The truth is the 2D Mario series still has not successfully shaken off the New Super Mario Bros stink. In those games, the structure and formula to The Perfect Mario Stage was found and hammered into every single level over and over again, for several games straight, and I can still feel that formula looming over all of this game: Introduce the level gimmick, iterate on the gimmick and make it slightly harder, then combine it with another gimmick for an Unexpected Third Act Twist. An appealing fresh coat of paint and cute animations ultimately can't hide that. It's not like it's a bad way to make a game, but it's nothing compared to how far games like SMB3 and SMW would go to shake up the formula.

The Wonder Flower gimmicks go a long way for mitigating this feeling, as they often do just interrupt the level completely for something genuinely spontaneous. This goes a long way in making levels much more memorable than anything in the NSMB series, that and the new enemies introduced. Every new enemy, from what I remember, compliments the platforming and introduces a new challenge in navigating the levels, and that's really cool. These games definitely need more of that, more weird guys that do cool shit.

Obviously the animations on Mario and Co. look great, as well as their models in general. Mario in particular is the best he's looked in a long while. But I have to say, something is lost in this game's decision to remove unique attributes from each character. As big as this cast is, all the characters feel much flatter than they did in SMB2 or 3D World because of this choice. Badges are a neat system but they're not a substitute for this, as it removes that little bit of charm from each character. While many of the badge powers are neat, I feel like they could have gone farther in allowing you to just totally change how the game is played, rather than being either "here's a neat bonus" or "this is a joke one don't pick it".

I say all this negative stuff but I still would say I like the game! It's still a fun 2D platformer, I like those when they're done well, which isn't often these days. Also, thought it was neat how this game clearly took a couple lessons from games like the DKC series and Rayman Origins/Legends, I like it when Nintendo isn't just completely insular.

This game is dull and a blatant cashgrab targeted at young children. Gameplay is arcade-style crane games, with a rotating selection of Nintendo themed badges that can be added to the 3ds's home screen. The downside is that you only get about a minute of free gameplay a day, and additional plays are locked behind a steep paywall. To unlock all of the thousands of badges would take literal years, or hundreds of dollars. This game would have been a perfectly mediocre addition to the 3ds library if the microtransactions were made with the signature Play Coin, but the price tag makes this unforgivable in my opinion. If you don't like splitting three hours of gameplay over six months, don't pick up this title.

Video game museums are beautiful places. I'm just now having this epiphany that I love being in museums in video games. I'm thinking about certain parts of the Radiohead Kid Amnesiac experience, the museum section of Sonic Mega Collection, Animal Crossing museums, the trophy gallery in Melee, Bubsy Visit the James Turrell Retrospective, all these things are very different but are what I would consider to be vital video game museums. And in that list, near the top, is the titular Namco Museum.

So Namco Museum games have been on basically every console since the PS1, and if you've played any entry besides the PS1 games, you wouldn't realize that at some point there was an actual "museum" to this so-called "Namco Museum". It's not just a catchy name for a collection of old games, it was an actual virtual location to walk around and observe exhibits in. You play as Pac-Man, as indicated by the adorable Pac-Man sprite in the bottom left corner that walks when you walk and goes "!" when he notices something you can click on. After giving a nice robot attendant your 3-letter name, you begin to wander the halls of the (relatively small) museum, featuring 6 main exhibits dedicated to the games on this entry in the series and a lounge dedicated to extras. The calm and atmospheric music, the PS1 textured marble tiles and columns, it's perfect video game museum vibes, and, tragically, this feature never made it outside of these initial entries. There's an option for if you want to just get straight to the game, you can just immediately start playing Pac-Man if you'd like, but I'm the kind of person who would much rather walk slowly to Pac-Man after going through the Pac-Man exhibit and observing several pieces of Pac-Man paraphernalia.

As for the game selection itself, obviously, you want to open with Pac-Man and Galaga, that's a no-brainer. But other all-timers like Dig Dug and Ms.Pac-Man are left out, not to be seen until later entries in the PS1 Namco Museum collection, in a move that is absolutely motivated by getting you to buy more than one of these games, but I think Namco makes up for this tactic by having this entry include two games that most people wouldn't recognize: Toypop and Bosconian. These are not only obscure entries but also just plain fun games, so including them in the first volume was a great idea. It sets the ground rules of these games: A little bit of the classics, and a little bit of the deep cuts, all treated with the same amount of historical importance. And Pole Position is there, say hi to Pole Position for me I guess.

Now obviously, this game, and this series on the PS1 in general, is not the ideal way to play any of these games. You can only play them with a d-pad, they don't emulate sound perfectly, and they take a hit lag-wise. And the museum aspect itself has some problems, like every image and piece of an exhibit taking around 5 seconds or so to load, which ends up discouraging you from checking out every piece of the museum if you value your time. But despite these problems, the vibes win out in the end. I haven't even mentioned the fantastical rooms that each game resides in. After going through little bits and details of each game, you go through a door that transports you out of the museum and into another world, much like these games did for the people who played them. Each of these rooms also has an incredible arrangement of their respective game's theme, made even more impressive considering most of them didn't have much music to work off of. No matter their problems, these games might be worth it just for these arrangements alone.

As someone who is very intrigued by Namco's classic arcade line-up and also someone who loves going through a virtual exhibit, I cannot wait to go through the rest of this series. I know this is not the ideal way to experience these games, except they are, because they're in a cool ps1 museum. Who needs accuracy when you have vibes?