GBC's, which is pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Plus, there's a green light that turns red when you're low on battery power, and the light eventually fades. This is quite handy for some games. Like when you've finally caught a Kangeshkan while playing Pokémon, and don't have to face the horrible frustration of the power shutting off before you could save your game because you didn't know how much time you had left before the batteries died out. Enough about the batteries. The graphics are awesome, it's 32 megabits which is the equivalent of a Saturn or Playstation. The price right now is $100, which isn't too bad. Don't tell Nintendo, but I'd probably be willing to pay $300 or more for something this good. There's likely going to be a price break within the next few months, but if you're a true Nintendo freak, you probably can't wait that long. Also, GBA's seem to be selling like Megazords and Dragonzords were in 1994, so get one while you still can.
Now about that game. I'd like to say I started out with what I hope to be a long line of GBA games with something phenomenal, but I let myself down on this one. Namco Museum consists of 5 classic arcade games, 2 of which are very similar, that were all originally released between 1979 and 1982. You may shed a tear of nostalgia while playing these classic games, but only if you're really pathetic. The first one I'll review is DigDug. For some reason, I've always had some sort of fascination with this game since I played the NES version about 10 years ago. There's something oddly appealing about a game in which you're constantly digging to find monsters, sticking them with a pump, and pumping air into them until they get big and explode. This game has more strategy to it than meets the eye. And since it has a certain amount of depth to it, it's actually almost like an action side-scrolling game. But just like the others, the purpose of this game is to see how many points you can get before you die and the infamous "Game Over" words appear on the screen.
And then there's Pole Position. At the very least, the title of this game can give immature adolescent children something to giggle about. But the game is pretty interesting and advanced, considering the year it was made. I guess you could call it an ancient version of Mario Kart, but without all the fun stuff. I'm going to show respect for the past and say that here you'll find a lot of high-speed racing excitement, which is sort of true. Hey, in a sport like this, you're lucky if you hear "racing" and "excitement" in the same paragraph. In this game you go really fast in a car, and you have to use some strategy, like changing gears and making sharp turns without crashing. But if you so much as nick the edge of another car or hit a sign, your car explodes into a spiky orange cloud. This can be annoying, and you may find yourself switching to Ms. PacMan or DigDug in a few minutes.
The next game is Ms. PacMan. I'm not sure if I should spell it as a single word, like Pacman or PacMan, or as a double word, Pac Man, but right now I don't feel like looking it up, so for the purpose of this article it's going to be PacMan. But this raises another question. The "Ms." implies that this game's heroine may or may not be married. She could be married to Mr. PacMan, OR she might be his sister. If the 2nd possibility is true, then I'd have to say I find the between-stage scenes a little disturbing where you see them looking at each other with a pink heart between them. On the other hand, maybe it's a coincidence that they have the same last name, since they're the only ones of their species. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I've spent this whole paragraph trying to make sense out of PacMan, but what else is there to talk about? Ms. PacMan is pretty much the same as the original except for some cool additions. For example, the dot-eating yellow thing has a BOW stuck on its head this time, you get to eat FRUIT for extra points, and between some of the stages you get to see short movies involving moving yellow things and no dialogue. But to tell you the truth this game is kind of fun. Any game where the bad guys' names are Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue, can't be that bad. You get to eat a lot of dots, and when you eat a big dot, the baddies turn blue and run away from you like cowards.
Finally, there's 2 games which are almost exactly the same, Galaga and Galaxiar. I'm not sure if I spelled the second one right, but at this point does anyone really care? I found Galaga to have more entertainment value than Galaxiar, but I don't think that says a whole lot. Both of these games are disturbingly similar to Space Invaders, the idea is to shoot everything before you die. If you find yourself enjoying either of these games for longer than 10 or 20 minutes at a time, I suggest you seek professional help.
Those are all 5 games that come with Namco Museum. In a way, I'd have to say that each of them is sort of fun to play. Just the fact that it's 5 games in one cartridge probably says something positive about it and gives it variety. But there's one thing about this game that left me bitter as a grad school dropout once I found out, and if I already knew this I never would've bought it. No matter how many points you get in any of the 5 games, IT DOESN'T SAVE YOUR HIGH SCORE. The whole fun of playing these classic arcade games is that if by chance you get more points than everyone else, you get to enter your initials so that fellow gamers (you think) will be impressed by your superior talent. You imagine other people saying "Wow! You got 60,000 points in Ms. PacMan, are you sure you're only a mortal?" But there's no hope for that in Namco Museum. Getting points is pointless, because once you turn the power off it doesn't matter. Sure, for each game when you get a high score it'll keep the number in the top corner of the screen, but you don't get to put your initials and it's erased once you turn the power off. There's no battery backup. If I could summarize this game in just two words, I'd say it's "limited fun". The games are kind of fun to play, for a while, but without the triumphant feeling you get when seeing your initials among the list of high scores, the fun is pretty limited. Are there any other positive things that can be said about this game? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. This is one of those games you'd also call "mindless fun". Don't you hate the way some games just constantly make your brain think? Genres that do this include strategy, role-playing, adventure, and sometimes even action games exercise your brain. You will find very little of this in Namco Museum. If nothing else, you can use this game as kind of a 'getaway' when you're in the mood for mindless fun. In closing, is Namco Museum a good game? Sort of. Is it worth paying $30 for? Probably not, unless you've already picked up some of the better GBA titles. That's all there is to say about this game. Good night everybody.
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