NINTENDO DS GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

[#] Namco Museum DS (Namco, Nintendo DS, 2007)

Seriously, why isn't every Namco Museum a little more like this?

The series having long since settled into "nice-to-have but unremarkable" territory, the DS edition of Namco Museum comes as a bit of a shock: it's the first one since the PS1 editions to be notable. Only featuring seven games on the surface (there are unlockable alt versions of two), this is the first one since those originals to feature any sort of museum component, and better yet, lots of hints and customizability about each game. If you're too young to appreciate coin-op games, the real appeal of them is learning their patterns and making the difficult automatic, and Namco Museum DS is as much a fantastic trainer for these games as it is a collection of them.

Featuring Galaxian, Pac-Man, Galaga, Xevious, Mappy, The Tower of Druaga, and Dig Dug II, the selection swerves between obvious and oddball. Mappy sees you play a police officer mouse trying to recover stolen electronics from murderous cats, undeniably cute but something I gotta be in the mood for. Druaga (as in the SSD-obsessed YouTuber, yes) is a slow but fascinating dungeon crawler with a large cast of varied enemies, and Dig Dug II takes the bike pump and "sinking the earth" gameplay of the first to the surface as you traverse various islands, blowing up enemies and trying not to sink yourself. More games would've been nice, but these are all great and all proper emulations as far as I can tell.

Each game not only features written history, artwork and advertisement scans, and a sound test for listening to their sound effects and music (some unused!), but also hints and "game navigation", showing you per-stage enemy patterns and hidden items in the various games. Seriously, it might seem like cheating, but this is exactly the kinda thing these games need, an easy on-ramp into their intriguing innards. You also get a ton of game options for display, enabling or disabling hyper-obscure glitches, and even setting DIP switches with the touchscreen on a replica of each game's arcade board. All this adds up to a lot more than your typical arcade collection. Get it.

Recommended for... if you wanna be the very best like no one ever was.

Reviewed	My favorite part
January 31, 2026	The "game navigation" screens and hardcore settings

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