A Less Than Super Sequel

There is no question that Pac-Man was a massive hit. It instantly became one of Namco’s most successful arcade games of the era, and it launched one of the company’s biggest mascots in the process with that yellow pellet muncher. The game was so huge that as soon as people got done pumping all their quarters into it they started demanding a follow-up. Okay, they also then went and cashed in more dollars so they could get more coins and pump those into the Pac-Man machine as well, but still: demand for a sequel was palpable.

The company knew it, as did their licensing partner in North America, Midway. That company was the first to strike while the iron was hot, creating their own conversion kit for Pac-Man (which was developed by General Computer Corp. original as a different game, Crazy Otto), releasing it to arcades as Ms. Pac-Man. Namco wasn’t to be outdone, though. While Midway’s game was technically legal (although contractually dubious), Namco had their own designs for a new game in the series, and they wanted to outdo Midway’s efforts.

Released slightly later in the year after Ms. Pac-Man stormed into arcades, the resulting official sequel, Super Pac-Man, showed audiences where Namco thought the series should go and, well, it didn’t exactly delight fans. To be clear, it was still a hit since arcade-goers wanted more Pac-Man and they’d take it in any form they could get. But in comparison to that wily female Paccer, and her ribbon-adorned adventures, the action of Super Pac-Man failed to capture the hearts and minds of audiences the same way. It was a fine game, but it wasn’t exactly what fans wanted.

The gameplay of Super Pac-Man is mostly the same as in the previous titles. You play as Pac (not his wife), stuck in a new maze while you have to eat things to get out. But instead of standard pellets this time, our yellow hero is now tasked with eating fruits and other food stuff scattered around the stages. Except to even get to the food Pac first has to find keys and eat those. That will unlock doors that block the sections of the mazes holding the food, and keys are the only way to truly progress through the game.

Power pellets to make a return here, but with some twists. Standard pellets are back and they work as expected, with the ghosts turning blue and fleeing Pac-Man. The ghosts can be eaten while blue, and are worth points, so collecting them might be worth it to the players. However, the game also included super pellets, and they gave Pac different powers. They doubled his size (to show that he was “flying”) while striking the ghosts (to show him as flying over them). While in super form Pac can’t eat the ghosts but he can break through locked walls (instead of collecting keys) as well as continue eating the food that’s scattered around. Using these power-ups, and figuring out good paths through the game, are key to clearing the mazes.

To be clear, some of the changes to the game are interesting. Food items in the original game were largely superfluous, there for you to get extra points but they weren’t necessary to the whole experience. Here, the food acts as the standard pellets, and they’re easier to see, too. That, combined with colored in stage walls, makes this game a rather pleasing title to look at. It presents a more interesting looking game, at the very least, which would attract players.

With that said, the actual gameplay of Super Pac-Man isn’t as interesting as the original game (let alone Midway’s sequel). Due to the setup of the game there are fewer pellets to collect and fewer paths through the maze. You have to get the keys to start, and while there are a few of them scattered all over the map, they are all set to unlock specific doors (starting off in stages with the nearby doors, although later mazes feature the keys unlocking further away doors). That means you always know your first path, no matter what, getting to the closest keys to plot out your path.

From there you have to figure out where to go and how to organize your game. While the power pellets are nice, the super pellets are the real star of the show. You want these so you can ignore the keys as much as possible. You need keys to unlock doors, but only the fruit has to be collected to clear stages. If you prioritize eating doors with the super pellets (and you can control your super-sized Pac well enough to do that) then you can ignore everything else as you chomp quickly through the stages.

Sure, you will miss out on eating all the ghosts this way, but the ghosts feel less essential this time around than they did in the original title. Sure, they’re still enemies and you have to avoid them when you’re small and weak, but the stages are organized in such a way that you can generally go super-sized, eat doors, eat food, and not bother with the ghosts until you absolutely have to. Early stages the ghosts are barely a bother at all once you know what you’re doing, and it’s easy to run up the stage count without losing too much sweat.

Later stages do change this up some. While the maze layouts don’t change, the length of time the pellets last does shorten, meaning there will come a time where you have to actually collect some keys and not just eat all the doors. And because later stages feature keys that unlock far away doors, you will also have to plan routes and figure out more strategy as the game progresses. That includes not being able to rely on pattern play for the game, ruining chances for really big scores.

But that’s only if you get that far into the game. To be frank, the gameplay loop of Super Pac-Man simply isn’t that super. It’s really kind of boring (a sentiment echoed even by the designers that worked on the game). The changes to the gameplay are interesting at the start, but with less to do and less concern about how to do it, the overall experience feels pretty lacking. It doesn’t have the pulse-pounding excitement of the first game, let alone the improved gameplay and delightful additions of Ms. Pac-Man. It feels inferior in a way, despite all the changes made to the experience.

That’s likely why this game hasn’t been featured in nearly as many remakes and rereleases as other games in the series. Sometimes it’s added to compilations, but very few of the gameplay tweaks or ideas from Super Pac-Man were carried over into later iterations of the series. There’s something pure and iconic about Pac-Man and this second sequel (first official one, of course) changes too much while failing to retain that special magic. It’s not that Super Pac-Man is a bad game, it’s just that when you compare it to the first two entries of the series the game feels like it comes up short. It would have been better if we didn’t have Pac-Man to compare it against but, then, without that game we wouldn’t have gotten Super Pac-Man at all.