Galaga is the sequel to Galaxian and it was developed by Namco and published in the United States by Midway in 1981. Once again it saw the light of day in stand up and cocktail varieties. It's pretty much the very same basic game as Galaxian. They did add some things though. It looks a little better, but not much. They added new enemy flight patterns. One of the Galagas can swoop down and it will shoot out a tractor beam. If your ship gets caught in the beam, the ship is taken away from you and the Galaga takes it back up into the formation. If you manage to destroy the Galaga that has your ship coupled to it without destroying your ship, you get the ship back. It comes back to you and connects to the side of your actively controlled ship. Having two ships joined at the hip gives you twice the fire power. They also added challenge stages every couple of waves where the Galagas come out in patterns and they don't fire at you. The object is to destroy all forty of them before they can leave the screen. Outside of those, it really is more of the same. This version proved more popular than the original, and I prefer this version over the original. It's more challenging. And being more complex takes it a step away from just being a Space Invaders variant.
Ms. Pac-Man was also published by Midway in 1981, in yet again cocktail and stand up versions. It was developed by General Computer Corporation as a modification to Pac-Man. Midway bought it and altered it to become what is Ms. Pac-Man. Namco wasn't exactly happy about this. Midway surrendered all rights to Ms. Pac-Man over to Namco to essentially keep them from taking away publishing rights of their future titles. Ms. Pac-Man offers a new character, four mazes instead of one, wandering bonus fruit, and between level cinemas. Outside of that, it really is the same classic game play as Pac-Man. It's still perfect. Ms. Pac-Man would go on to become the most successful arcade machine of all time. A special note should be said about the emulation. This is actually the real Ms. Pac-Man emulated perfectly. It's available for the very first time on this disc. All other previous Namco Museum versions of Ms. Pac-Man have been recreations.
Pole Position was manufactured by Namco and published in the United States by Atari in late 1982. The game was released in stand up and sit down versions. The stand up cabinets had the accelerator pedal, gear shift (Lo-Hi), and the steering wheel. The sit down cabinet had all of that plus the addition of a brake pedal. Pole Position featured one track, Fuji Speedway. Players would put in their quarter and would be instructed vocally to prepare to qualify. You would then complete one lap to assign your pole position, your starting position. If you qualified, you'd be placed in position one through eight depending on your time. If you failed to qualify, game over. If you qualified, you got to race again. The difference in the qualifying lap was that the cars were already in play when you begin. And in the race lap, you all start the race together. There were also puddles to avoid in the race lap that aren't in the qualifying lap. The arcade Pole Position used a free spinning wheel. That means you can spin it left or right and it would continue to rotate endlessly. For the sharpest turns you'd actually fully spin the wheel and let it spin. There is no way to replicate this with the current generation of console controllers. An aspect of the arcade game is lost here. Home control of Pole Position is tough at best. It's just extremely twitchy and sensitive making things overly difficult.
Xevious was published in 1982 by Atari in both cocktail and stand up varieties. Xevious is a horizontal scrolling shooter where the player has to interact on two areas of play. The player could shoot forward in the air at enemy ships coming toward him. He also could bomb targets on the ground. You have to watch both areas of play for enemy fire to avoid. It the heat of the moment, it's tough to tell what's coming from where. It's pure twitch game play. You're able to power up your ship from items that come out of defeated enemies. There isn't much more to it, than kill for power ups and points for extra men to get as far as you could and set the highest score. It's fun if you like the genre. Otherwise you'll probably never return to Xevious.
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