Bookmark This Page; The Namco Chronicles

The more research I did about Namco the more amazed I was at how almost every title was connected. If you want to find out all about Namco’s shared universe then Bookmark This Page.

The Namco Chronicles, part 1...

The Namco Chronicles, part 2…

The Namco Chronicles, part 3…

The Namco Chronicles, part 4…

The Namco Chronicles, part 5…

The Namco Chronicles, part 6…

The Namco Chronicles, part 7…

The Namco Chronicles, part 8…

The Namco Chronicles, part 9…

The Namco Chronicles, part 10…

The Namco Chronicles, part 11...

The Namco Chronicles, part 12…

The Namco Chronicles, part 13…

The Namco Chronicles, part 14…

The Namco Chronicles, final part…

Prop Cycle, the most interactive arcade game you've never heard of. A 1UP Classic...

The tanks of tomorrow, the games of the past.

Did you have a favorite Namco game, or series? Let me know about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Freeze frame, my poster collection, part 10…

The previous entry on this series was about the Namco fighting game that was forgotten by the publisher. Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada said that in the early days of the Tekken, and Soul Calibur series there was a friendly rivalry between the teams. It wasn’t the only arcade-turned-home series that the company forgot about.

Splatterhouse was one of the early arcade horror hits. It got a few sequels on the consoles, and even a decent 3D adventure. Sadly the game is only remembered by die hard arcade fans. This poster from the 2010 game is absolutely massive. The top edge is a little worn, but I’m glad I still have it.

I have a lot of rare Namco things in my collection. Here’s one from the pages of Namco Graffiti magazine. A manga series that they published called Chana of the Labyrinth.

I love the UGSF universe, and consider Starblade one of the greatest arcade games ever made. I’m glad that I have these rare arcade flyers in my collection.

There would be no Starblade without Solvalou, the 3D follow-up to their arcade his Xevious. These are not the rarest Namco things in my collection, but I’ll talk about that in a future entry. Are there any rare Namco games that you wish would get rebooted? I’d like to read about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Ridge Racer Legacy, the Namco Chronicles, final part...

When the original Ridge Racer developers left Namco they broke the trust from their teammates in the process. The camaraderie that they shared with those they left behind had been shattered. It didn't seem to matter how much they had grown personally or professionally on all the titles they had worked with. In the eyes of the publisher only those that stayed behind were truly loyal employees and worthy of carrying forward the Ridge Racer name. Unfortunately those that remained were casual fans of racing. They had not poured their heart and soul into Ridge Racer. They did not grasp the level of insight and passion that the original team had brought to the project until it was too late.

What the remaining members had was experience in multiple genres and in 3D programming. They could guarantee that the very next racing game from the company would at least look good as their rivals, and be playable. It might not be the greatest racing experience but it would be enough to keep the company moving forward. The designers that stayed behind had cut their teeth on the brilliant UGSF arcade shooters. They had a certain aesthetic in mind and wanted to redefine the genre. The rides featured in Ridge Racer were very nice but they weren't revolutionary. So the new project members challenged themselves to create a whole new breed of race car. Each car would look like a traditional open-wheel racer but upon further inspection they would begin to resemble space ships.

The designers envisioned the Ace Driver: Victory Lap cars as being the peak of race technology. They would be the race cars that were being driven around the time of Cyber Sled and Cyber Commando. They would be in a class above every category in Ridge Racer. Each of these new rides featured power plants, transmissions and aerodynamics superior to those on all of the Ridge Racer production cars. This would become the distinction made between actual GT-class cars and Formula-1 racers. While both racing leagues featured millions of dollars worth of R&D in the cars only one type of car was specifically designed for racing. The GT cars by comparison were rooted in production autos.

With the exception of the prototype class most GT cars had been sports cars that were converted for racing duty. The multi-wing technology that Namco featured on the Ace Driver cars was not a new concept for Formula-1 or INDY racing. It was the layout and position of the wings, air splitters, spoilers and bodies that were radically different than those in real-life open wheel racers. In many instances the game from 1994 would predict the trends that the actual Formula-1 racing cars would use almost 20 years later.

