Games worth discovering

I’ve Got Pac-Man Fever, Baby, and the Only Cure Is…More Pac-Man!

16K View2022-08-05

When I was a lad, Pac-Man Fever was rampant and there was no inoculation against it in any way, shape, or form. Pac-Man was everywhere, and just like a

fearful, blue ghost you could not escape him. He was on lunchboxes, on TV, on bed sheets, there were puppets, a breakfast cereal, joke books, chairs, a bank, and even a Christmas album. Hell, he was so ridiculously popular even a nasty teacher I absolutely despised gave us geometry homework with Pac-Man themed problems. While that didn’t make me dislike her any less, it was cool enough for me to recall forty-plus years later.

Pac-Man is the O.G. when it comes to merchandising a video game and, more specifically, a video game character. If Pac-Man’s friendly, yellow gob wasn’t plastered everywhere in the early ‘80s you wouldn’t see Mario, Sonic, Lara Croft, Crash Bandicoot, Pikachu, Master Chief, and Minecraft Steve on any of the merchandise you see them on today.

In essence, Pac-Man made all of that real. The little, yellow pizza-inspired circle that chomped and chewed his way through a glowing maze was the first video game character that just about everyone loved…or, at the very least, recognized. And because of that unprecedented media blitz and/or brainwashing when I was child, I still have my very own Pac-Man shrine (of sorts) decorating my home to this very day. Here’s a small taste of the Pac-Awesomeness:

Now, fast-forward to couple months ago. Namco Bandai, never a company to shy away from a dollar or two, released Pac-Man Museum+, a title that contains fourteen arcade and console Pac-Man games (Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania, Pac-Attack, Pac-In-Time, Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Version, Pac-Man Arrangement Console Version, Pac-Man Championship Edition, Pac Motos, Pac'n Roll Remix, Pac-Man Battle Royale, and Pac-Man 256) that are all presented in a historically cool, "arcade exhibition hall" context.

Since I’ve already played Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and Pac-Man 256, which are all still excellent games and are certainly worth playing today (and I could write volumes on the simplistic genius of their design), I’m only going to discuss the ones I haven’t played, and honestly didn’t even know about (yes, I’m glaring right at you, Pac Motos…), here.

So, Pac & Pal, let’s see what you’ve got for me…

Pac & Pal is an odd game – odd in the sense that it plays very much like a Pac-Man clone from 1981 called, Lock ‘n’ Chase. It’s almost as if Namco are parodying themselves here or thumbing their collective noses at Data East, the company that made Lock ‘n’ Chase.

Anyway, it is a fun, little maze game where you unlock the special items (apples, cherries, strawberries, etc.) by collecting cards around the maze. There’s also a cute dude/dudette (the titular “Pal”) that roams around the maze and grabs the items before you can then takes them back to the “base.”

I’m still not sure if he/she is helping me or not, but OK. Another cool wrinkle found in Pac & Pal is that you don’t eat the ghosts here, but you can stun them with some sort of sonic blast from Pac-Man’s mouth that appears to be ripped straight from Galaga. So there’s that.

Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade and Pac-Man Arrangement Console are also oddities in that one is the worst and/or hardest Pac-Man game I’ve ever played (Arcade), and the other is one of the best, beyond the original of course, Pac-Man games I’ve ever played (Console). At their core(s) though, there are just simple remixes of Pac-Man with floating dots and 3D graphics rather than 2D sprites. Just play Pac-Man Arrangement Console and forget the other one exists. Trust me.

Pac-Motos and Pac’n Roll Remix are very similar games as well as it is clear they were built using the same engine, but one plays more like Marble Madness (Pac-Motos) and the other more like Super Monkey Ball (Pac’n Roll Remix). I must say that enjoyed Pac’n Roll Remix much more than Pac-Motos because all you really do in Pac-Motos is bash into other round objects with Pac-Man in the hopes of knocking them off a raised platform whereas in Pac’n Roll Remix the level design is much more complex and the gameplay is blazingly fast at times. I also have to say that I was rather disappointed that Pac-Motos wasn’t a Pac-Man kart racer – I confused it with the PS2 game from 2006, Pac-Man World Rally.

Pac-Land is an early arcade platformer that looks like the graphics were drawn by me in the 8th grade on my Commodore 64 with my trusty Koala Pad attached. There are no mazes in this game as you just guide Pac-Man from right-to-left as you would in any, standard platformer. The ghosts do make appearances, flying space ships and driving cars as ghost as wont to do, and the fruit and power pellets show up too but, otherwise, this is just an early ‘80s, by-the-numbers platformer that hasn’t really aged all that well.

Pac-In-Time is essentially a Sonic the Hedgehog game with Pac-Man standing in for Sonic. No, I’m not kidding. And as Pac-In-Time was made in the early ‘90s this checks out as I can totally envision some random Namco executive braying, “Hey, we need one them there Sonic games too! Let’s just do the same damn thing and toss that round, yellow guy we own in there…yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket!”

The story here goes that an evil witch zaps Pac-Man back in time because she clearly hates him and all that he stands for…and, realistically, that’s the kind of stuff evil witches do, after all. Pac-Man then has to traverse several, sprawling levels while collecting items and solving a few switch-based puzzles preferably at a high rate of speed. The only difference from Sonic here is that Pac-Man can also collect different power-ups (a fireball which he shoots out of his mouth, a rope swing, the ability to swim underwater, etc.) to aid him on his quest to get back to his time. It’s a decently fun game that, unfortunately, is waaaay too derivative of Sega’s spiky blue speedster.

Pac-Attack is Tetris with a Pac-Man coat of paint, and it plays well enough. ‘Nuff said.

Pac-Man Battle Royale is a game I’ve only seen in arcades up until now and it seems like a rather fun multiplayer game of Pac-Man as you essentially have to turn cannibal on the three other people you are playing with by devouring their Pac-Man rather than the ghosts and/or pellets, but you can still chomp on those too if you really want to. The mazes and graphics appear to be based on the rather excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition, but playing by yourself against an AI opponent (like I did) isn’t the way to play this, so don’t.

Pac-Mania is an isometric, 3D version of the original Pac-Man with the main gameplay addition here being that our golden boy can now hop over the ghosts as he traverses the mazes as well as eating them when powered up. The jump is an interesting idea that only works sporadically because the game itself moves at a sluggish pace and it can be difficult to time your jumps because of that…coupled with the wonky isometric point-of-view, of course.

And if that isn’t enough Pac-Content for you, Bandai Namco isn’t quite done beating the corp…ha-ha, I mean…graciously providing us with a glimpse into its storied past as Pac-Man World Re-Pac (a remake of the classic PS1 title) is coming out at the end of August – the 26th to be exact.

So many Pac-Man games…so little time. But the fever, baby, it lives on and on and on and on…

💬 What are your thoughts on the Pac-Man franchise? Have you played any of the fourteen games in collection? Drop us a line down in the comments with your thoughts!

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