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| | | Let me just say right off the bat that I bought this solely for Ms. Pac-Man.
Guess I might as well pay lip service to the other games that tag along. "Pole Position II" runs shockingly smooth but the stiff control and flat track don't succeed in making me care too much, and your car going off like an A-bomb the second it touches a pixel of another car doesn't help me like it more.
"Dig-Dug" is pretty good, played vertically--nothing like shooting a hose into someone and pumping 'em until they pop. Dig-Dug also reminds me a lot of Namco's later tunnel-digging game, Mr. Driller. Yay!
"Phozon" is a funky molecular chemistry thing where you play "stick the atoms on the molecule" while other particles pop around and try to hit you. It's tough because you've got to run into the wandering atoms from the right angle to build your molecule the right way. Nifty graphics, the gameplay is a bit more frustrating than exciting, however.
"Galaxian"... well, it's no "Galaga." Really slow shooting and slow moving--whose brilliant idea was it that you could only have one bullet onscreen at once? Very challenging but not very fun... I never really liked Galaga much in the arcades though.
And "Tower of Druaga"... hurg! ;P Let's just say that the only good thing about this sluggish and pointless maze game is that it was used as the name of a mode in Mr. Driller: Drill Land. Horrifically ugly color patterns, terrible sound, and why the heck do they make a character whose sword-stroke does not extend beyond his own body's hit detection border? Wow.
But yeah, "Ms. Pac-Man" is here in her full tate mode glory--the only home port to give you the missus at the full arcade single-screen resolution, as far as I am aware.
All the PS1 Namco Museums, when it comes to that, are perfect ports, offering plenty of configuration options, tate mode when applicable (it's rotated clockwise rather than counter-clockwise like every other tate game out there, but oh well), and memory-card saved high-score tables even for games that don't normally track high-scores. The game selection is sometimes hit or miss and the extensive "Museums" where you can view scans of arcade fliers and boards seems likely to appeal only to an extremely hardcore few, but all in all this is the way game compilations should be made. Well done Namco. |
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| | | | I should note that all the PS1 Namco Museum games with vertical screen modes have the screen rotated the opposite way of any otherh "tate" mode games: you have to turn your monitor 90 degrees clockwise rather than counter-clockwise. Doh. |
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| | | Well, now I'm totally in love with this version of Dig Dug. The screen shows at a gorgeous 1:1 pixel presentation, even in horizontal screen mode, with some scrolling--you can turn that scroll off, but then you can actually dig your way OFF THE SCREEN, as can be seen near the end of this video:
Anyway, Dig Dug, I wuv woo. This game disc is pretty much permanently installed in my US PS2 as of now. : D |
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| | | Ms. Pac-Man's default, non-rotated display is slightly scaled down to fit the whole thing on screen, rather than scrolling like Dig Dug.
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| | | | The dots blink slightly faster here than in Arcade Game Series: Ms. Pac-Man on PS4 (see entry 1336): they toggle to visible or invisible every eight frames here, vs every 10 in the Arcade Game Series version. |
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Hm I guess the graphics here do come out slightly blurry--when I zoom in on a still frame from the video in Photoshop--but I'm not sure if that's from the game itself or something to do with the video out, conversion, capture, and video compression--it's component to an OSSC, then a Framemeister, and captured--at fairly high bit-rate, but still not losslessly--through a Game Capture HD to OBS. The blurriness is so slight that it's hard to see without zooming in in Photoshop, though; it's significantly less blurry than the PS3 (Pac-Man Museum--see entry 1334) and PS4/PC (Arcade Game Series--see entry 1497) versions of Ms. Pac-Man, whose blurriness jumps right out at you as soon as you start playing.
... Hm yeah there's the same minute level of slight blur even in the 3D Museum areas, so I suppose it's probably something to do with the capture, maybe that's just as sharp as I can get from PS2 320x240 video out. I suppose for a real test I'd have to try capturing some Darkstalkers 3 or something video to compare against. Hm I suppose if the OSSCs are resampling to proper NTSC screen pixel aspect ratio then yeah there would have to be a little pixel alteration going on regardless.
