Namco Bandai planning on more XBLA remakes of arcade classics

by Griffin McElroy on Sep 14th 2008 11:30PM

Were you a fan of Pac-Man: Championship Edition and the more recent Galaga Legions? Are you hoping for future remakes of games that are likely older than you? You're in luck -- the team at Namco Bandai that updated the two arcade classics for Xbox Live Arcade is reportedly planning updates for other arcade titles of the era, though no specific title has been decided upon as of yet.

The director of the small team, Tadashi Iguchi, revealed in an interview with MTV Multiplayer that there's an initiative at Namco to revamp the company's "masterpiece games" -- more specifically, he mentions that he's interested in "making games that players who liked games in the 80's will enjoy." A humble suggestion for the team: Pole Position. Don't think, Iguchi. Just do it.

Source

Tags: arcade, galaga-legions, namco-bandai, pac-man-championship-edition, remake, xbla, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (49)

Dig Dug: Reinflated

Somehow your avatar serve that comment an extra side of creepy.

Somehow your avatar make that comment much more creepy.

mmmmmm joysTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIQ!!!!!! >=(.

Sweetness. Both Pac-Man: Championship Edition and Galaga Legions have been amazing so far, so I can not wait for what they do next.

If they do PacMan:CE for their other games consider me sold because that was an amazing remake. I never thought they'd make PacMan a better, newer gamer but they did.

This is great news. As I was browsing through the available XBLA titles I thought it was missing something. Well, it turns out that something was a server lack of classic remakes.

Kidding Aside - WTF are they thinking?

Why not just take a genre and expand on that idea like Geometry wars, Super Star Dust HD, Braid & PJ Monsters?

I can handle a remake so long as it is similar to the quality of Bionic Commando Rearmed.

It will please you to know that Pac-Man CE and Galaga Legions are fantastic re imaginings of their respected franchises. I think these Namco classics are in good hands with the Pac-Man CE team.

I do agree though, there is a severe lack of classic remakes. The Atari ones are terrible and the rest of these so called remakes are simply emulated arcade ports with marginally updated graphics masking the original game.

zomg, want a psychedelic Battle City NOW!
Complete with level editor plz.

I may be alone on this one, but does anybody remember Solaris for the Atari 2600? That was one of my favorite games on that system along with Adventure and Moon Patrol. But anyways, Solaris would be awesome with some updated graphics and gameplay tweaks!

Rolling Thunder remake plz?

why doesnt the PSN ever get any of these games? i dont have a 360 but i would love to play some of these updates on my PS3.

I suppose this is their way of making their money in Europe, turd on the PS3 owners to make stuff for the 360 owners. ...also known as the SquareEnix line of buisness.

360's are cheap now, jump in.

360s were always pretty cheap

I don't know about that, this gen was the first to hit above $300 since the 3DO days I think. My wallet def felt the hurt when I paid $400 for the 360 a few years back.

oh that was a cheap shot at the hardware quality, it has some great software though. i just read they fired a red ring whistle blower on edge.

Gotcha, I'll give myself a big WHHHOOOOOOOOOOSH

Tower of Druaga and Sky Kid please.

Dig Dug is a definite shoe-in, and a welcome one at that.

Oh god, Tower of Druaga would be awesome!

They did re-do Druaga just a few years ago on PS2, but wedged it into a Mystery Dungeon game. Obviously it didn't get much attention.

Gundam SEED Rengou vs ZAFT on XBL/PSN plz...

Is that a screen shot of Pac-Man: CE? I have the game, and I don't recall a time where I saw that many dots on the screen at once. For those of us who play the game, we know that the game puts just small sections of dots and power-ups in the game as you clear other parts of the screen.

The further you get into Championship Mode (5 minutes), the more dots they put on the stage. This arrangement does eventually appear if you clear enough sets of dots.

I'd like a remake of the Atari 2600 classic E.T.

That game was awesome.

Wait... i just thought of one... MAPPY! OMG!

For you non-360 folks, don't sweat; I'd imagine that once a couple more come out, a disc-based compilation will show up for Wii/PS3/whatever. Give it another 6 months.

In the meantime, though, between Pac-Man CE, GL, and Space Invaders Extreme (hint: you REALLY want to play that), there's a lot that can be done with the older, simpler games to make them more appealing. I mean, come on, Space Invaders is older than I am and I'm having a major amount of fun going through it (it's distracting me from finishing FFTA2). Basically, I suggest you take a look at all those other games from the old PS1 Namco Museum discs-- the ones that didn't sell that well-- and try to bend your brain around how some of those games could be brought some thirty years forward.

Myself I'd like to see updates of Xevious, Rolling Thunder, and Rally-X.

Even without owning (or wanting to own) a 360, i can get excited about this

If only because of how excellent Championship Edition was. The flavor of Pac-Man perfectly remixed for today's audiences

Namco must not like money. Otherwise these would be made available on PSN and WiiWare as well. Unless MS is paying them big bucks for exclusivity...for 20+ year old games?

Seriously, look at how well Bionic Commando Rearmed did on XBLA and PSN...why wouldn't you want to release on both (or all three systems where possible) and maximize the number of people who can access your rehashed arcade classics?

