IGN said:Share Is In The Air
Namco's new arcade collection allows players to freely trade some classics.
By Nix
February 10, 2005 - Sony Computer Entertainment left a little surprise for us to find in our first hands-on with PSP in the form of a curious menu item called "Game Sharing." The feature was not mentioned previously as being part of the system's function set, and no game was announced to use the feature. Such a feature wasn't necessarily unexpected -- a root-level wireless searcher is almost a necessity for a multifunction handheld device, and the Nintendo DS already features a "DS Download Play" right there on the front end menu. But Nintendo has elaborated in detail multiple times about its use of the feature (which include downloadable kiosk demos, single-disc sharing for multiplayer, downloadable demos and other such uses) whereas Sony hasn't yet given an indication of how important it holds Game Share as a PSP function. The preliminary PSP manual released last month describes Game Share as such: "GAME SHARING - You can play games that support Game Sharing. For details refer to the software manual supplied with the game." Since no game has made use of the feature, that wasn't much of a help.
At last, the first Japanese game to use Game Sharing has been announced -- Namco this week updated the official website for its upcoming classic arcade pack, Namco Museum, with details on its use of Game Sharing. The feature allows a PSP gamer to share via wireless download a playable roster of arcade games with other PSP players who do not own the game itself.
To use Game Sharing in Namco Museum, the player with the game selects the transmit function from the game's menu, while the other player selects Game Sharing on the main menu of the PSP (it's the icon with two PSPs and arrows between them indicating sharing.) Once the systems recognize each other, a short download starts where the game-less player is sent the playable selection -- after that is complete, the gamer can go ahead and play without even having a UMD game in the system.
For the Namco Museum feature, all seven classic arcade games are uploaded in one big package -- Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Rally-X, New Rally-X, and Dig Dug -- and players can choose and play any one of them from a simple menu without having to download anything more. The cool new Remix modes are unfortunately not available for Game Sharing, there is curiously no use of the Game Sharing for multiplayer gaming, and the seven arcade classics are stored to RAM instead of to Memory Stick -- once the PSP is shut down or sent to the Home menu or another game is played, the sampler download is erased.
It seems natural that one of the more simple PSP games uses this feature -- we're surprised that the puzzlers and mini-game games didn't make use of it earlier -- but the feature can be used for much more powerful functions. This first use in Namco Museum alone is impressively complete -- the Game Boy Advance had a similar function with the GameCube Nintendo Puzzle Collection, but only one game was available for download at a time instead of the full suite uploaded here. And all of the functions we've described about the Nintendo DS's DS Download Play -- demos and single-game sharing and such -- might just as easily show up in PSP games since the functionality is very similar. Nintendo has already made extensive use of its Download Play feature, including game sharing of complex 3D games like Super Mario 64 DS, and we're eager to see what PSP developers are able to share with gamers on PSP's similar Game Sharing function.
We ask every time we chat up a developer whether they'll be using the PSP's Game Sharing feature, so when we hear of more use of the function, we'll let you know. As for the first game featuring the function, Namco Museum has not yet been announced in the US yet but will be released on February 24th in Japan for those interested in importing.
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Neat! Finally we get the jist of it.