... Ah yeah it's gotta be just about the analogue to digital conversion. I tried messing with the OSSC H.samplerate for instance, changing from the 320x240 default 426.00 to 426.60 per https://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php/Optimal_timings , but it didn't change the slight blur incurred, just moved it over slightly.
That procedure I was talking about at the end for extracting the Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga, and Ms. Pac-Man arcade roms from the "Arcade Game Series" releases on Steam is here: https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/wiki/Arcade-Game-Series ; unfortunately, they haven't yet worked out how to get a working Ms. Pac-Man rom out of it. |
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| | | | The alien formation, slow side-to-side movement and accompanying sound, and ship designs, all are REALLY reminiscent of Space Invaders; I guess when there's, like, only one game really to rip off, not much need is felt to be subtle about it. But it doesn't feel like those enemies fit as well with the much greater height of the screen, distance from the player gunship, and the dive bombing. Like, I'd rather play Space Invaders or Galaga; Galaxian is an uncomfortable in-between. |
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In DuckStation.
Giving your name to the Museum receptionist still enables saving but if you haven't done that, quitting a game pops up a screen asking if you want to create a new save, so I guess you can do it that way, too.
Galaxian feels pretty repetitive, I don't think I can see myself getting into it over its sequel, Galaga.
This Ms. Pac-Man port doesn't have the sound inaccuracy problem the Pac-Man port in Vol. 1 has, and her movement isn't as jerky as Pac-Man's--although it certainly isn't the silky smoothness of the arcade version, which almost feels uncanny if you play it right after this version. But I do enjoy this version a lot and I seem to get good scores in it; I suspect it's slightly easier than the arcade version--maybe runs just a skosh slower?
Confused by Dig Dug's "SCROLL" video option 'cause with it off, there's at least one row of the level that is off the bottom of the screen--I thought it would zoom the screen out slightly or something; in fact I thought I REMEMBERED it doing that back when I used to play this on the actual hardware...oh wait no my notes from when I made a video on it in 2018 say that yeah I was able to dig off-screen there, playing it on PS2: https://youtu.be/Ka8vYYPNFHY?t=524 .
Still quite the party in Ms. P's house! |
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| | | | Having now played Galaxian from Namco 50th for PS2 (see entry 873), extracted and running in the latest MAME, the sound there is WAY better than it is in the PS1 version! Wow! It sounds awesome; that and maybe the slightly increased resolution--not aspect ratio though, they're pretty much the same unlike Galaga in Vol. 1 which can run at a shortened "Panorama" playfield--make Galaxian in MAME really work for me! Not this version though. : P |
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| | | | In a very crude eyeballing-it and hitting-l/r-rapidly comparison playing the 2D versions of Ms. Pac-Man in Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness on Dreamcast--see entry 380--and Namco Museum Vol. 3 for PS1, in the emulators Flycast and DuckStation, respectively, the DC one may be slightly more responsive (Flycast has the magical ability to remove ~2 frames of input delay), and has a more accurate aspect ratio--that is, Ms. Pac-Man and the dots are noticeably more perfectly spherical in Flycast, whereas in the PS1 version in DuckStation they're slightly tall ovals. On the plus side for the PS1 version, the colors come out slightly brighter there. |
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This rotated "Arcade" screen mode in Namco Museum Vol. 3 is an excellent version of Ms. Pac-Man--even does a number of things better than the actual arcade version (ie arcade ROM extracted from Steam version of Arcade Game Series Ms. Pac-Man and played in latest MAME):
- more distinct dot-eating sounds--they don't double-up like in MAME
- rounder Ms. Pac-Man (superior aspect ratio when set to "PAR 1:1" in DuckStation; "PAR" stands for "Pixel Aspect Ratio" 'p')
- much better at keeping my high score (MAME's auto-save-state high score is easy for me to mess up and lose ; D)
The Steam extracted arcade ROM in MAME does do a few things better:
- easier-on-the-eyes maze wall colors (not as super-bright as the PS1 version)
- slightly larger overall graphics size on-screen
Those two factors in MAME's favor are probably gonna keep me playing Ms. P in MAME for the most part--but the PS1 version is really good in its own right! |
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