Munchin’ in a 3D World

The soul of the Pac-Man series has felt in flux since the very first title. Namco, especially under the control of series creator Toru Iwatani, had a specific vision for Pac-Man, and the games they officially developed iterated on the concept in ways that felt very different from the initial game. They introduced new kinds of collecting-mazes in Super Pac-Man and then added in a “helpful” pal in Pac & Pal, and while these games were interesting they didn’t catch fire with audiences the way the original game had.

Bally Midway, the U.S. licenser who went out and made their own sequels, had more luck directly iterating on the basic Pac-Man formula, especially with their first sequel Ms. Pac-Man (although later sequels like Pac-Man Plus and Jr. Pac-Man were not as successful). And then Namco went off and made a Pac-Man game that didn’t even feature mazes with Pac-Land. It raised the question of what really was a Pac-Man game? More to the point: could anyone find a way to make a Pac-Man game that felt like a proper evolution of, well, Pac-Man?

And then along came Namco, telling everyone else to hold their beer, and they released a solid Pac-Man title that showed they knew how to properly make Pac-Man feel like Pac-Man. Released at the tail end of 1987, Pac-Mania was the next big iteration on the classic Pac-Man formula, throwing in new ideas that radically changed the experience while still feeling like a proper evolution of the original Pac-Man. It was everything fans had wanted after getting their fill on Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, and it became an instant hit.

The basics of Pac-Mania are what you expect from a proper Pac-Man game. You have the yellow pellet muncher, stuck in a maze. They have to go around, eating the pellets, clearing the stage of all of them. Doing so unlocks the next stage where they can then do it all again, racking up points as they go along until either the player loses all of their lives or they live long enough to hit the eventual kill screen (although in this case, that might actually be a forced end screen for the game depending on what dipswitches were flipped in the arcade model).

Naturally, there are the normal hazards to contend with as well: ghosts. There are five basic ghosts in the game – Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde, and Sue – that will chase Pac around the arenas, and, yes, as the game goes on they get faster and meaner. The player can eat the ghosts, of course, if they first eat a power pellet. But our yellow orb also has a new trick up his… roundness: he can jump. This simple move lets him leap over ghosts and avoid damage, giving the player far more strategy than they had before. Just watch out as later ghosts that get added into the mix, Funky and Spunky, can also jump and you won’t be able to jump over them to avoid death.

Displayed from a slightly angled perspective, Pac-Mania has a striking look that sets it apart from all the previous maze-chase games in the series. The graphics have the faux 3D look that was gaining popularity at the time, that look that seems like it was made with 3D rendered models (even if they really weren’t). Combined with the free scrolling mazes, the interesting angles, and the flow of the whole game, Pac-Mania ends up with a feel all its own, and that’s before we even get into the changes to the gameplay. If this game was nothing more than a fresh coat of paint on the basic Pac-Man gameplay it likely would have been a hit right there.

But the new moves and strategy really do a lot to make this feel like just another Pac-Man title. The jump is really useful. Being able to lure ghosts around the maze and then leap back over them, sending them scurrying around to try and catch you again, it lets you really strategize. There’s no cool down on the jump, so you can keep working around groups into gaps so long as you know the feel of the mechanic. It’s light and fluid and just feels right in the game, making you wish every Pac-Man title had a jump mechanic in it (and after Pac-Land I didn’t think I’d say that).

The game does lure you into a false sense of security with that jump, in fact. The game is broken up into four worlds, each with their own look and feel. The worlds, though, also steadily increase the menace of the ghosts. The first world is fine, but the second ups the number of ghosts from five to seven. It ups it again in the next world, while also letting the green ghosts that appeared in world two jump in world three. If you weren’t expecting it you’d likely eat a face full of ghost. And then everything speeds up more in the next world. It really adds to the anxiety of the game and undercuts that security you felt early on when you could jump around to your heart’s content.

But then you do also need to quickly clear the pellets from the mazes. While there’s no time limit, per se, if you spend too long in a maze the game will slowly drain off your jump power until you can’t jump at all. That’s so that players don’t camp in a corner and keep jumping, avoiding all damage for hours. Arcades needed to make their money, so players had to be encouraged to get into trouble and risk their lives. The jump would have been too powerful otherwise.

The jump isn’t the only benefit Pac has though. Special pellets make their return in this game, too. There’s a pink pellet that will give Pac another, short lived, burst of ghost eating power, and a green pellet that will speed the yellow gobbler up for a brief period of time. These pellets appear in the center of the maze where the normal fruits and other edibles show up, and the game will helpfully point out what kind of bonus item is in the center so you can know if you wanna risk a journey over there or not. Sure, that’s also a risk, and could lead to a death, but that’s all part of the give and take of an arcade game. It can’t be too easy, after all.

I really like the mix of gameplay elements in Pac-Mania. I think Namco was really up to something here, showing how the Pac-Man concept could be pushed and stretched in interesting ways to make the formula even more fun. It’s like they looked at all the sequels that came before, both from their own company and Bally Midway, and studied them to see what really worked. There’s the special pellets of Super Pac-Man, the larger mazes from Jr. Pac-Man. The jump mechanic from Pac-Land. The refined gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man. It all comes together here, in Pac-Mania, to make a Pac-Man game that’s hard to put down. I enjoy it, and find myself wanting to go back to it again and again.

In short, Namco beat Bally Midway at the little rivalry the American company started, and they did it with aplomb. If you haven’t tried Pac-Mania before, you really should. It’s Namco doing Pac-Man right.