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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.
'Rally-X Rumble' trademarked by Namco
The next game in Namco's "Generations" series of creatively updated retro games may be a Rally-X revival. Siliconera found a European trademark for "Rally-X Rumble," filed at the end of last month. In case you never explored the filler games on your Namco Museum collections, Rally-X was a top-down maze game, essentially Pac-Man with cars, released in arcades in 1980. Players collect flags around the maze, while avoiding red enemy cars and stunning them with smokescreens. No matter how weird you might think it is to bring this game back, it's still not the weirdest revival. That's Dancing Eyes. Aero-Cross follows pretty closely.
Dancing Eyes: the Namco Generations revival nobody asked for
Namco's Generations series started off with Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. Pac-Man seemed like a good starting point for the retro revival series. Then it expanded into Galaga Legions DX, and then Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions. Things got a little weird when Namco announced that it would remake the semi-obscure running game Metro-Cross as Aero Cross. The series' slow turn into weirdness just accelerated into a powerslide with the next announcement: a PS3 remake of the virtually unknown 1996 arcade game Dancing Eyes. It's a sort of 3D Qix game about a monkey cutting rectangular routes around idols' clothing. The new version will feature PlayStation Move compatibility, so you can guide that pervert monkey with motion. After the break, you'll find a trailer showing some gameplay and a very sad monkey. Dancing Eyes currently has a "TBA" release date in Japan; we wouldn't be surprised if this were the one Namco Generations game not to be announced elsewhere.
Focus your attention on Galaga Legions DX
The last trailer to feature Galaga Legions DX was pretty unsatisfying -- a few seconds of DX at the end of a minute-and-a-half of previous Galagas. This new trailer cuts all the unnecessary stuff and just gets to the bullet-hell-with-bugs insanity that is DX. The trailer demonstrates "Focus Fire," which appears to be a system for cutting through hordes of enemies to get to the core -- though there's so much going on, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what "Focus Fire" could be referring to. The trailer also shows a lot of shooting in different directions from your ship. It kind of looks like DX is a twin-stick shooter! We'd say we're uncomfortable with the change, but its Namco Generations contemporary, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, has taught us to trust Namco on these things.
'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.
