I like Pac-Man a lot, so it would probably be hard for me to list my five favorite Pac games. Though games like Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arrangement, Pac-Man: Championship Edition, Pac-Mania, and Pac-Pix would probably be good contenders. But even though I’m a big Pac-Man fan, I’ll admit that some Pac games are REALLY bad. So for this list, here are my five least favorite Pac-Man games.

Pac-Man All-Stars
Back in the 90’s, Namco licensed some of its characters to Hasbro to make classic game updates on the PC. Hasbro then went on to butcher classics with Galaga: Destination Earth, and Dig Dug Deeper. Some of Hasbro’s Pac-Man PC titles were actually somewhat decent, but not All-Stars. Basically all you did was pick a Pac-Man character, then run around an open field and eat more dot clusters than the others. It was like a really bad Mario Party mini-game disguised as a full game. If you ever see it in a PC bargain bin, DON’T get it!

Pac-Man World 3
Pac-Man first got into 3-D platforming on the PSOne with Pac-Man World, and that was a fairly decent game. Pac-Man World 2 on the PS2 wasn’t as good, but at least it wasn’t as bad as the third game! Man it was awful, I can’t even go into it all. It didn’t even feel like Pac-Man and they couldn’t even get the emulation right on the included original Pac game.

Pac-In-Time
This was a really bad 2-D platformer in the 16-bit days. But you can’t blame Namco too much, they didn’t even make it! It was actually a European game starring a fuzzball that Mindscape took and just replaced him with Pac-Man, with Namco’s permission. So I guess you could blame Namco after all.

Pac-Man Fever
Namco wanted a piece of the Mario Party action, but aside from chibi playables like the Ridge Racer Lady and Asteroth, nothing else about the game was very Namco-ish. It was very generic. At least Pac-Man World Rally, while a blatant Mario Kart clone, at least TRIED to have some classic Namco references. And if you’re going to name it Pac-Man Fever, at least buy the rights from Buckner and Garcia so you can play the song, Namco. Such cheapskates.

Pac-Man Atari 2600
This would probably be number one on many people’s list. It was really BAD and disappointing and probably helped Atari crash. But it didn’t have much of an impact on me because I was playing near arcade perfect Pac-clones on my Apple][+ instead. One interesting fact is that all the games on my list were NOT made by Namco, but by someone else. I think the lesson here is that only Namco should make Pac-Man games. Maybe. Well, Ms. Pac-Man wasn’t really made by Namco and that was good.

Runners Up:
I really don’t like the controls in the arcade 2-D platformer Pac-Land, based on the cartoon. And the Tetris wannabe Pac-Attack isn’t very good either. It was actually just a reworked version of Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle. Pac-Man Pinball on the GBA was a dismal cash-in, too.

Bonus Top Five!My top five favorite fruits to eat:

1. Strawberry
My favorite! If I were in a video game and ate fruit for bonus points, I would have the strawberry be the most common. It would be worth less points, but I’d get to eat more of them! I also like the strawberry the best in Pac-Man.

2. Pineapple
Fresh pineapple is the best, but I’ll take the canned stuff any day since fresh pineapple is so hard to prepare.

3. Blueberry
I actually like them fixed with other things like cereal or muffins. My mom makes blueberry muffins with the blueberry juice cooked in the dough so they really are blue!

4. Kiwi
I actually only eat kiwi fruit sliced up. I hate the fuzzy outside. But the inside green part is good.

5. Nectarine
It’s like a peach without the nasty fuzz. I don’t really like peaches, except the princess one, Ha ha!

Runners Up:
I also like watermelons and watermelon flavored things like Jelly Bellys. And even though it’s not really a fruit, I REALLY like pumpkin. That would be the highest bonus fruit if I were in a video game. I like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and I even like pumpkin ice cream better than chocolate! I don’t like cherries or bananas or canteloupe or honeydew melons.

Your turn:

What are your favorite/least favorite Pac-Man games?

What are your favorite fruits?

Tags: Misc