Thanks to Atari for the review code

Title: Atari 50: The Namco Legendary Pack
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $7.99
Release Date: 11/13/2025

Prelude

A year ago, I covered the first DLC for Atari 50, and enjoyed it a good amount. I did pick up the second DLC but never got to reviewing it due to The First Console War launching at the worst possible time for me mentally and me also not having as much to say as with the original pack. Well, a year later Digital Eclipse is back for more Atari 50, this time with a big third party in the vein of Namco.

Yet again we have a set of new documentaries, mostly interviewing Tod Frye, and also a timeline with assorted historical info about Namco’s relation with Atari. Kinda. Sorta. It does a very good job of covering their relationship up to a certain point, but there’s nobody from the Japanese side of things interviewed here. No Endo, no Iwatani, nor anyone related to Tengen, which would essentially form partly because of Namco’s relationship with Atari, and their legal fight with Nintendo would in part encourage Namco to cut back on making Famicom games. All of that is not here, so while the Tod Frye stuff and early-era info, plus the interviews from people involved in the Atari ports is very cool, it does feel incomplete, especially with a certain Namco game not even getting a mention in this DLC.

Presentation

Similar in structure to the other DLC. New set of games, presented on a timeline. No games/versions are excluded from the timeline this time around since there aren’t that many playable variants to begin with. We have Arcade, 2600, 5200, 7800, and computer games and they all emulate just as well as they should, meaning there are no weird sound errors like Berzerk 5200 in the last pack. (which appears to not have been fixed in this update patch, annoyingly enough. Neither did the Steam Cloud not recording the Arcade high scores get corrected)

The two arcade games (Xevious and Dig Dug) are both the US variants, which haven’t been reissued until now. There’s nothing major about those versions, but I will admit it was pretty cool to see the Atari logo on Xevious’s title screen. They also play and look fine, with cool border art replicating the real US cabinets. For the timeline videos, they’re presented just as they are in the other timelines, and there’re even a couple more vintage ads to watch and enjoy. All games have their scanned manuals/flyers present too.

Gameplay

So this is where the review gets a bit weird, since i either debated covering the games by system, by name, or just in a ramble, and I think I’m gonna do the latter despite there really not being much in terms of game variety. You have various versions of Dig Dug, Xevious, Pac-Man, Galaxian and Galaga all to play, but only the first two are Arcade versions since Midway published the rest of them. Still, you get the 2600, 5200, 7800, and 8-bit computer versions of games that have those variants. Galaxian never hit the 7800, so it isn’t there, but you do get the pretty good 2600/5200 ports.

Pac-Man has the infamous 2600 port (which for the hardware at the time really isn’t as tragic as the internet made it out to be, even with the scoring all messed up; I’ve played worse home ports of other games on NES/SNES), plus the much more accurate 5200/8-bit computer ports. (these two are pretty much identical, same for Galaxian) The Pac-Man 2600 port they just made for the 2600+ did not make it into the set unfortunately, which is a shame since it’d be a great compliment ala Berzerk 2600’s voice version getting added to the last DLC. Dig Dug has versions on all systems and for once the computer version is different than the 5200, leading to each experience being a different variant. Lastly, Galaga is a 7800 exclusive, but still an excellent port in line with most 7800 scorechasers from the time.

There’s really only one major, major omission here, and it isn’t Ms. Pac-Man. (while that is unfortunate, the legal issues around it have been well known, plus it got referenced in the main game’s history timeline anyhow) Rather, it would be Pole Position/Pole Position II, which both got put out by Atari plus home ports. Pole Position II was even a pack-in for the 7800, yet it isn’t here. I don’t just mean “it couldn’t be included because of licensing like with Ms Pac-Man“, I mean the game does not exist in this timeline. No flyers mention it, no blurbs on the timeline mention it, it basically got disappeared. I presume this is because a track in both games is a real life race course and thus it made for trickier licensing, but the fact we didn’t even get a mention of it or at least the super funny commercial for the home port was a huge bummer, and felt like a giant piece of the Namco Atari pie was missing.

In terms of playability… Well, I liked a lot of these old Atari ports more than I expected! Pac-Man 2600 is whatever, but the 5200 version is pretty darn solid and enjoyable. Galaga on 7800 is excellent, all the Dig Dug ports are fascinating in their own way, (with the 7800 one being my personal favorite of the home versions) and Xevious’s 7800 version is shockingly good. The best of all the home ports however, was Galaxian.

Both 2600/5200 offer an excellent home version of Namco’s 70’s Arcade game, but since years had passed since the original launch of the Arcade version, a few things were added that make the home ports a bit faster paced than the Arcade verison, including the ability to crank the difficulty way up and make all the enemies ludicrously fast. It honestly makes both versions addicting to play when you’re dealing with enemies attacking you way more often than they would starting off in the Arcade version.

No matter what title you play though, all of these games are scorechasers. Either you enjoy getting points like myself, or you won’t have much to play with here.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the Namco Legendary Pack is a pretty solid DLC for Atari 50. It brings home some pretty fun ports of Namco arcade classics, with Galaxian’s ports being a nice surprise for me due to their unexpected speed upgrades. The two Arcade titles are quite enjoyable too, and while they’re usually available in a lot of other collections, oddly Xevious is only really on modern consoles via Arcade Archives. If you don’t have the ACA version (which isn’t a thing on Steam/Xbox), this is currently the only way to get Arcade Xevious on those platforms, otherwise you just get the NES port and its sequel. The lack of rapid fire in Arcade Xevious is a bit annoying, but not a dealbreaker.

What might be for some though, is the complete omission of Pole Position without so much as a timeline mention or commercial inclusion. It arguably is just as important to Atari history, if not moreso than Pac-Man 2600 was, so to see it pretty much ignored was a bit of a letdown here. It also was a mild letdown a couple of the bugs from older DLC/main game stuff remains unfixed, but thankfully I didn’t notice any such bugs with these games in comparison, outside of the timeline weirdly coming up as 100% complete right away. As much as the lack of Tengen history or Pole Position sucks, The Namco Legendary Pack is still a fun batch of scorechaser ports with some fun programming history to go along with it, and one I definitely found myself enjoying more than The First Console War.

I give Atari 50: The Namco Legendary Pack a 7 out of 10.