As far back as gamers can remember, Namco has been a mainstay in the industry. The company has shown its ability to adapt to the ever-changing tastes of the gaming climate, delivering arcade juggernauts in the 80s, revolutionizing the fighting genre in the 90s, and ignoring conventions with titles like Katamari Damacy during the 2000s.
In 2006, the company merged with Bandai due to the declining birth rate in Japan and advancements in gaming technology. As of 2022, Namco-Bandai will be Japan’s largest third-party gaming company, ahead of studios such as Sega, Square Enix, and even Capcom. While the company shows no signs of slowing down, there have been occasional blunders throughout its history.
10 Jump Force was an overwhelming and ostentatious crossover
Developed by Spike Chunsoft, Jumping power was a 3D fighter who took several traits from The Weekly Shonen Jump. Unfortunately, this ho-hum fighter is let down by a gaudy presentation. Taking these exaggerated hand-drawn features and putting them in a realistic, muted art style just doesn’t work.
It just makes the final product look gaudy and hideous, like a bad DeviantArt coming to life. Why it didn’t go for a cel-shaded look akin to Dragon Ball FighterZ is an absolute mystery. In 2021, Namco Bandai stopped supporting the game and the following year removed the list from digital stores.
9 The Splatterhouse reboot didn’t exactly paint the walls red
the 2010 splash house reboot was intended to reintroduce one of Namco’s classic franchises to a modern western audience. Unfortunately, conflicting views between developer BottleRocket and Namco higher-ups caused the game to go through a difficult development.
As a result, the end product is a buggy, poorly optimized brawler that is held back by a terrible frame rate, shoddy collision detection, and incredibly long loading times. In terms of audio, the game does much better with a fitting gothic death metal soundtrack and some cheerful profane vocal work by Jim Cummings, among others. Like many of the schlocky B horror movies it pays tribute to, it’s worth the rent, but not much more than that.
8 Ms. Pac-Man has been replaced
The story goes that after the success of Pac-Mansome MIT dropouts developed an improvement known as: Crazy Otto. They presented the game to Pac-Man‘s US distributor, Midway, and were so impressed that they turned it into an official follow-up called Mrs Pac-Man.
From there, the character became a seemingly permanent part of the Pac family, even appearing in Namco-developed titles such as Pac-Land. Unfortunately, rights entanglements resulted in Namco having to pay royalties for its use. Recently, the company scrubbed every copy of the character and replaced her with a new character – Pac-Mom.
7 Tekken X Street Fighter Never Happened
For years, fans have been throwing around the idea of a crossover between Capcom’s street fighter and that of Namco Tekken, but the games’ disparate combat systems made this dream team sound more like a castle in the air. However, in 2010, the two companies announced their intention to create two fighting games that blended the best of both worlds.
Capcom’s infusion of Namco’s characters with classic 2D fighting gameplay from street fighter turned out to be fun if not held back by any income. While Namco’s take on the Street Fighter mythos never materialized, Akuma was set to appear in Tekken 8.
6 The original developer of Pac-Man World was not credited in the remake
Pac-Man World was developed to celebrate the arcade superstar’s 20th anniversary by a western branch of Namco known as Namco Hometek. The soundtrack was provided by Tommy Tallarico of earthworm Jim and Live video games fame. Unfortunately, after two sequels from the same studio, the Pac-Man World franchise went dormant for years.
In 2022, Namco Bandai unveiled two remasters of their classic PlayStation titles, such as: Klonoa Door to Phantomile and the above Pac-Man World, with Japanese developer Now Production handling the latter. Unfortunately, the Namco Hometek staff was not credited with their work on the original title in the remake.
5 The Tekken Franchise Is Smeared By Some Horrible Movie Adaptations
It’s strange that so many terrible movies are based on fighting games, while classics like Enter the dragon and blood sport formed pretty much the perfect blueprints for running a movie around a tournament featuring various colorful characters.
While both animated Tekken movies are pretty bad, the live action adaptation takes home the title for the king of iron fist tournament of terrible fighting game movies. Long time producer of the Tekken franchise, Katsuhiro Harada, expressed regret over the live-action film, stating “We were not able to accompany that film.”
4 Performance issues continued to curse Elden Ring’s PC prot
Elden Ring took over the formula from Software and enlisted the talents of George RR Martin to create the game’s knowledge and world. Unfortunately, in a curse that continues to plague From Software’s games, the game was plagued by some performance issues on PC. Even two months after the game’s initial release, the 1.04 patch was alleviated, but it didn’t come close to fixing the game’s technical issues, such as the frequent stuttering.
Although considered an improvement over the borderline broken PC versions of dark souls, the fact that this problem continues to crop up with the company ten years later is particularly mind-boggling.
3 Namco Bandai splits its beautiful collection in half for western markets
The original Japanese of the Namcot Collection was a brilliantly recreated and lovingly presented collection of various games from their vast past. These titles ranged from arcade classics to famous home titles to more obscure entries like Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti for the Japanese Famicom.
Considering the sheer number of platforms these titles covered, the emulation work from M2 and BB Studio was phenomenal. Unfortunately, in locating these titles, the decision was made to split them in half for English-speaking areas like Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1 and Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2, respectively.
2 Dark Souls’ original Windows port was a hollow experience
Following the success of the home console versions of dark souls, the demand for a Windows port was fervent, with a petition from fans garnering 92k signatures. Namco Bandai no doubt saw that there was a base and announced a Windows port known as the Prepare to Die Edition that contained new content.
Unfortunately, players wouldn’t be so quick to praise the sun with this port, as it’s riddled with a measly 30 FPS cap, poorly implemented mouse and keyboard controls, and a non-customizable resolution. Once the game saw a remaster, Steam stores removed the list Prepare to dieEdition in 2018.
1 The company was the target of a ransomware attack
In July 2022, Bandai Namco confirmed reports that it had been exposed to ransomware attacks by a hacker group and assessed whether consumer information was at risk. Shortly after the news came out, the company tried to allay consumer concerns by saying, “After confirming the unauthorized access, we took measures such as blocking access to the servers to prevent the damage from spreading.“
This attack came in the same year from several high profile Bandai Namco releases such as: Elden Ring, clonoaand Pac-Man World Re Pac.
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