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Aero Cross release plans crossed out
Aero Cross, the XBLA and PSN reimagining of bizarre footracing game Metro-Cross, has officially been canceled, following two years of total silence. Namco cited "various" non-specific reasons for the curtailment of the project.Taken with the cancellation of Dancing Eyes and the total lack of other series announcements, this looks like the inauspicious end of the Namco Generations retro revival series. We can probably expect more ports of the Pac-Man Championship Edition games, at least.http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/19/dancing-eyes-and-the-death-of-a-generation/
Dancing Eyes and the death of a Generation
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. The Namco Generations series brought us cool reimaginings of Namco's ubiquitous arcade games, including Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Galaga Legions DX. It can also be assumed to retroactively include games like Pac-Man Championship Edition that came out before the series was named.Namco Generations appears to have come to an end now – at least Namco's been quiet about it – and that likely end came before two of the announced Generations games could make it to release. For some reason, Namco planned updates for relatively obscure arcade games Metro-Cross and Dancing Eyes alongside the Pac-Man and Galaga flagships.Above, you can see what the company had in mind for the PS3 update of Dancing Eyes (embedded from a third-party Youtube channel since Namco made its own video private). The PS3 game is sort of like Qix, except instead of surrounding rectangular spaces in a flat, stark vector retroscape, you're a monkey cutting pieces off a girl's clothes. The surprise isn't that it was canceled this year; rather, the surprise is that someone at Namco thought this was a viable game concept on two separate occasions.
'Namco Generations' series includes Galaga Legions DX, Aero Cross
This week's Pac-Man Championship Edition DX isn't just the second game in the Pac-Man CE series -- it's the first game in Namco Bandai's new "Namco Generations" series. Buying any game in the series, in Japan at least, will provide access to an online newsletter, visible from inside the game. In announcing the existence of its new PS3/Xbox 360 retro-remake series, Namco went ahead and announced its next two offerings: Aero Cross and a sequel to Galaga Legions. This is the first mention of Galaga Legions DX, and the first official confirmation of Aero Cross, which has shown up in ratings previously. Its status as a Namco Generations game strongly suggests it's a Pac-Man CE-style update of the arcade game Metro-Cross.
ESRB rates Namco's 'Aero-Cross' for 360 and PS3
The ESRB rating for Namco Bandai's Aero-Cross (first seen in Australian and German ratings) includes a content description that confirms our suspicions about it being a follow-up to the surreal, arcade foot-racing game Metro-Cross. It's a futuristic racing game about a running man, just like Metro-Cross was, and places obstacles in front of that runner like "mines, hurdles, and rolling barrels." New to this game: robots that administer a shock to the racer, "resulting in a shocking effect that causes the racer's body to twitch." That's progress! Aero-Cross was rated for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, likely as a downloadable game. [Image: The Arcade Flyer Archive]
