In a way you’re playing against the maze itself as much as against the ghosts or the clock - and that’s where Iwatani and Namco have captured the essence of the original game and taken it to a twitch-inducing extreme. Setting up strategies for your paths in real time is essential because every second spent traveling over black space instead of munching dots or ghosts is time wasted. The first few patterns set up paths of dots that are ideal for combos if you play them correctly, but as the game progresses those paths aren’t as clear-cut. The process repeats with each new side getting more complex, filled with more and more dots and power pellets. Clearing one side of dots will bring up a bonus item (cherries, Galaga ships, keys, etc.) which will then open up a new pattern of walls and dots on the other side when eaten. Unlike the static mazes of old, however, the mazes in PMCE are constantly shifting. The original Pac-Man had an element of this: should you eat the blue ghosts after getting a power pellet or simply clear the rest of the dots and move to the next board? In PMCE, the answer is: you do both, but you do it by setting up a chains of power-pellet-fueled ghost combos over the paths of the dots in the maze. The crux of PMCE’s gameplay is the tried and true arcade formula of balancing risk versus reward. The other major changes (besides the mazes - more on that in a minute) are that power pellets can be chained indefinitely for successive ghost-munching bonuses of up to 3200 points per ghost, eating regular dots without dying builds up a score multiplier, and that Pac-Man respawns in the same place he died after losing a life.
Most but not all of the other modes are 10 minutes long. The main draw, Championship Mode is five minutes long. The goal is the same as it ever was: score the most points possible. With original Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani at the project’s helm (his first time working on a Pac-Man title since the 1980 original), PMCE could be considered a true “championship edition” in that getting the most out of the game will require some decidedly well-honed Pac skills. Instead, they rethought it almost entirely. But Namco didn’t simply retool a classic game with PMCE. With Namco’s penchant for rehashing Pac-Man over the years it might be easy to dismiss Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade as just such another ill-conceived idea best left on the drawing room table. Pac-Man Championship Edition (XBox Live Arcade) I hope you enjoy seeing all the best that Pac-Man has inspired. I also used Wikipedia to detail some of the specifics of gameplay for some of the games. RadarScope1 shared his experiences with the new XBLA Pac-Man release, Ivo scoured the Interwebs to find and test all of the obscure clones on an array of platforms, and I (racketboy) contributed my thoughts on my favorite console and handheld spinoffs. Pac-Man is not on the list)Ĭredits: Since there was a lot of ground to cover in digging up all these gems, this article was actually a team effort. (And before anyone complains, I realize that Ms. This feature takes a look at the best games that either added something new to the formula or modernized the experience on newer platforms. Over the last twenty-five years, there have been quite a few Pac-Man clones and official spinoffs that are still worth playing today, and possibly even worth getting excited about. Even many of Namco’s own Pac-Man spinoffs were only worthy of a yawn. However, many of those clones didn’t really add much or even capture much of the original charm. Pac-Man is one of the most popular video games of all time and it was no surprise that many companies tried cloning the game in order to make a quick buck.
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