Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

When I fired up Namco Bandai’s Noby Noby Boy for the first time, it did not take me long to realize I was looking at Mappy.

You know, little white mouse in a police suit? Runs around a 1983 Namco arcade game saving museum treasures while avoiding the cats? I’m a huge Mappy fan, so stumbling into this cameo was a delicious surprise. Goro – Mappy’s nemesis Boss cat – is in NNB as well. Both can be found as part of the random scene-scapes that populate Noby Noby Boy. They just kinda walk around.

Pac-Man (sort of) appears during the game’s tutorial, and Katamari’s Prince is mentioned on the Trophy list, so I was wondering what other Namco games might be showing up inside Noby Noby Boy? Well, a quick scan through the credits will reveal all. The answers, and some Noby Noby Boy movies, after the jump.

Here’s the credits. Note that the zippy sound effect is also from the original Mappy game. It’s the sound the microwave doors make.

The list of games occurs around 30 seconds in, just after I get tired of driving Manual BOY through the text. Here’s the spoiler: Pac-Man, Mappy, Dig-Dug, Tower of Druaga, Libble Rabble, Metro Cross, Bravoman, The Genji and the Heike Clans, Adventure of Pistol-Daimyou, Wonder Momo, and Katamari Damacy. Most of those are esoteric Japanese arcade games. Esoteric to the West, anyway.

In other Noby news, Paul and I are fairly sure that Noby Noby Boy is the first PS3 game to support that live screenshot feature that Sony added waaaaaay back in firmware 2.5 last fall. Unfortunately it’s a bit clunky. You have to go out to the XMB and select the screenshot option from the Photo menu, and then you go back into the game and hit X to save the photo. Unfortunately, the game is still running while you’re screwing around with the XMB, so it is impossible to snap a perfect photo.

Here’s a video where I wrote “Aeropause.com” on BOY’s side.