I got Namco Museum "C" Vol. 4 today.  It has three great games
(Assault, Ordyne, and Pac-Land), and the other two (Genji & Heike,
Ishtar) are good.  I've been looking forward to this one & Vol 5,
which have less "too old" games and more post-1984 titles.  

Assault: This alone justified the price of NM4 (though I'm glad to
have Pac-Land & Ordyne!).  When Namco started developing SNES games, I
thought, "Great! Maybe we'll get a 12-Meg version of Assault done in
Mode-7?".  That never materialized, but FINALLY the game's on a home
system- and perfectly done, if you've got a monitor to sit on its
side.  Knowing it works with the Sony twin analog stick, I'll gladly
part with another $60-70 for that controller. ;)  This one kicks @$$.

Ordyne: The Turbo-Grafx 16 had a decent port of it, but this PSX
translation is THE REAL ARCADE VERSION and makes the TG port look like
crap- you'll find effects that the 16-bit version had either deleted
or cut-down.

Pac-Land: The Turbo-Grafx also has this one, but that's not a perfect
conversion.  THIS is!  It has somewhat better graphics than the TG-16,
including the parallax scrolling that was yanked from that version.
It's obviously the Japanese version (Midway's U.S. version was just a
little different, with the Pac Family redrawn to appear as they did in
the cartoon and the dog & cat running through the yard.). 

Genji & Heike Clans: The complete version of Samurai Ghost (the TG-16
game was very incomplete, missing the overhead levels).  The game that
Sega sort of cloned with their SMS game Kenseiden (which is one of the
SMS' best releases).

Return of Ishtar: It's a bit weird controlling 2 characters but you'll
get used to it.  Move Ki (princess) with the D-Pad & Gil with the
buttons.  I thought the prequel, Tower of Druaga, sucked- ToD is slow
& boring.  This destroys ToD- faster gameplay, it's not like you're
trudging through mud anymore.  Just like Namco says in the manual it's
best to use Ki as the main character.  Gil will attack enemies when
moved close to them but this puts him in jeopardy.  If Ki gets hit
once, the game's over (FOUL!).  Gil has hit points and dies if they
reach 0.

We all know Namco will do Vol. 5.  I don't know if they'll do Encore,
but sure hope they do (I want Rolling Thunder BADLY!!  THAT would
justify $50 by itself when NM-E is released.).   Vol 5 (The BEST!!)
isn't out til October, so we'll be waiting til 1st Quarter 98 for
Encore.  
                         TTFN!  2TheLimit