With the second volume of Namco Museum having the exact same "museum layer" presentation, I was totally ready for 3 to be the same, so it was quite a surprise to find that the presentation here has been totally revamped for the better! First of all, everything takes much less time to load, and the game isn't throwing you into a loading screen every time you want to look at a low res image of an arcade pamphlet. This makes the "exhibits" something I would actually want to stop and look at, rather than disregard it as a waste of time. I also feel like the rooms that the games are in are much more animated and ambitious, like the Galaxian room having a whole light sequence as you enter it that goes along with the music, or the Ms. Pac-Man room having the titular Ms. and her dog dancing while Pac-Man shits in the toilet. The aforementioned exhibits are also now more closely themed to the game they lead into rather than being the same format each time.

The devs could've just used the same template on all of these volumes and been just fine, but the fact they bothered to revamp it for the better is really cool, and shows a dedication to make sure these games are well presented with the treatment they deserve. In terms of the games here, it's a pretty good line-up all things considered. Ms. Pac Man and Dig Dug alone could carry any collection of classic games, but this volume takes some time to acknowledge games that, while not the most fun taken out of their historical context, are important enough that I'm glad they were put here. While Galaxian will always be seen as only the precursor to Galaga, I came to appreciate it a lot more here than in other collections, it's a decently fun take on Space Invaders, and it's interesting to see how this formula eventually evolved into Galaga and more advanced shmups in the future. The Tower of Druaga is also a very important game, especially to Japanese game history, but I still can't really get much out of it here. It's legacy has more to do with the collaborative effort that arcade-goers made to "solve" the game and it's many mysteries, so maybe someday I want to look into how to get further in it, but I think I prefer learning about it than playing it. Pole Position II is more Pole Position, and Phozon is a strange on that I still don't fully have my head around. It's a very respectable line-up, and that combined with the changes in presentation make this possibly the best entry so far, or at least neck-and-neck with 1. It also really speaks to the wide range of themes, settings, and genres that Namco was experimenting with in the arcades. 4 and 5's game lists seem to be really out there, so I'm excited to be pushed out of my comfort zone when it comes to classic Namco.

Let me also take the time to express my appreciation for something that's been in every entry but I keep forgetting to mention: I love that they let you see the way these games boot up, with an overload of sprites blasting the screen for a couple seconds. It always looks cool, and I feel like most collections would shy away from something that looks so "messy", so the fact they've left these in since the first volume is greatly appreciated. It's a tiny piece of history that they wisely preserved.