Namco Legendary Mountains drops 100 classic characters into a puzzle bowl

Developer BeSide Inc. has announced Namco Legendary Mountains, a voxel-based 3D puzzle game coming to Steam this summer. The game takes over 100 classic characters from Namco's arcade history and drops them into a physics-based container where players merge them to chase high scores.

BeSide is a studio with deep roots in the Japanese gaming industry. They are best known for creating Sony's cat mascot Toro Inoue in the 1999 PlayStation title Doko Demo Issyo. More recently, the developer pivoted to the puzzle genre with Fruit Mountain, a 3D take on the drop-and-merge mechanics popularized by Suika Game. Namco Legendary Mountains builds directly on that foundation. You drop characters into a circular arena, and when two identical figures touch, they combine into a larger, different character.

The watermelon game gets a Namco coat of paint

The entire project is a voxel-based 3D puzzle game based on a legendary arcade game title released by Namco. The roster pulls from across the company's early catalog, including Pac-Man, Mappy, Xevious, and The Tower of Druaga. Dig Dug and Xevious both hit arcades in 1982, defining their respective genres of digging and vertical shooting. Mappy followed in 1983 with its trampoline-based platforming. Seeing these characters translated into chunky 3D blocks gives them a physical weight they never had as 2D sprites.

The physics engine adds a layer of chaos to the formula. The blocky, irregular shapes of the voxel characters do not stack as neatly as perfect spheres. A stray sword from a Druaga knight can easily wedge itself between two Dig Dug enemies and ruin a carefully planned drop. It requires a different strategy than standard merging games, forcing players to account for jagged edges and uneven weight distribution.

I think the music in this is fantastic. From Dig Dug to other great themes, the soundtrack remixes original arcade chiptunes into upbeat, modern tracks that fit the chaotic puzzle gameplay perfectly. BeSide clearly put a lot of effort into making the audio feel authentic to the 1980s era while updating it with modern instrumentation. It makes the inevitable game-over screens much more tolerable.

100 characters to unlock

Beyond the main puzzle mode, the game includes a meta-progression system. Every time you successfully merge a new character during a run, it unlocks in your collection. BeSide has included a gallery mode where players can take their unlocked voxel figures and arrange them into custom dioramas.

The gallery mode lets you rotate and inspect the characters up close. Since many of these designs have only ever existed as flat pixel art, seeing how BeSide interpreted their sides and backs into 3D space is a neat bonus for arcade fans. It gives you a reason to keep playing even after a frustrating run where a poorly placed Pac-Man bounces out of the bowl and ends your game. You are always making progress toward completing the massive character catalog.

Namco Legendary Mountains launches on Steam this summer. It looks like a great way to kill 15 minutes, which will inevitably turn into three hours of trying to merge two Pookas.