The cars in Victory Lap took on the characteristics of the UGSF space ships. There was a hint of Galaga, Nebulas Ray, Solvalou and even Starblade in each car. It made sense that the Ridge Racer and Ace Combat games were connected. The manufactures sponsoring the Ridge Racer tournament were using the cars as test beds for new technologies. Many of these advances were meant for mass production. This was a reflection of the real world. The big auto manufacturers would enter rolling tests beds into endurance races. They were great for advertising but were also used so that engineers could gain a lot of insight by pushing new technology to the breaking point. What about the companies that had a very specific goal in mind? Perhaps the ones that wanted to manufacture parts for a smaller market, like airplanes and space ships. These manufacturers needed a way to advertise their presence and test out the reliability of their equipment as well. Should they be prohibited from creating race cars? Of course not!

There was an evolutionary gap between the vehicles featured in Ridge Racer and the planes from Ace Combat. The majority of the rides in Ridge Racer looked like those that could be bought at a local dealership. The radical designs of a pure racing machine was lacking in the series. The open wheel cars in Ace Driver filled that gap. They were as close as Namco had ever come to creating land-based fighter jets. The cars had modern suspensions to shift the balance between turns and even wings that were flexible and helped steer the cars around the most brutal turns. Wings in actual Formula-1 cars were fixed and engineers were not allowed to adjust them in the middle of a race. These cars honestly looked like the wheeled cousins of the ADF-01 Falken. They looked like the ancestors of the GeoSword and Dragoon. Although there were only four of these cars created for the series each one had a tremendous presence. The most "conservative" of the racers was still far bolder than the most recent F-1 car. It would be a shame if audiences around the world never got another chance to pilot these cars. Especially on the consoles!

With the numbered Ridge Racer series on an indefinite hiatus I could only speculate what Namco was working on. They had learned a tremendous amount over the past 20 years, the most important being that they could outlive Sega so long as they believed in their own titles. The best games they created during that era had withstood the test of time. The classic hits were still referenced as examples of greatness across multiple genres. Perhaps the company was trying to figure out how to present a new generation of Ridge Racer to audiences. One that would connect the dots between Ace Driver, Ace Combat and the UGSF continuity. Whatever the case was I would be eternally grateful to the company for every experience they provided my brothers and I in the arcade. For every great console moment and for every carpal-tunnel inducing mobile game I would also say thanks.

This has been the Ridge Racer Legacy, my blog chronicling the contributions of Namco (now Namco Bandai Games) to a generation. I hope you enjoyed the series. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them. Thank you for following along and I wish you all the best. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Namco Chronicles, part 14...

At the start of this series I mentioned that Pole Position was one of the biggest hits from Namco. It was one of the best selling games of the '80s and had been ported to just about very console, handheld and computer system ever created. Very few games could claim to have reached as many as many people through the years and even less racing games could match the success of Pole Position. It did very well financially but more importantly it helped the image of the company. When it came to racing games few studios could say their legacy was as important. When it came to puzzle games none could claim the longevity of Pac Man. When it came to space shooters none could match Galaga. Namco had built a reputation based on fantastic experiences and managed to keep those memories growing over 30+ years. The racing genre was the one that they had their biggest successes and failures with.

Pole Position put Namco on the racing map but other publishers were challenging them at every turn. The sequel to Pole Position did well but so were rival titles from Atari and Sega. The company lost momentum when they tried to re-imagine the open wheel racer with the Final Lap series. Even the introduction of 3D graphics in the Winning Run series did little to get Namco back on top. Ridge Racer was the first serious attempt at recapturing an entire genre. Of course Sega countered by stealing the talent that produced Ridge Racer. The remaining members of the company tried to make a better racing experience than Ridge Racer but they missed the mark from a gameplay and critical perspective.

Namco returned to the open-wheeled racer in 1993. The Indy and Formula-1 inspired cars in Ace Driver: Racing Evolution were supposed to be leagues ahead of the best cars in Ridge Racer. In fact they were supposed to be ahead of Formula-1 cars, they were called Progressed Formula Racers in the game flyers. They couldn't call them Formula-Zero because that was already taken by Nintendo. Namco wanted to let audiences know that the rides in Ridge Racer were nice but the fastest race cars on the planet still resembled the machines from Pole Position. These cars were the pinnacle of race engineering and unlike the cars in Ridge Racer they were not street legal. Unless you were a professional driver the cars in the Ace Driver series were unattainable. Of course it was a sense of attainability that made Ridge Racer popular to begin with. The cars were tuned for peak performance on real roads and not sterile race tracks. The Ace Driver cars may have been faster but they were limited by their focus. Namco went back to the drawing board and tried to salvage what they had started. If the remaining staff had failed to live up to the standard set by the original Ridge Racer then at the very least they could begin a new franchise that was a spiritual successor to Pole Position.

