This year marks Pac-Man’s 30th Anniversary, but aside from Google making a playable Pac-Man logo game earlier (which was awesome), I haven’t heard about any other celebrations from Namco. Hopefully we’ll hear something about it at E3. I’ve read rumors about the creator of Sonic working on a Pac-Man 3-D platformer, and rumblings on a new Pac-Game called Pac-Man Rebirth, but nothing officially confirmed by Namco. So I decided to take it upon myself to celebrate Pac-Man’s 30th with a (possible) series of blogs.

I’m probably one of the biggest Pac-Man fans out there. I’ve loved Pac-Man since I first played it in a Kroger grocery store when I was five. I have boxes of Pac-Man merchandise I’ve collected, and a full size Pac-Man arcade machine in my garage. I could probably write whole dissertations about everything Pac-Man, from the products to the cartoon, the music, and all the games. But that would take WAY too long to read and even longer to write. So I decided to keep to the basics and talk about what really matters: the GAMES. I’ve picked my top five favorite Pac-Man games, five honorable mentions, and five of my most hated Pac-Games. Maybe later on this year, I can talk about other Pac-Man things, but for now, here are my favorites:

Favorite Pac-Man Games

Here are my favorite Pac-Man games, in order:

Super Pac-Man

Yeah, it’s pretty odd that this one’s my favorite. Many would say it’s not the best. But I just love how wacky it is. Pac-Man doesn’t eat dots in this one anymore; all the items are food like apples, bananas, fried eggs, hamburgers, etc. But later on Pac-Man starts eating even weirder things in the levels, like coffee cups, mushrooms, even shoes! And the game is NOISY! It makes such a racket. And Pac-Man is so HUGE when he turns into Super Pac-Man that he can’t even fit in the maze borders!

But I think the thing I like most about Super Pac-Man is that I’m really good at it. I got a lot of practice in it when it was at the Wal-Mart near my house many years ago. I know that it’s not very hard to be good at Super Pac-Man. If you can manage to stay big and super for the whole maze, you’ve got it made. But it gets trickier later on so you have to rely on other tricks to survive. So yeah, I bet I can take you all on at this game. Bring it!

Pac-Man: Championship Edition

This newest Pac-Man game came out on Xbox LIVE a couple of year ago. I have to say that this was a deciding factor on me getting a 360. It combines retro ideas with some new ones, like ever changing mazes and a race to get a high score that way. It’s absolutely brilliant, and having the original Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani on board to provide input probably helped, too. I only wish there was an endless mode that wasn’t timed, but I guess that kind of defeats the purpose on how the game is designed.

Pac-Man Arrangement

Back when I was in college, retro gaming got a bit of resurgence with MAME first coming out and retro gaming collections like the Namco Museums on the horizon. It happened in the arcade, too, when Namco released a series of Namco Classics Collections which features three games that you could play in original and “Arranged” forms.

The first one had arranged versions of Pac-Man, Xevious, and Rally-X. In Pac-Man Arrangement, you got new mazes and better graphics, and more power-ups. Best of all, the ghosts got powers, too! By combining with a new yellow ghost named “Kinky.” (Poor choice of names, there, Namco), the ghosts could get extra abilities to help them catch Pac-Man! Blinky could grow bull horns and charge at you, Pinky would get rabbit ears and could jump near you, Inky would get a mirror image of himself, and Clyde would cry dots that would slow you down. I like the fact the ghosts got as much attention as Pac-Man got, which is how I think it should be.

Speaking of the Arranged titles, you can play some of them on one of the Namco Museums on the PS2 (not the same as the PSP Arrangements). The ones you can play are Pac-Man Arrangement, Dig Dug Arrangement, and Galaga Arrangement. You can play Xevious Arrangement on the PSOne Xevious 3-D/G+ game. The only ones you can’t play are Rally-X Arrangement and Mappy Arrangement. I wish they would let you play Mappy Arrangement on a future Namco collection. It’s really fun.

