NAMCO WHISPERS IN OUR EARS AND SAYS THAT "YOU ARE IN NAVARONE"
Again, Hamster is about to repeat their "Namco-Suprise-Namco-Taito" pattern all over.
And the first title from "The House of Pac-Man, Ace Combat and The Idolmaster" to start the pattern is the obscure game Navarone.
Right out of the Disco era.
As one of the first shmups out there, Navarone breaks the concept of vertical shooters replacing the traditional left-to-right horizontal movement in favor of an "U" shaped range, allowing the player to move in both horizontal and vertical directions, making this the percursor of arena-based games like Grobda and Tank Batallion. The main objective of the game is to destroy all the points on the "Island" while avoiding the turrets that shoot from the sides and above you. All of these has to be done in the fastest time possible since the Bonus slowly depletes with time. With a low fire rate and a lot of targets on the island or peninsula, ¿Is there a way to clear all out quickly? Believe it or not, the answer is yes. Along with the traditional dots, there's small circles that create a chain reaction that will take down other dots and cause a larger explosion when they destroy a nearby circle. This was an interesting innovation since it was a fresh, new concept over the traditional mechanics from Space Invaders and Namco's own Galaxian. In the center of the island there's a skull confined on a yellow square. Every once in a while the square will open from one side which will allow you to hit the skull directly. If you can hit it, you'll get another bonus. As you keep going further in the game, the firing rate of the turrets will increase. While you can destroy the projectiles, the only problem will be the width of the player's sprite, since its wide enough to get hit from one side while the rest of it is away from the line of fire you'll probably get caught trying to clear a tight area which survived the chain reaction.
Despite having a few innovations that made the game look modern compared with Galaxian and Space Invaders, it suffered the sad fate of becoming a forgotten arcade title. No one made a localization (Atari, Magic, Midway, etc.) or a home porting for PC or console, not even on their constant Namco Museum compilations. Since February of 1980, the game was on the total darkness until March 30th of 2023 when Hamster and Bandai Namco Entertainment published the game as part of Arcade Archives. While this home porting and the well known Arcade Archives features and PlayStation trophies that come with are well received, the fact that this game didn't had a home port back then is still baffling, especially when Galaxian and Space Invaders had a plethora of ports.
You can play it with color if you want.
In terms of graphics, well, there's not too much to say. Compared with their previous work Galaxian, Navarone looks very inferior as it features black and white just like Space Invaders or use a color filter with only green, yellow and blue which is a massive stepback compared with Galaxian's vast color palette. The object you're controlling is quite difficult to tell if you're using a battleship or a mobile turret of some sorts since it is a single sprite without enough details to make it recognizable. In sound terms, there's no music. Only these TMMM!, TMMM!, each time a dot is destroyed by your shots and a short "Ting-Tung-Tang-Tung-Tin-Tungtangtung!" when the skull in the center is hit, and that's all what there is to say about the audivisual part of Navarone.
TRIVIARONE
I'm not movie-based, I swear!
- This game has a very important place in arcade and Namco history as the fifth game made by the company.
- In the omake "The History of Namco Games" segment of Dragon Spirit's credits, the game is wrongly called "NAVALONE".
- The logo on the Arcade Archives announcement is very different from the original flyer.
- Despite the title, or even the source material-based arcade flyer artwork, the game is unrelated to the film The Guns of Navarone.
- For some reason, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator was unable to recreate the game correctly.
- There's a fan-made Genesis ROM remake called Nava Barone where the island is replaced with an aircraft carrier like vehicle and the player's battleship is a starfighter.
- The Arcade Archives description calls the player's vehicle "Fighter Plane" when in reality is a battleship.
Better late than never.
While not precisely a memorable masterpiece, it is both a Japanese curiosity and an 80's obscurity that after 43 years later finally gets a home release. But the price tag is a damn steal since we're talking about a very simple game and $7.99 is way too much compared with bigger titles like Metal Hawk, Xexex or Tetris: The Grand Master. Yeah, 1979-1983 titles should be priced at $2.99, 1984-1986 at $4.99 and 1987-onwards on $7.99, that would be a fair price tag.
This is what Namco should started their incursion in the Arcade Archives, starting chronologically from Gee Bee, Bomb Bee, Galaxian, Cutie Q, Navarone, Pac-Man and so on rather than making these random leaps because it's annoying that after getting wonders like Assault, Ordyne and Phelios then all of a sudden they do step-backs and suddenly Namco threw at us a game from the "Disco Sucks" era.
Who knows what Namco will throw next so we can only hope they can hit the pedal into the 90's. Can't wait for NebulasRay and Fighter and Attacker.
Unless you're looking for "Older than gramps" games, pick it.
Otherwise, pick a different game.