The majority of the remaining team members had worked in other genres and were busy on various arcade and console titles as well. They wanted to do something with the racing franchise that was much more forward thinking. Rather than trying to recreate the world of contemporary open-wheel race cars they decided to push the technology a few years if not decades down the line. The studio looked at the other games they had published with a similar futuristic element like the UGSF hit like Cyber Sled and tied those games in through advertising and sponsorships. Ads for Cyber Commando, Rave Racer and newer hits were plastered all over Ace Driver: Victory Lap, the 1994 sequel to Racing Evolution.

At first glance the cars looked like traditional Formula-1 autos. They were bright and colorful, wrapped in the livery of a specific team and covered with bold stickers. When players drove the cars and raced through the environments they began to see visual cues that made the world seem far more futuristic than other games. Enormous glass and steel stadiums were constructed around the tracks, many with three-dimensional holograms playing advertisements high above the race course. Some of the tracks were set in the countryside but even those had grandstands and box seats that looked like they were designed by science fiction architects. The tracks in the city were surrounded by enormous skyscrapers, hotels and office buildings that looked far more fantastic than most modern metropolises.

The cars in the Ace Driver sequel were amazing pieces of art. There were only four basic models featured in the series, compared to the dozens in any Ridge Racer title. Each of those four however had its own strengths and weaknesses. Most arcade racing fans could name off these things, the fastest car in the game was also the most difficult to control. The easiest to control had the slowest top speed and the cars in the middle either handled well or accelerated well. Audiences also got to choose whether or not their car would be a manual or automatic transmission. The four basic cars, and their color schemes were formally given names in Victory Lap. There were Team Red Lightning, Scuderia Blue Castle, Yellow Cyclone Racing, and Green Island Motorsport.

In order to post the fastest times players had to go with manual transmission and hope that they could learn the best speed and angles for every turn or risk a miserable wipeout. The game was unforgiving and had a steep learning curve. Of all the racing games I ever played this was one title that was in the middle of the pack. There were some very strong elements that worked in its favor. The car designs were awesome, the track layouts memorable and the music selection was great. It had trace elements of great Ridge Racer and UGSF soundtracks, possibly because the same people that worked on those games also worked on both Ace Driver soundtracks. Despite the good elements it still lacked solid gameplay. It made the decision to stick with the Ridge Racer series much easier for Namco.

Namco was looking for new sources of revenue and adapting to the changing market at the start of the new millennium. The relationship that the studio had with Sony was still very solid but they also had to flexible and now include mobile-friendly titles into their portfolio. The company had to look at developing games for markets that were rapidly expanding. More than a decade after the last Ace Driver was released a new arcade-only title turned up. Published in 2008 the game was released in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong only.

The Chinese middle class had exploded in prosperity in a few generations. They were looking to buy into, and invest into every possible source of entertainment. The ban on video games, specifically arcade games had been lifted in the mainland and the population was starved for new titles. Ace Driver 3: Final Turn was built on an advanced version of the Ridge Racer 7 engine. Graphically speaking it looked slightly better than the last console release of Ridge Racer. Perhaps this new engine was the prototype build for Ridge Racer 8, or even for Ridge Racer Vita. Whatever the case was this new version of Ace Driver had controls that were much more intuitive for fans of the Ridge Racer series and even beginning drivers. This meant that drifting in an open-wheeled car was now an option rather than a mistake.

Ace Driver 3 maintained the tradition of the four car types from the previous games. Each one held onto the same futuristic designs and were presented with much greater fidelity than any other car in the series, Ridge Racer included. The game did take another element from Ridge Racer as well. The track layouts became more fantastic in nature. They looked less like a Formula-1 courses surrounded by brilliant architecture and instead incorporated storytelling elements, including racing through a futuristic metropolis and even through an amusement park. These details would have made Sega green with envy. One of the new tracks actually had roots in Rave City from the Ridge Racer series.

Audiences had been racing by the amusement park in Rave City for some time, they had seen it from a distance and got a bird's-eye view of the park when the occasional new machine was delivered. Now thanks to the Ace Driver series players could get up close and personal to the track. They could see that the designers at Namco never stopped working on the courses between releases. If you stuck with the series long enough then eventually you too would get a chance to drive through the roads seen in the distance. The only question now was what type of cars would Namco allow audiences to pilot in the future? The next blog in this series will take a guess at that and also be the final entry in the series. I hope to see you back for that. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Namco Chronicles, part 9...

The first time that I realized the games in the Namco universe were connected was actually by accident. It was around 1989 and the arcade scene was pretty strong. It would still be a few years until Street Fighter II dropped and forced every company to get into the genre. So there was a lot more diversity for the few years leading up to it and that was a good thing. A new space shooter from Namco had appeared at about that time. The game was titled Blast Off and looked interesting for a number of reasons. The graphics were bright and colorful. Gone were the blocky ships that I remembered while growing up. The new ship had more fidelity than before, the proportions were slightly cartoonish but it was a small oversight. The backgrounds were amazing. There were several graphic layers that the artists had worked with to create an amazing sense of depth.

Players would fly through plasma clouds, above twinkling stars and galactic clusters. It felt like a redo of Galaga that was closer to the vision of the designers. The enemy types were more detailed but still flew strafed opponents in dizzying patterns, the larger ships were there to provide a bigger challenge and the end of every level was met with a boss battle. Unlike other SHMUP titles which forced players to stick with one weapon type until they could earn an upgrade Blast Off gave players multiple weapon configurations. Players could switch between the weapon types on the fly. There were variations of a wave, laser and photon cannon that allowed players to shoot forward, diagonal, sideways and even behind the player. This completely changed the strategy when fighting waves of enemies. Sometimes diagonal or sideways lasers could help get through a particularly tough stage better than any forward facing weapon.

Where the game really came together was in the layout of the missions. Every level consisted of three missions. The first mission was set in deep space as the player was en route to a target. They would engage with small reconnaissance craft and a few scattered larger ships at this point. The second stage was much closer to the objective and players had to fight against wave after wave of tougher opponent classes. In the background of each stage players would catch a glimpse of the level boss. It was an enormous base with six spheres connected to a hexagonal hub. When players finished the second mission they would see the ship fly towards the enormous target. The third mission actually took place inside of the base. The camera would zoom in on players and present a more detailed close up of the ship once inside of the base. Players fought through increasingly difficult areas, filled with sentry cannons and tanks as they went into the heart of the station. If players could defeat the mechanical core, which was protected by a complex series of rapidly moving cannons then they would finish the stage. Players would fly out of the base and watch it explode from a distance. They would then continue on deeper into space and fight larger and more challenging stations. The largest of which appeared like a row of Death Stars connected at the hip.

It was the sense of scale that really made Blast Off stick out in my mind. Namco had done a great job at taking a format that I thought couldn't really be improved upon and broke it wide open. Granted, when it came to video games the SHUMP format was the one I was terrible at. By comparison my big brother excelled at those titles but wasn't very good at racing games. I was good in many other genres but didn't quite have the patience or determination to see most SHUMPS through to the end. Blast Off could be considered slow and simplistic to many veterans but for me it felt like a perfect challenge. The idea of being the solitary fighter taking on an entire fleet in deep space was something I couldn't pass up. It was like the best parts of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and every other space adventure rolled into one.

Also, unlike earlier space shooters this one had a beginning, middle and end. The game did not just get faster and harder, like the earlier Namco hits. Blast Off started with the fighter leaving a space carrier with an electronic fanfare that sounded an awful lot like the John William's Superman theme. During the end credits the player would revisit the site of every boss station and see its debris floating in the distance. Eventually they would land back at the home base, the biggest hero in the entire galaxy. It was a rare SHUMP that I managed to beat in the arcade and only with a handful of quarters. In my book it was perfection. That was of course until Namco released Starblade.

