I received a Namco 5 in 1 Stick for Christmas…from my wife, what a good choice 🙂

It’s a joystick containing five retro Namco arcade classics: Pac-Man, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Rally X and Bosconian.

It’s rather addictive! I’ve never been a fan of games that take days/weeks to play (like The Sims for example), so these quick-to-load-easy-to-play games work for me. That said, I did play Elite to death Elite on the BBC Micro. (Elite in wikipedia)

Of course, I could have downloaded a BBC Micro emulator and played most of these games on the PC, in a window:

Anyway, here’s the Namco unit:

It has one small problem…there’s no pause button! So, mid-game, the ‘phone rings (or some other important event occurs), what do you do? You have to commit the all-time sin of “leaving the game mid-play”. Oh the pain. Actually, it has another minor issue, but it’s one that can be worked around: the reset button is too close to the rest position for the left hand…it’s easily pressed mid-game…more pain.

Despite the fact that it relies on batteries (no PSU), it’s a great little box, I can strongly recommend it!