A special Namco edition of Picross is coming to Switch next week

A special edition of Picross focused on classic Namco games is coming to Switch next week.

Picross S: Namco Legendary Edition will be released on May 30, at a price of ¥1,200.

Similar to previous crossover Picross games, it will feature a variety of puzzles based on sprites from retro Namco titles.

A total of 30 games will be represented in the game, including such titles as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Xevious, Dig Dug, Mappy, Rolling Thunder and Splatterhouse.

It will feature a Picross mode with 150 puzzles, a Mega Picross mode with 150 puzzles, a Clip Picross mode with five large puzzles (each consisting of 50 smaller ones), a 30-puzzle Color Picross mode and an Extra mode with five more puzzles, for a total of 585 puzzles.

The Picross series started in 1995 with the release of Mario’s Picross on the Game Boy. Since then, developer Jupiter has released numerous Picross games on the Super Famicom, DS, 3DS and Switch.

It has also released numerous Picross crossover titles, featuring characters from other series. These have included games based on Pokémon, Sanrio, Final Fantasy, Kemono Friends and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

The most recent crossover release was Picross S: Mega Drive & Master System Edition, which was released in 2021 and featured puzzles based on 59 classic 8-bit and 16-bit Sega titles.

In a rare interview given last year, Jupiter told VGC that it’s usually the one who proposes Picross collaborations, but that sometimes an IP holder will come to Jupiter instead.

“It’s almost always us who approaches the licence holder, going ‘hey, why don’t we do this’,” managing director Norichika Meguro told us.

“Initially we usually think about something straightforward, like a standard Picross game with the collaboration integrated. But with the Final Fantasy and Pokémon Picross games, they wanted to make sure each universe was expressed well within the Picross universe.”