It wasn't long after I had played Blast Off than the pieces suddenly started to fit together. I was walking by someone going through Galaga '88. I noticed a number of improvements that the company had made to the original shooter. Even though I was still in junior high at that time a wave of nostalgia had washed over me. I remember being very young and playing the original Galaga in the corner market. Galaga '88 had improved in the visual and gameplay department by a wide margin. While the majority of the game still took place on single screen levels the enemy types were much more challenging and diverse. It was the jump from location to location using warp technology that caught my eye. Players could see the final destination getting closer each time they defeated a stage and the ship would disappear into hyperspace.

The effect would be revisited in the 3D games like Star Ixiom and Starblade. One of the backgrounds looked eerily familiar to Blast Off. There was an enormous hexagonal space station that was destroyed floating in the distance. There was no way that this game was related to Blast Off was there? As the player went through the stage he got closer to the debris. There was no mistaking it. The Galaga ship was fighting near the remains of the same space stations that I had beaten earlier. When I looked at the title screen I saw that Blast Off was released after Galaga '88. So it was some sort of sequel? I remember seeing ships that were very similar to those in Blast Off and Galaga '88 but much earlier. I just couldn't remember where. I bugged my parents to take me to different arcades every weekend so I could look for the other Namco games that might be related to Blast Off. Finally I came across the game in Cerritos, in an arcade that had some older titles still in circulation.

It turned out that the ancestor to both games was a 1981 gem called Bosconian. It was built on the Galaga engine but featured completely different gameplay. In the title players could fly and shoot in eight directions and they had to destroy enemy bases that were hexagonally shaped. The neat thing about the game was that players could fire lasers from the rear of the ship so they couldn't be caught off guard by opponents. This was clearly the inspiration for the weapon types and villains featured in Blast Off. Bosconian was also notable because it was the first Namco game, possibly the first arcade game ever, to feature a continue screen. When I discovered that there was a lineage to the Namco space shooters it blew my mind. I felt like I was living through some sort of Dan Brown conspiracy that had been kept secret from the world. No other studio seemed to grasp the nuances of keeping true to a legacy. Instead they produced games that had nothing to do with each other. Namco was focused on the evolution of a genre and never forgot where they came from.

A few years later the origins of the word Bosconian were revealed, at least in canon. The alien life forms were very advanced technologically but also very hostile. They sought out planets to conquer and transform. It was up to the brave Galaxians, the people that traveled to the edge of space as members of the UGSF, to protect humanity. The name Bosconian was derived from one of the most brilliant minds in the Namco universe Dr. Geppetto Bosconovitch. The scientist formerly employed by Mishima Zaibatsu was a genius with few peers. Dr. Bosconovitch had appeared as an important figure throughout the Tekken series. In the game history he had created the cybernetic arm and later cybernetic body for Yoshimitsu, the leader of the Manji Ninja Clan.

He also created the Prototype Jack (P-Jack) combat cyborg. He was not only good at cybernetic components but also developed the bio-weapons Roger and Alex. Those were creatures that appeared like a velociraptor and kangaroo with boxing gloves. The scientist was not without his rivals however, Dr. Abel was a scientist also working for the Mishima Zaibatsu that became a bitter enemy. Dr. Abel focused his efforts on mind control technology and could command some of the characters in the Tekken series to do his bidding. He also reanimated Brian Fury and destroyed the peaceful Jack cyborg models at every opportunity.

Dr. Bosconovitch developed the "Cold Sleep" program as a form of suspended hibernation. It also seemed to stop the aging process. He tested it out on Nina and Anna Williams, top level assassins that worked for the Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation respectively. He intended the Cold Sleep program to preserve the life of his terminally ill daughter Alisa. When Alisa succumbed to her disease Dr. Bosconovitch made an android in her likeness and assigned her to be the bodyguard of Jin Kazama, his new employer. It was the brilliant mind of the doctor that would be remembered centuries after his death. When a new technologically advanced alien species was discovered the UGSF named them Bosconian.

As I got older and was able to travel further and further I managed to play more games in the arcade by Namco and their contemporaries. I was also lucky enough to travel with my brothers and friends to Little Tokyo and see what Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Games were hot and what the real gems were for the Playstation and Saturn consoles. I was very eager to find out where Namco would connect their next game to the Bosconian legacy. It turned out that a little-known PC game from 1994 was another missing link from the company. Star Luster was an amazing remake of an old NES title.