Pac-Mania

This one came out in 1987 in arcades, nearly a three year stretch between Pac-Games! So I was really excited to see this when I first saw it. It’s a 3-D isometric Pac-Man game and you can jump over the ghosts. I especially liked the peppy music and 16-bit graphics that were great for its time. And the NES version was pretty decent for what it was.

Ms. Pac-Man

I bet this one is most people’s favorites. The fact that you can still find it in arcades is a testament to its greatness. A sequel that’s even better than the original. Pretty interesting considering it started out as a hack by some college students in the US! The original arcade version is great, but I also like the home versions on the 16-bit systems like the Sega Genesis and SNES (and the rare Tengen version on the NES). It added several different mazes and modes while keeping the spirit of the original game intact.

Diamonds in the Dots

As a Pac-Man fan, most games in the series I do like. While I have my favorites, there are some others that didn’t make the top five list (like Jr. Pac-Man, for instance). However, there are a selection of Pac-Man games that stand out from the crowd and have something associated with them that makes them special to me, even though they’re not my favorites. So here they are:

Pac-Man World

This PlayStation game was made for Pac-Man’s 20th Anniversary. It’s a fairly standard 3-D platformer romp for its time, but still pretty decent. What makes this game special to me is that it’s the first game I got to follow through all its entire production as a game reviewer. When I first free-lanced for The Dallas Morning News, that year at the first E3 I went to, it was being shown as Pac-Man Ghost Zone. The next year it was Pac-Man 3-D before finally becoming World. It spent a lot of time in development hell!

During that time I got to be friends with many of the folks on the production team. I really enjoyed talking with them about Pac-Man stuff. After the first two games, some of them went to work for Capcom’s US branch, making games like Maximo! About the time Pac-Man World 2 came out, I was let go from the newspaper. I told the team to not send me a copy because I wouldn’t be able to review it. I think they knew I was pretty bummed about it, because they sent me a game anyway, and the whole team signed the front of the box! Wasn’t that nice of them?

Another great thing about Pac-Man World is that Tommy Tallarico did the music for it. Say what you will about him, but he KNEW how to make good Pac-Man music that fit with the game. I’m glad they used him again for Pac-Man World Rally. I got to meet Tommy Tallarico at Video Games Live one year and he told me a neat story about how he got to play the title theme from Pac-Man World with Dweezil Zappa!

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures

When Sonic became popular in the 16-bit era, EVERYONE had to have a mascot platformer. Most were pretty unoriginal and not very fun. So when Namco made a mascot platformer with their own Pac-Man, I was surprised as to how original it was. It was like a cross between Lemmings and a point and click adventure. You didn’t control Pac-Man directly; he moved on his own and got distracted by things on screen, especially food. You controlled a slingshot that you could shoot at things to get Pac-Man’s attention. Pac-Man was pretty moody, too, and you had to monitor his mood to make him do certain things. An angry Pac-Man was braver, but careless, while a sad Pac-Man would be more cautious about his surroundings. If any ghosts appeared, you could shoot a power pellet to Pac and he would chomp the ghosts. If this game became available on Virtual Console, I would download it right away. A lot of people didn’t like this game, and I can understand why, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. Plus, the artwork made me think of my old Pac-Man coloring books, and playing this game back in the day caused me to gather all my Pac-Man merchandise and put it all in one place.

Pac-Man Vs.

Originally on the GameCube, this four-player Pac-Man game was actually designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and Zelda. Apparently he’s a big Pac-Man fan, too. While a lot of people ridiculed this game because it was a big showcase at that year’s E3 for GameCube/GBA connectivity, which didn’t pan out so well, it’s still a fun multiplayer romp. One person is Pac-Man and can score points by eating dots and ghosts, while the rest are ghosts and try to catch Pac-Man so they can have a turn to score points. Whoever reaches a certain score first, wins. Later on, they made a version of Pac-Man Vs. for the Namco Museum DS game, and it’s worth the price of the game on its own. And much less cumbersome than how it was on the GameCube.

