Back to the museum of arcade antiquity with you - only this time Pac-Man's not underfoot and there aren't any bitmapped circuit boards to stare at. This leaves you to enjoy Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, Dig Dug, Galaga and Galaxian on your own. (Namco, 2001)

Granted, most of these games have been on the Game Boy all the way back to the original monochrome model. And granted, most of these games are being made available for the umpteenth time by now. But despite that, there's something awe-inspiring about the fact that Pole Position looks the same on a handheld device as it did in the arcade way back when. That's the one game here that's never been attempted on a previous Game Boy model, and in a way it's the real showcase of Namco Museum on the Game Boy Advance.

Not that any of the other games are slouches - if anything, my only real beef with anything here is with the tiny, tiny displays on Galaxian and Galaga, rendered so incredibly small here that I I wound up going back to the old monochrome Game Boy Arcade Classics 3 cartridge for my flying space bug fix - even with the wider screen afforded by a game programmed especially for the GBA screen, the old cartridge's versions of these games are more enjoyable, not to mention visible. Given that Galaga is an all-time favorite of mine, I can only describe this as a major disappointment for me.

Ms. Pac-Man functions essentially the same way as its ancestor does on Namco's Pac-Man Collection, right down to my caveat about the shoulder buttons ruining your game (read more about it here). Dig Dug also works very similarly, only without the shoulder button "problem." (Face it, it's purely "pilot error" if you do hit those buttons in mid-game, but it's still annoying.)

Which brings us back to the jewel in the crown of this Namco collection, the trend-setting first-person racing game Pole Position. It looks and sounds almost exactly like the arcade version - it even speaks the words "Prepare to qualify!" in that same vaguely bored female voice! - and once you get the hang of the controls (A = gas, B = brakes, right shoulder button = gearshift), it's amazing how much like the arcade game it really is. Now, admittedly, this means I still suck at it (and, given a quick primer on the controls, my older brother would probably still leave me in the dust), but an old fart like me - who lost his computer virginity in the Commodore PET era and was introduced to video games by a Sears Pong Sports console - finds it intensely fascinating, not to mention way cool, that I can now play a nearly arcade-authentic game of Pole Position in the rest room. Now there's a blessing from the advancement of technology - I don't have to worry about clean underwear when I crash.

A nice quintet of retrogaming goodness, with significant points counted off only for reducing Galaga and Galaxian to microscopic menaces.

Rating:  Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that might alienate less patient arcade veterans.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster