Re-introducing: Namco Gallery (GameBoy)

On my birthday last year, I bought myself the trio of games that can be seen in the photos throughout this post.

Even though they arrived on my doorstep shortly after, I failed to photograph them--or, you know, otherwise acknowledge their existence--until earlier this week.



Anyway, the boxes look pretty nice lined up as they are in the shot above, don't you think?

Something you probably can't make out by looking at said photo (unless you click on it to blow it up): the frames featured on each volume's box art include elements that tie in to one or more of the four games contained on that particular cart.



The frame featured on Namco Gallery Vol. 1's packaging, for instance, includes depictions of Mappy's titular police mouse (above) as well as Nyamco (below), the game's antagonist.

(The frames featured on the covers of the second and third volumes include similarly delicious depictions of Dig Dug, Sky Kid and The Tower of Druaga characters.)



The backsides of the Namco Gallery boxes aren't as thrilling as the front sides, unfortunately, but they do give folks a nice look at the colorized versions of each compilation's games.

Just in case you've forgotten which games are included on which Namco Gallery volume, the first one contains pint-sized versions of Battle City, Galaga, Mappy and Namco Classic (a golf sim); the second offers up portable iterations of Dig Dug, Famista 4 (baseball), Galaxian and The Tower of Druaga; and the third consists of Family Tennis, Jantaku Boy (mahjong), Sky Kid and Tower of Babel ports.



My favorites are the most well known titles of the bunch: Dig Dug, Galaga, Mappy and Sky Kid, with the first game's puzzlerific (no, that's not a real word) "New Dig Dug" mode alone being worth the price of all three cartridges, in my humble opinion.

This portable re-imagining of Dig Dug is the only one of the above-mentioned ports to earn a North American release, by the way. I've wanted to own a complete-in-box copy of it for ages now due to its striking box art, but price-gouging eBay sellers have kept me from realizing those desires.

See also: a previous post with a bit more information on the Namco Gallery games

Getting to know: Namco Gallery (GameBoy)

Remember how I posited in this recent post that the GameBoy version of Dig Dug never saw the light of day in the Land of the Rising Sun?

Well, it seems I was wrong.

Thanks to a helpful bit of cyber-sleuthing conducted by my Twitter pal Brian (aka iamnotagoomba, aka the guy behind the Japanese 3DS tumblog), I now know that the GameBoy version of Dig Dug was released in Japan--just not as a stand-alone title like it was elsewhere.

Instead, it was included on the second of the three Namco Gallery games that hit Japanese store shelves back in 1996 and 1997.

Each of these portable compilations contained four titles. The first Namco Gallery featured ports of Battle City, Galaga, Mappy and Namco Classic (a golf sim). The second included Dig Dug, Famista 4 (baseball), Galaxian and The Tower of Druaga. The third, Family Tennis, Jantaku Boy (mahjong), Sky Kid and Tower of Babel.

The fascinating thing about these ports is that although they're pint-sized--not to mention black-and-white, or rather green-and-white--versions of their arcade and console counterparts, they look and sound and play as much like the "real deals" as is possible given the hardware.

That's even more true when you stick one of the Namco Gallery carts into a Super GameBoy peripheral, as doing so injects each game with various amounts of color while also surrounding them with some pretty fabulous borders (see the screenshots placed throughout this post for evidence).

After dabbling with each of them over the last few days, my favorite so far is the second release--thanks mostly to the "New Dig Dug" mode that's included in Dig Dug.

The others are nice, too, though; especially the colorized versions of Galaga, Mappy (above) and Sky Kid.

See also: 'Four GameBoy titles I'm surprised never saw the light of day in the Land of the Rising Sun'

I'm probably going to pre-order Game Center CX 3 as soon as someone allows me to do so

The problem is, I need another 3DS game at the moment like I need a hole in the head. (I know I've said that many times before, but I'm writing this on the Monday following a week-long vacation, so please forgive me for resorting, yet again, to such a tired cliche.)

Still, I love me some retro-tinged mini-games, especially when they harken back to the 8-bit gems of my childhood, and that certainly describes the titles that will be included in this upcoming, likely-to-be-import-only compilation.

You can see two of those titles in action by zooming to the 26:50 mark in the video below (and here), by the way.



I especially like the first one, which is a blatant Mario Bros. rip-off, although the second one--which riffs on Namco's Sky Kid--looks pretty sweet, too.

Are any of you Japanese 3DS owners planning to pick up a copy of Game Center CX 3 after it hits the streets?

(Via tinycartridge.com)

The Great Gaymathon Review #52: Sky Kid (Famicom)

Game: Sky Kid

Genre: Shoot 'em up

Developer: Namcot

Publisher: Namcot

System: Famicom

Release date: 1986

I knew next to nothing about this odd little game before buying it a year or so ago--which shouldn't be much of a surprise to those who know anything about its history. (Although the arcade original was released in the States, it wasn't a very high-profile release and, as such, it didn't see much success. The NES port, published here by Sunsoft, suffered a similar fate.) To be completely honest, I only picked it up because I was on a bit of a Namcot-made-Famicom-game kick at the time and I thought Sky Kid's cover art was cute. Luckily for me, the game that resides beneath that box art quite a lot of fun. I especially like that it's unique in the way that only games from this era seem to be: At its heart, it's a shoot 'em up, but blowing oncoming planes to smithereens isn't really the goal. No, the real goal of the game is to pick up a bomb that's placed about half-way through each stage and then drop it on a specified target that typically sits just before said stage's landing strip. (Yep, you have to land your plane at the end of each mission.) As I'm sure most of you have already imagined, that's a lot easier said than done. In the case of Sky Kid, that's because rival pilots do their best to create havoc by filling the screen--and not just with their planes, but with their bullets, too. At the same time, multitudes of ground units add to the visual cacophony by launching their own ammunition into the air. Thankfully, controlling your little pea-shooter-with-wings is as easy as can be. You even have access to a loop-the-loop maneuver (performed with the Famicom controller's B button) that can help you evade on-coming fire. Two additional reasons to check out this pleasingly unique title: Its graphics, while definitely on the simplistic side, are colorful and well crafted, especially for the era, and its soundtrack enjoyably jaunty--although not to the point of annoyance.

See also: Previous 'Great Gaymathon' posts

Famicom Friday

The folks from UPS have dropped a number of packages at my doorstep over the last few days. The contents of those packages: Six Famicom games I purchased (via eBay) shortly after my birthday.

Five of those games--BurgerTime, Mappy, Pac-Man, Sky Kid and The Tower of Druaga (below)--were produced by the fine folks at Namcot.

As for the sixth game, well, I'm pretty sure most of you have heard of it.

(It's the original Super Mario Bros., in case you can't make that out in the photo above.)

Isn't that banana-yellow cartridge grand?

Check out my Flickr photostream (here) if you want to see more Glamour Shot-esque pics of my latest gaming haul.