Pac-Pix

While most people would say that Kirby’s Canvas Curse was the first game that really tapped the DS’ potential, I say it was Pac-Pix. You had to draw Pac-Man with the stylus to eat ghosts. It was a brilliant and original game. Even Miyamoto said he wish he had thought of it! When I went to the E3 where the DS was first being showcased, I attended a private showing of the new DS. The room where we could play games was very crowded, so I only got to try one game. Luckily, Pac-Pix was the one I got to try! When it came out in Japan, they even had special Pac-Man styluses to go with it. A friend imported one for me.

Namco Museums vol. 1-5

Not really Pac-Man games, but these PSOne favorites did have a Pac-Game on each collection, and the 3-D museums had Pac-Man be your guide and there were lots of facts and artwork about Namco’s round yellow fellow. These games also helped me rekindle my Pac-Man and Namco fandom, too.

When I was a kid, I always dreamed about an arcade that had video game themed rooms and museums, so seeing the interactive 3-D museums was a cool way for my dreams to become realized. That was a really special experience.

Worst Pac-Man Games

While there are some really good Pac-Games out there, there are also some really bad ones. Here are my least favorite of the bunch:

Pac-Man World 3

Pac-Man World was fairly good, and the sequel was decent, too. But the third one they made for the 25th Anniversary was downright awful. Pac-Man got unfitting powers like being able to shoot electricity from his hands. They also gave Pac-Man a voice that sounded more fitting for Dilbert. The dark urban slums and ghost world levels didn’t seem to fit the Pac-Man theme at all. And the bad camera angles and poor save decisions made it totally unplayable. Namco actually had an outside team do this game, so the lesson here is to be very careful with who handles your most popular franchise.

Pac-Man All-Stars

Speaking of other teams making bad Pac-Man games, in the early part of this century, Namco licensed out its classics to others like Hasbro so they could make games starring Namco’s popular properties. Aside from Pac-Man: Adventures in Time and Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze, all other games done with this deal were awful (see Galaga: Destination Earth or Dig Dug Deeper).

Pac-Man All-Stars lets you pick Pac-Man, Ms. Pac, Jr. Pac, and Prof. Pac as you run around an arena and try to nab the most dots. And that’s it. It’s like a single Mario Party game except this was all there was on there. Just plain pathetic, really.

Pac-In-Time

Another non-Namco made game. It wasn’t even a Pac-Man game originally. In Europe, this PC title starred a little furball character. The now defunct Mindscape wanted to bring it to the US, so with Namco’s permission they changed the fuzzball to Pac-Man. The game doesn’t have much to do about Pac-Man, really, and the horrible play control makes this one very frustrating to play.

Pac-Man Fever

Despite having the same title, you don’t hear the one-hit wonder song of the same name anywhere in this Mario Party clone. It stars Namco characters like Pac-Man, Asteroth, and the Ridge Racer lady, which is cool. But the mini-games have nothing to do with Namco classics, which gives it a generic feel to it. Also made by an outside company, too.

Pac-Land

This was the only one on my list of least favorites that was actually made by Namco. It’s a 2-D plaformer that was in arcades, about a year before Super Mario Bros. So you really can’t say SMB was the first 2-D platformer, but you can say it was the first one to get things RIGHT! A lot of my friends love this game, but I hated the button-only controls. Namco may try to deny it, but Pac-Land is based on the cartoon. Same theme music and everything. And the Midway version that was in the US even changed some of the graphics to make it look MORE like the Pac-Man cartoon!

Pac-Conclusions

And that’s all I feel like talking about right now. If I do any future Pac-Man celebration blogs this year, what would you like for me to write about? Also, let me know what your most favorite and least favorite Pac-Man games are! –Cary

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