Mappy? Pac-Land!? Episode 171 belongs in a museum!

A Namco Museum, to be precise.
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Mission control for ; former EIC of and ; taking dapper (and frogs) back from the Nazis.

Now that we've put the wraps on our Retronauts East journey through SEGA's arcade history, it's time to move our focus back over to their coin-op rival: Namco. We worked our way through Namco's golden age of games like Pac-Man, Xevious, Galaga, Galaxian, and Rally-X; now we move along to the years that followed, which weren't quite as iconic... but still pretty darned good. You may not remember every game from this era, but the likes of Pac-Land and Tower of Druaga were profoundly influential (there's a case made here that everything Nintendo became famous for on NES was done first by Namco, and it's a pretty good case).

I'm personally more excited for our next episode, where you see Namco begin to translate concepts from the late ’80s wave of console hits into coin-op form, but there's still plenty of good times to be had here. And there's also a contest in which you could win some of these games, if you listen carefully... after all, the retail version of Namco Museum for Switch does arrive this week.

In case you've missed them, here's a bunch of other Retronauts content on games relevant to this episode or to the new Namco Museum Arcade Pac:

Retronauts Episode 171
Namco's Arcade History, Pt. 2
MP3, 46.1 MB | 1:23:12
Direct download | Retronauts on iTunes | Retronauts on Libsyn

Episode description: The Retronauts East survey of Namco's arcade legacy continues! Jeremy, Benj, and Chris tackle the coin-op doldrums of 1983-1985 while dreaming of more interesting days to come.