Bandai Namco's 2026 retro lineup includes a new Time Crisis light gun

Bandai Namco has launched the Namco Legendary 2026 project, a year-long campaign celebrating five major arcade and console milestones. The focal points for this year are Galaga (turning 45), The Adventure of Valkyrie, Genpei Toumaden, and Family Stadium (all turning 40), along with the 30th anniversary of Time Crisis.

The publisher is rolling out a mix of new hardware, software, and merchandise to mark the occasions.

AI cameras and plastic guns

The most interesting piece of hardware in the lineup is a new plug-and-play light gun from Tassei Electric. The original Time Crisis hit arcades in 1996 and changed the genre with its pedal-based cover system, which let players physically duck behind objects to reload and avoid fire. This new controller includes that original arcade release alongside Point Blank (known as Gunbullet in Japan), Steel Gunner, and Steel Gunner 2.

Light gun games effectively died out when CRT televisions were replaced by LCD and OLED screens. Modern flat panels lack the scanning electron beam required for traditional hit detection. Modern workarounds usually involve placing infrared LED borders around the television or relying on gyroscopes. This new controller uses an integrated high-resolution AI camera to track the screen directly.

I am incredibly curious to see how well this actually works in a living room environment with varying lighting conditions. If the tracking is accurate, it could be a massive step forward for playing arcade shooters at home without mounting sensors to the wall.

Dropping blocks

On the software side, BeXide has released a Steam demo for Namco Legendary Mountains. It is a 3D puzzle game that takes 1980s pixel art from Pac-Man, Xevious, and Galaga and converts them into voxel capsules.

Players throw the capsules to stack them and trigger chain reactions. The setup looks very similar to the physics-based merging mechanics of Suika Game or BeXide's own Fruit Mountain, just wrapped in classic Namco aesthetics. The final game will include over 100 different voxel items to collect and global leaderboards.

I still need a Famicom box art blanket

Kadokawa Game Linkage is opening pre-orders for its second wave of Classic Game Blankets. These feature the exact box art designs from the original Japanese Famicom releases. The first wave covered Pac-Man, Xevious, and The Tower of Druaga. This new batch focuses on The Adventure of Valkyrie and Mappy.

There is also a physical pop-up shop happening in Tokyo. The Namco Game Selection Summer Market will run from July 11 to August 6 at the Hakuhinkan TOY PARK in Ginza. The event focuses heavily on merchandise for Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Mappy.

96 games and counting

For players who just want to play the original code, Bandai Namco is pointing players toward Hamster's Arcade Archives series. There are currently 96 Namco arcade titles available on modern consoles through the program.

This includes the original Galaga, VS. The Adventure of Valkyrie, and Genpei Toumaden. The latter is a fascinating piece of arcade history. Released in 1986, Genpei Toumaden is a hack-and-slash action game with massive character sprites that were highly unusual for the time. It blends side-scrolling platforming with top-down exploration. It remains one of the weirdest games the company ever produced, and having it readily available on the Switch and PlayStation 4 is a lot easier than tracking down an original arcade board.

The 1986 Famicom release of Family Stadium (often shortened to Famista) is also part of the anniversary lineup. That title essentially defined the console baseball genre in Japan before Konami's Power Pros series took over the market in the 1990s.