midway arcade treasures

[cubman]

Hey, I was reading the new PSM magazine. There is a new game coming out for PS2, XBOX and Gamecube called Midway Arcade Treasures that has 20 classic Midway games. It inclues Spyhunter, Gauntlet, Joust, Bubbles, Moon Patrol, and 720 just to name a few. I can't wait to get it.

 

[JaffaMused]

Don't forget that Namco Museum is available on most platforms including Gamboy Advance, XBox, PS2 and Gamecube.

Gotta plug my own games

Contains: Ms Pac Man, Pac Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Pole Position, PacMania, Pac Attack, Pac Man Arrangement, Dig Dug Arrangement, Galaga Arrangement, Pole Position II.

Fewer games on the GBA version due to it's small cartridge size. But most of the the missing games are on Pac Man Collection (one of our other carts).

 

[FMonk]

Well, 20 games is certainly better than the 6-game compilations that we've been given so far. I love the retro collections, but I've always had a problem with their inclusion of so few games (which is why I've never bought one, just rented and borrowed them-- although I did just buy the Konami classics for GBA, but it was only 15$

). Not to knock your work Jaffa, but I always thought it would be nicer to have one big ass collection instead of three or four little ones

If they can fill it out with all the extras (dip switches, original artwork, pics of the original cabs, history about the games, interviews with programmers) we may have a really cool disc in our hands

 

[JaffaMused]

People always ask for more stuff

But there are a couple of things which prevent it. On the GBA you are limited by cart size, bigger carts are a LOT more expensive to manufacture, as are carts with RAM for hiscore saves. Also there is a small development budget / and or short timescale, so we simply don't have the time or money to add all the extras (although DIP settings ARE in our games), but the history, flyer scans etc are not.

You have to realize that Namco are in charge, and they want the games working for $xx dollars and in xx months - extra "nice" stuff costs more but doesn't sell more games, it's all about the money

Trust me, if it was up to me, we'd have cabinets, history, everything in there - I'd also love to do some spruced up versions with new artwork and sounds and enhanced gameplay - but the publisher (Namco) wouldn't be interested in that.

BTW: The museum titles are one of Namco's best sellers, with over a million copies sold on most of the platforms.

 

[cubman]

Don't worry Jaffa, I already have the namco museum and the pacman collection for my GBA.

 

[FMonk]

I know, I know...

I'm just saying, from a consumer's point of view, it'd be way cooler to have it all, but I totally understand how that goes.

 

[noice87]

Midway didn't do Gauntlet or 720 but I guess they own the rights to them now.

 

[JaffaMused]

Yep, that's the pain of the job - there's so much you *want* to do, but the budget is always against you.

It can be painful when you read the reviews and it get slated for not having x or y, but they never mention you only had 3 months to do it on a tiny budget.

To give you an idea of how this industry works, you usually get an advance on future royalties to pay for the development. Then once the game is out there it has to sell 250,000 units just to break even - all you've done at that point is pay the wages of the people who worked on it - no profit yet. Then you get a small royalty on any extras that sell - typically less than $0.50 a unit. Not much for a company with a $2 million/year burn rate.

As technology advances, it costs much much more to develop, but we recoup less and less - this industry will eventually die.

 

[TexasHotshot]

Yes, they own the rights. Midway owns all the rights to Atari and Williams arcade game classics now...and I think they picked up the rights to licensed games like Moon Patrol and BurgerTime as well.

Odd to see who owns what now. I just learned that Namco has Space Invaders and Qix in it's stable now.

Konami finally has the rights to Frogger back 20+ years after being ripped off from them. Now if they could only get the rights back to Pengo as well.

 

[simpsons99]

I was very dispointed with Pac-man Fever I liked the other Pac-man MS-pac-man games that came out recently.

 

[JaffaMused]

Pac Fever was ruined by Namco trying to control it too much. The head producer at the time (now no-longer there), made us keep changing the games right up until the end because he sucked at them. A very frustrating project.

 

[simpsons99]

Are they going too make a Pac-man world 3 soon.

Can you get discounts on the games for us?

 

[JaffaMused]

There's talk about Pac-Man World 3, but I don't know if we'll be doing it or whether it'll be an in house Namco development.

I can't even get a discount on games myself

I get one copy of a game that I've worked on (only one platform) and that's it. I have to buy the rest from the store

 

[LepricahnsGold]

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:[/color]<hr />
I can't even get a discount on games myself I get one copy of a game that I've worked on (only one platform) and that's it. I have to buy the rest from the store

[/quote]
Bummer, dude.

 

[TexasHotshot]

Why not a true Pac-Man Collection disc? Include Pac and Ms. Pac as well as stuff like Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man etc? Why do the other Pac sequals get no love on the home front?

I'd buy a disc with all the classic Pac games in a second.

 

[JaffaMused]

Problem is that one company doesn't own the rights to all of them, so you can use some but not others. Namco own the rights to most of the japanese versions of their games, but not many of the US versions, they were exclusively licensed or sold to other companies.

So it's unlikley that you'll every see all the games in one package, unless everyone gets together and agrees on it.