Three out of Five ain't bad

Overall:

The menu system is well done; it's very quick to switch to a different game or restart the game you're currently playing. A small point, but an important one, since half the fun here is switching between the different games on a whim.

I'd give the cartridge another star if it just saved high scores! Ridiculously, the high scores reset every time you switch games or turn the Gameboy off. Every one of these games has one goal: get the highest score you can! Namco let us down by not including this critical feature.

And now, the games:

Ms Pac Man:

A pixel-perfect port if you go with the scrolling mode, where you see about half the screen at a time. You can't see where all the ghosts are, but this is definitely the way to play - the graphical loss in the scaled-down, full screen mode is just awful, and control seems a bit harder there too.

The sound is a little less than arcade-perfect, especially through the speakers, but other than that, it's perfection.

Pole Position:

I can understand why Namco chose to put this on the cartridge. It sound so cool. "Wow! Pole Position!"
Um, maybe it's the lack of a steering wheel that does it in, but the game sucks. No variety, no room for error, no fun.

Dig-Dug:

Offering only a scrolling mode (unlike the choice given with Ms Pac Man), it's another pixel-perfect port. I think. It all seems a little less crisp than it should, but I think that's a complaint with the original as well.

I just don't know about Dig-Dug. I liked it when I was a kid, because it was easy to get through a few levels. But now, playing it again, once you get through the first 5 or six levels, it suddenly becomes nearly impossible. Could be I'm just bad at it.

Galaga:

A very nice scaled-down version of a brilliant bottom-shooter game. This is the game that I play again and again.

Galaxian:

Hmmm. Well, I've played it about twice. After playing galaga a little bit, Galaxian (an earlier game) just feels retarded and slow.