Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1983

So far in this competition we’ve seen both companies pushing the limits of 80s technology.  Most notably they’ve been able to flood the screens with enemies or make a 3D effect out of 2D graphics, both things that on their own would still be impressive into the 90s.  We’ll find out how much more these companies are capable of as we go over the games of 1983.

Xevious(NAM): Whoah!  A shooter that’s not set in space!  This had to be an attractive new look, but the big new idea for gameplay is the addition of targets below the flying plane that must be hit by dropping bombs on them.  The problem is that unlike the usual vertical shooting, where your shots go across the screen, the bombs only drop on exact locations a little ways in front of the ship, meaning you have to be a lot more precise and if you miss a turret building you have no choice but to let it shoot you from behind until it’s offscreen.  Even without that annoyance, there’s a lack of enemy variety and even though it’s nice to get out of space for once, the environment never changes.  That’s forgiveable in space because outer space is a big black void, but planets should have a lot more to show.  I first played this game as a bonus in Star Fox Assault and I didn’t think it was very good then either.

Sinistar(MID): I really wanted to like Sinistar.  At its core are many great ideas.  A free-roaming map with a minimap that tells you what you need, fast-paced controls, pretty graphics, real recorded voices and the premise of trying to build up armaments to destroy a big talking death machine before it’s complete or else fight a difficult boss.  With all the promise it has, Sinistar fumbles in every execution.
 
The goal of the game is to gather crystals from shooting planetoids and enemy ships carrying the crystals so that you can make powerful bombs that are the only things that can damage Sinistar.  Meanwhile, swarms of enemy ships gather the crystals and take them to Sinistar to build him as the ultimate space weapon.

The ultimate space weapon is meme fodder.

The first big problem is that the controls for the player ship is fast and loose, which isn’t inherently bad, but the crystals you need to get are so tiny that they’re easily mistaken for stars and the programmed area that registers them as being grabbed is very tiny, resulting in countless instances of circling around crystals because the damn ship won’t pick them up unless it runs right into them with pixel perfect precision, wasting time in a game where time is of the essence.  Even when incomplete Sinistar takes a lot of these bombs to kill and after you unload a full salvo of bombs you’ll have to go back to get more crystals while the enemies repair him so the aggravating crystal collection is long and drawn-out.

If the enemy ships successfully build Sinistar you might as well quit because the game is just over.  All he has to do is get close and then he can insta-kill you, something you can’t avoid because you have to get close enough to not have your bombs intercepted, meaning to get a shot on him you have to be flying close to him and inevitably get insta-killed.  This game is known for its high difficulty, but it’s only difficult because it’s so badly made.

Mappy(NAM): Namco tried to make another charming and simple game about going through a maze collecting things, but this time the maze is of trampolines and doors as Mappy goes through seizing other people’s property before they can be stolen by bandits.
There are no jump physics to this game, so using the trampolines is more like holding down the jump button to get to the exact right height you want to be at.  On the trampoline the bandits can’t kill you, but they can when you’re off it, resulting in cheap deaths because you happened to be going to the same floor as them and the cheap deaths don’t stop there.  A very common scenario is two bandits coming at you from both sides because without the trampoline you’re only moving in two directions and the only means to fight back is opening doors on them, which is easier said that done because the doors only seem to want to re-close when they feel like it.  It’s not fun.

Bubbles(MID):

This is one of those games that is so simple it might as well be a minigame in Mario Party.  You move around as a bubble collecting dirt, grime and baby roaches until you become a big enough bubble to go down the drain to the next level.  There are scrubbers and razor blades that will pop the titular bubble on contact, but the biggest problem are the adult roaches that come out of the drain when a baby goes down it because apparently this is the sink where the humans wash off growth acceleration mutagen.

Compare the gaps to the bubble's size.

The difficulty comes from both the clouds of dangerous objects that can instantly pop you and the intentionally slippery controls.  It does indeed feel like you’re controlling a soap bubble, where letting go of the control stick means you continue to glide along, and that would be fine if the game didn’t quickly demand impossible precision before long.  It’s at least an amusing distraction for a few minutes, which is better than Mappy.

Pac & Pal(NAM): Pac & Pal is a step in the right direction after Super Pac Man.  The gameplay is still about gathering items (cards, in this case) to unlock doors to specific collectibles, but it goes back to the more methodical maze navigation and quick strategizing the original game had by slowing down the gameplay to a more manageable level.  The titular “pal” assists by carrying the pickups needed to win into the middle of the maze to clear them from the field.  It feels like the extra helper is tacked on because they needed some kind of gimmick after they took out giant mode, perhaps a necessary decision because otherwise it has little to stand out with.  It’s alright though.

Spy Hunter(MID): You play as a car driving down a road equipped with machine guns and other weapons and gun down other cars as you go.  The game doesn’t seem to have any end goal beyond destroying cars and even that doesn’t give me a satisfying feeling like some of Midway’s space shooters.  Since it’s a top-down view with the car in the middle, there’s a limited field of view, meaning shifting gears into a faster speed is so much of a crap shoot that it might as well not even be there.  This game blows.

 

Pole Position 2(NAM): More of an update than a real sequel, Pole Position 2 has all the problems the first one did and just adds selectable tracks and some new graphics.  Choosing the track beforehand eases the problem I had with sudden turns, since you know what to expect, but only a little.  It doesn't do enough to make this significantly better than the original.

1983 was not exactly a stellar year for these two.  From Namco we got a weak shooter with a frustrating secondary fire, a badly-designed maze game, an alright spin on Pac-Man and a sequel that didn't fix anything.  From Midway we got a really badly designed space shooter, a fleetingly amusing minigame and a boring, poorly thought-out car combat game.  Nobody is winning any awards, but alas I have to choose a winner regardless.  Between the two, I have to go with Midway, if only because the simplicity and novelty of Bubbles kept my attention for slightly longer than Namco’s games.  Even if it’s not an especially captivating game, I’d rather play a game that hasn’t been done before than Namco’s games that are just “X, but worse.”  Better luck next time, Namco.