Last time we saw IREM and Naxat go head-to-head. Things almost ended in a draw, but Naxat pulled slightly ahead finally winning 14 to 12 over IREM.
There was a bit of dispute brought up by certain people over Naxat doing more "publishing" rather than "developing" on many of the games that feature the Naxat logo. In order to make sure we appease our anal retentive members, I have made sure both parties this time around are, in fact, developers.
In light of recent discussions frequently mentioning ICOM titles (Ghost Manor, Shape Shifter, Camp California, etc) I've been thinking how great a developer they really were for the system. While the number of titles they developed wasn't great, nearly all seemed extremely solid.
On the other hand you have Namco, who is much more widely known, who produced a slightly larger number of titles. While they too had some really A-list titles, they had some real stinkers there in the mix (*cough*Genpei Toumaden*cough*).
Like we pointed out last time, this is not a contest of quantity.
Anyway, I'm going to have to go with ICOM on this one. Nearly every single one of their games is just completely awesome, although some will argue otherwise in the case of Shape Shifter but that's strictly opinion. They had extremely good graphical artists, great gameplay (for the most part) and intuitive level design.
Namco just had too many stinkers and mediocre crap games: the aformentioned Genpei, Bravoman, Ordyne, Wonder Momo, to name but a few. In all fairness, they had some really great titles too like Pac-Land, Samurai Ghost, Splatterhouse and Final Lap Twin featuring the quest-RPG mode that everybody loves. In the same vein, we're still trying to forget the trash that was ICOM's Yo Bro.
IMO though ICOM's games were more consistently good, and just better enough to make them the clear-cut winner for this gamer.
