Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1985

This competition has not been kind to Namco.  I mean in a historical context it was because Midway and Namco published each other’s games in their respective countries, but as far as this contest to see who made the best games, but as far as this contest is concerned, Namco wasn’t doing so hot.  They started out with some timeless classics, but their brain seemed to slowly degrade as they made consistently made bad game design decisions, reaching a head with Tower of Druaga and Dragon Buster.  Midway, meanwhile, experimented with technology and style, making for memorable games that sometimes came together into great ones like Marble Madness.

For 1985, Namco has the perfect opportunity to score another win.  There’s only one 1985 game from Midway I’m aware of so there’s a lot riding on that one game.  All Namco has to do is make at least one game better than Gauntlet and they’ll win.  Will they?  That it’s even a question is a testament to how badly last year damaged Namco’s reputation for me.

Metro-Cross(NAM): An obstacle course game.  Your character runs to reach a goal before time runs out while you dodge and jump around obstacles that slow you down.  There’s enough variety in obstacles to keep each round fresh and the ability to slow down and speed up as needed prevents the game’s controls from getting frustrating.  It’s straightforward and functions, but the music copied from Mappy doesn’t fit with the high speed thrills and gets repetitive.  It’s an average game that will be swiftly forgotten.

Dig Dug 2(NAM): Namco took the core gameplay of the original Dig-Dug in a new direction still maintaining the core elements that made the original fun.  Instead of being underground, Dig Dug 2 uses a top down perspective and instead of drilling underground, you instead dig around small islands.  These islands have several points where the player can jackhammer cracks to make pieces of it fall into the ocean, with the smaller piece being the one to fall, taking everything on its surface with it.

The new jackhammer digging method opens up a whole new dimension to the gameplay. The player still has the tried and true air pump weapon to deal with the enemies, but there’s strategic ways to cut the islands in the right way to kill them more efficiently, making Dig Dug 2 something of a puzzle and action hybrid.  Finding these shortcuts to win the levels more easily gives the game replay value and a rewarding feeling when it all comes together.  Dig Dug 2 doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the first game and while I do miss the musical movement effect of the original, this sequel is a good game in its own right.

Baraduke(NAM): Remember how bad Dragon Buster was?  Well this game does pretty much everything that game did wrong, except as a generic space shooter instead of a generic fantasy platformer.  Ugly, doodle-like graphics, extremely weak sound design and a very limited number of enemies make Baraduke look just as amateurish.  Its full-range movement gives the player a better fighting chance than in Dragon Buster, but that’s the only thing I can type about it that isn’t negative.  Baraduke sucks.

This is pathetic.

Motos(NAM): There have been a few old arcade games I’ve compared to Mario Party minigames, but this one has a more specific comparison: bumper balls.
 
You bump enemies off the stage while avoiding getting bumped off yourself, but Motos has the enemy and stage variety to always have a fresh challenge in the simple premise.  Having to watch your positioning and hit enemies of different properties and behavior is challenging and the 8 directional movement makes me feel like anytime I lose it’s my own fault.  It’s a good feeling when I out-maneuver an enemy and get them right where I want them before bumping them off.  Motos is a good one.
 
Gauntlet(MID): Gauntlet is another impressive game from Midway on a technical level.  Similarly to Robotron, the screen gets absolutely swarmed with enemies and the fuzzy recorded voice acting from the game’s guide is great.  Even better is that apparently the actor is the guy who did the “voice” of Poggle the Lesser.

Plowing through swarms of endlessly respawning enemies with rapid shooting is fun for a little while (probably moreso with up to 3 other players) but I soon realized that such mindless shooting is almost the whole game.  The only other move in Gauntlet is a screen-clearing magic potion.  Apart from strategically using those potions optimally, the game’s pretty repetitive and every problem is solved by shooting your way through it until you inevitably get overwhelmed and die unless you spend a fortune restoring your health.  I’ll give it credit for being one of the first of its kind, but Sengoku Basara this ain’t.

Sky Kid(NAM): Another shooter except in this one you go from right to left.  The biggest gimmick for Sky Kid is that there are targets you have to drop bombs on, but it can’t even do that right.  The bomb moves with the plane as it drops so it’s less dropping and more being descended from the plane by a vertical pole.  It’s like Namco made a generic shooter and then had to change a few superficial things to make it less so.  Throw it on the pile.

The Winner

Midway’s success hinged on either Gauntlet and it wasn’t especially fun.  Namco definitely wasn’t at their best in 1985, but Dig Dug 2 and Motos were decent so they didn’t do too bad in spite of Baraduke and Sky Kid.  That means they win.

Meanwhile…

Namco and Midway weren’t the only ones having an off year.  Almost all of SNK and Capcom’s 1985 games were bad or mediocre.  Capcom’s Commando was good for the start of the run and gun genre, but the only good game on its own merits was SNK’s Alpha Mission, which is the best one out of every game among all 4 companies thanks to its more in-depth gameplay and varied visual design.
A noticeable difference between the previous and current competition is that the games from Capcom and SNK had far better visuals than the simpler arcade graphics Namco and Midway were still using, although Gauntlet and Sinistar were pretty impressive with what they could do in other aspects.  Our current competitors need to get with the times.

With their second victory, Namco has shortened Midway’s lead on them.  We’ll see if they can keep it up when we go over the games of 1986, where Midway will have much more of a fighting chance.