It even featured updated versions of the classic chip tunes. In this title an evil alien race called the Battura were causing strife not long after the Bosconian Wars. The game took place in the same continuity of Galaga ’88 and Blast Off but featured a first-person perspective instead of a vertical one. It was the template that Star Ixiom would use for the Playstation a few years later. Seeing Namco stay true to their continuity for as long as I could remember made me fans of the company. I admired their own science fiction IP and had more respect for it than most licensed space games. I was curious to see what else the studio had tied together through canon. As it turned out Tekken was not the only game that had a connection to UGSF continuity. The seeds of the series had been planted in a different title. The next blog will feature this game. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Namco Chronicles, part 8...

If you were to ask gamers which science fiction universe they would love to live in they might respond with a variety of choices. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect and Halo would probably be near the top of the list. Yet if you were to ask me which one was my favorite I wouldn't have to think hard about it. The UGSF continuity from Namco was by far the most interesting to me. It represented various stages in the fictional history of mankind.

From the first tentative steps into other solar systems to the first encounters against hostile alien lifeforms. The future of humanity was set in all of the beauty and chaos of the cosmos. There was sometimes a great struggle against monsters and creatures too horrible to imagine but also tremendous strides for human lifeforms across trillions of light years. As a kid that grew up admiring all of the sciences, but especially space science, this was a fascinating series to me.

Namco had been working through dozens of original titles over the past 30 years and tried to connect the dots on most of them. The UGSF series actually stretched out from the middle of this century (2040) all the way to the year 7650. Past that was unknown because Namco had yet to plan for it. To connect all of the dots that Namco had mapped out would include the history of civilization on Earth as well. The earliest adventures in Namco canon took place in ancient Babylon, some 3000+ years ago. The company had published adventures set at various points through the history of the world, including the feudal era in Japan, the dark ages in Europe and even the current era. In all the studio had over 10,000 years of canon that they could work from and jump to. It had taken Namco more than 30 years to amass a library of games that supported their obsession with canon. It was a feat that would have been impossible for any other studio to recreate. That was why I admired the company and their science fiction work more than any other studio.

Everything Namco created came from somewhere, it had a backbone and a heart. It was much more than a facade which was all that most modern game publishers could offer in their games. It was brilliant the way the company retconned the classic games like Dig Dug and Baraduke so that they fell in the same continuity as Galaxian and Galaga. The best part about the publisher was that they kept copious notes and arts on every UGSF title. In other science fiction titles there was a specific timeline that most games focused on. Perhaps there was a generation or two at stake like in Star Trek, or perhaps there was even a few centuries separating the adventures as in Star Wars. For the UGSF there were decades, centuries and even millennia that were points of interest for fans. The company actually knew how mankind managed to stretch from one end of the galaxy to the other. They knew every battle along the way, every technological achievement and every story worth telling. Those high points turned out to be the first generation of arcade, console and even mobile hits from the publisher.

Growing up playing just about every arcade game that Namco published, especially those about space, had preserved that same sense of awe and wonder that I had as a kid. When I worked at JPL and was doing mission support over a few years, including the landing of the Curiosity rover, I felt as it all the quarters I had spent in my youth had finally paid off. From an artist and designer point of view I became enamored with the stylization of the ships from UGSF canon. They were not quite animé nor western sci-fi. The company had found a balance between the two that was awe inspiring. From the stealthy Coleoptera Fighter in Galaga to the massive Dragoon-J2 in Attack of Zolgear, there was a genuine sense of evolution for all of the fighter craft. It was something that not every team of designers could capture in other science fiction titles.

Of course every long-time fan of the UGSF series would ask where the overlap was. Several of the biggest titles happened within a few decades of each other, and some within galactic reach. Namco answered this question in the Kuusou Kagaku-developed Star Ixiom. The title from 1999 was considered the pinnacle space shooter for the original Playstation. It became the benchmark from the publisher just as Ridge Racer Type 4 was for racers. The game blended the heroes and villains from a literal who's-who of UGSF canon, including Starblade, Galaxian, Nebulas Ray, Star Luster and Bosconian. The game was set in a first person perspective. Missions were spread all over the galaxy and what made the game innovative, aside from the free flying 3D dogfights, was the ability to "warp" from location to location. The stars would form a tunnel as players passed light speed and reached objective markers. It was the same classic effect of making the jump to light speed from Star Wars except now players could choose where they would visit with each jump.