Namco's pole position remix just hit the iPhone app store yesterday for ten bucks. Exactly what you're asking for.

While not owning an xbox 360 my best friend has one and I have to say playing these arcade games always gives us something to do when we have nothing to do. I used to have the namco classics game that you plugged right into the TV and I would love to play it all the time. I can’t imagine a newer version of pole position I might go out and get an xbox so I can play these games all day. Theres nothing wrong with sitting down for a few hours to play pac-man or my personal favorite galaga.

Marketing Spammer

I think the popular games in the 80s would be a great idea to come out for remakes. Pac-man is always a fun game and is actually pretty simple to play for all the non-gamers out there. The games back in the 80s had more of a variety than a lot of today’s games anyways. All you have to do for a new game now is put a few action figures in army suits and call it a battle. I don’t think everyone wants to play games that will send their grandpas back into Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. But don’t get me wrong some of the older games needed work to. And what about Duck Hunt? That was the most fun I’ve ever experienced playing a video game. These remakes are great and seem like a lot of fun. I just hope they continue to make them and include a lot of the games from the past.

I’ve never personally played Galaga Legions, but Pac-Man Championship Edition was amazing. It never gets old seeing video games older than me being remodeled into a new video game. Pac-Man has always been a personal favorite and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Also, by reading all these comments it seems like everyone else feels the same way about Galaga Legions too. The one possibility, however, is that this remake won’t be nearly as good as expected which in contrast would lower the status of these two great franchises. I just hope this game lives up to the hype and is able to be as popular as the originals. Nobody can say for sure until the game is actually out but it seems that a lot of people are really excited for this game. I don’t personally have a 360, but if I did, I would definitely consider buying this when it comes out. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out.

I remember playing Pac-man all the time when I was younger. All of the Atari games were fun but just a little old fashioned, like the Ping Pong game for instance. Ping Pong is simple yet fun but needs a lot of work with it. I also remember my dad getting a kick out of my brother and I playing because it “brought back old memories”. He loved joining in on all the fun with us. I am so excited that it is being remade to fit our era because once again, something great from the past will soon be something great in the future, with just a little tuning up. I think if a lot of these games are revamped, more generations to come will find the same amount of interest that these games once gave all of us. I absolutely cannot wait for all of these to come out!
-Mowen

I’m not an extreme gamer, but when I play I’ve found myself leaning toward, not the games of today but many of the past such as: Pac Man and Galaga Legions. A game doesn’t really have to have much to please me, maybe a couple nice characters and easy probing, so I don’t have to read through the instructions a billion times and I’m good to go. I love old fashion Namco games, like the ones you would have to blow for Super Nintendo. I have yet to beat the old Donkey Kong without any help, but just thinking of an opportunity to play an updated may be even more challenging version is quite exciting. I also agree with a few of the other bloggers quite a few of the older games remakes were terrible and some update of them have just involved tweaking the graphics, and masking the original.

Let's just home Aaron Greenburg doesn't bill each of them as a historical event in gaming.

Dig Dug!

Even though it's not by Namco, can someone make Space Invaders Extreme in HD, also Bangai-O!

Those 2 games have had more playtime on my DS than all my other games added... absolutely brilliant.

This looks really neat I used to love playing the pac man games. Galaxia or whatever is was called and dig dug. I would definitally download these games if they updated them and made them more our time than "that" time. I used to play these games all the time with my brother and sister and we would be stuck on the computer for hours.

Marketing Spammer

Rock Band 2 or Star Wars, FUCK

money sucks.

GOD DAMMIT

I'll take me some revamped Xevious, Mappy, Tank Batallion, Warp Warp, Dig-Dug, and the criminally underrated Gaplus (AKA Galaga 3) any day of the week!

Harper, Maria, A Mowen, Jackson A Jackson and Walz. I call spam on all 5. All new accounts today singing praises. Never seen it so rampant as I have today!!

Im not a spammer thank u very much. Ur kinda rude. I had to do a blog for an english class and it had to be on video games which is probally what they other people were doing to.

English class, huh? Ok. Let me help you out:

"Im not" should be "I'm not".
"u" should be "you".
"Ur kinda" should be "You are kind of".
"english" should be capitalized: "English".
"probally" is misspelled. It should be "probably".
"they other people" doesn't make sense. It should be "the other people".
"to" is used incorrectly. You should have written "too".

Furthermore, you didn't "do a blog", you posted a comment on a blog that somebody else did. So I think you failed that assignment.

All in all I count 7 grammatical and spelling errors in a post only 3 sentences long. If it was for English class, which I highly doubt, than you've got some studying ahead of you buddy.

Oh, also, if you really are posting crap just because it is an assignment, I'd have to go ahead and label that "spam".

Marketing Spammer

ok for this stupid blog the grammer doesnt count or anything like that for that matter he just wanted us to find an interesting game and say something about it. Our class is pop culture. I dont know why he made us do it but he did. Dont be such an ass about it and maybe you should grow up besides wasting your time on a stupid video game blog. call it what you want but I did it because it was an assigntment not to get in an arguement with an ignorant person like you! Get a life lame!

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Namco Bandai planning on more XBLA remakes of arcade classics

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