The game could be held up to the standards set by Wing Commander and the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series. The downside was that this game never saw the light of day in the USA. It was released in Japan and Europe only. Thankfully emulators helped die-hard fans in the states get a chance to experience it. It was a shame too, the game was beautifully done. It mixed the designs from each of the distinct universes well. It maintained the sense of scale and adventure from Starblade while allowing players to pick up missions on the home bases. The ability to progress through the missions at the leisure of the gamer was something that no Namco arcade game could ever allow. From a design standpoint every cameo made sense. Remember that some of the technology employed by early colonists, the Galaxians, were still in operation several generations later. Players would visit stations that looked obsolete in one sector of space and much more advanced in a different sector. The UGSF made do with the resources of every particular home world and defended it to the best of their abilities. It was a much more realistic approach to science fiction logistics than had been seen in other media.

Star Ixiom was not the only gem that Namco kept from the west. Most of the decisions to keep a game in one region were business related of course. I often wish that the marketing people and bean counters did not have as much pull at the studio as they do now. Without taking a chance on new ideas the company would have stopped evolving after Galaxian and Pac-Man. Instead they decided to compete against the big boys in multiple genres. They took the battle to Sega and matched the juggernaut game-for game. Sometimes they had a better experience and sometimes they didn't. Unlike Sega however Namco did not seem to give up on their oldest franchises.

In 2007 the company decided to try their hand at a completely different format for the UGSF series. New Space Order was an an arcade/PC real-time strategy (RTS) game. It was the first time the classic universe had been presented in such a format. It seemed to work very well too. Players chose from one of four different human factions as they tried to expand their respective empires throughout the stars. The ability to command entire fleets of classic and new ships from UGSF history was a real treat. Well designed space RTS games were extremely rare. The genre had been used in popular fantasy and science fiction ground combat titles like Warcraft and Starcraft. The format hadn't been seen very much in space shooters.

The game was actually set during some of the most formative years of the UGSF. In order to bring audiences into this world Namco produced New Space Order - Link of Life - a web drama from 2007. The series explained how far humanity had come and how factions had grown out of planetary ties. It told the story through the eyes of a select group of young pilots, engineers and officers. Each held a distinct view of their world and told the story of how their nation and planet had to fight in order to keep their history and culture alive. What was great about the series was how much in depth they went into the actual canon established by the game series. Many of the notes and designs that the company had been sitting on were finally brought out.

The web series and game managed to touch on many of the high points of UGSF canon. They brought out the relationships between the classic arcade and consoles hits and gave them entirely new dimensions. They explained the origins and outcomes of the wars against ETI (extra terrestrial intelligence) from Galaga, Bosconian and Battsura. They highlighted how humanity had developed ships that were designed to combat the most highly evolved of alien species, such as the robotic UIMS. Many of these ships were several kilometers in size with the largest mobile platforms being as big as an asteroid. The smaller ships turned out to be very useful in combat because they could bypass the defenses of the more massive targets. Players actually got a chance to set up both offensive and defensive capabilities for their particular factions. They would have to figure out which ships worked best for certain missions and how they would have to adapt to constantly changing threats. Namco dubbed this form of gameplay "Fleet Assault Tactics."

The game was absolutely gorgeous. It had twinkling stars and spiraling galaxies billions of light years in the distance. Players learned to terraform and connect their planets and navigate around asteroid clusters while defending their home worlds. With a much more laid back classical soundtrack to help the player feel more like a military strategist than a space cowboy. The title was taken offline in 2009 much to the disappointment of the fans. I can understand that it was a business decision. Arcade games were a hard sell in the US and western audiences favored action over RTS titles by a wide margin.

Of course I would hope that someday soon the company would return to their galactic roots. New Space Order and the other experiences from UGSF canon certainly deserved more chances. Even without a new science fiction title in the works the influence of the space legacy was hard to ignore. The UGSF canon had become ingrained in the culture of Namco. It would pop up in some of the least suspected titles. When it did it gave long-time gamers a chance to reflect and long for the future. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!