Worse still, Pac-Land has a clear V-Sync issue on scroll. While most of the emulation seems very accurate, with no major issues in terms of play, the CRT shaders for the old arcade titles like Pac-Land are completely useless, with very limited settings. As a single or multiplayer survival spin on the Pac-Man roadmap, it’s brilliant fun to play for score and see how long you can last. An endless runner, you power up the grid, outrunning an encroaching ‘glitch’ reminiscent of an '80s arcade kill screen, while grabbing various power-ups, accruing points with your dot-eating, and navigating an increasingly intense maze for as long as you can. Originally an iOS game from Hipster Whale, the developer of Crossy Road, this is the later console port, which abandoned microtransactions and introduced a four-player co-op option. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)įinally, Pac-Man 256 is mad, but brilliant. Both versions are really good fun, and its new scoring tweaks will be especially enticing to fans of the formula.
It features two-player co-op and a cool final boss. It’s graphically vivid, with coursing dots rippling around the place, and has a host of new features, like continuous gameplay after a death and dash icons that shoot you down lanes to snag vulnerable ghosts and strings of dots. Pac-Man Arrangement comes in two versions, the 1996 arcade title and an arrangement of the Arrangement that first appeared on Sony’s PlayStation Portable as part of Namco Museum Battle Collection (2005). Its pun-tastic title is the best thing about it. Developed by Kalisto Entertainment, following their Amiga title Fury of the Furries, it’s utter garbage and you shouldn’t waste more than a couple of minutes on it. Pac-In-Time (Super Nintendo, 1995) is a platform-action game where Pac negotiates scenery by jumping around, grabbing dots, and firing projectiles at enemies. It’s an excellent title to have as part of the collection. Complete the first course and you’re off again, now with new obstacles and increased difficulty. You run Pac back and forth, jumping over obstacles and ghosts, through forests and across falling mountain logs, before powering up with flight and soaring back the way you came, all under the duress of a time limit. The theme tune burns itself into the brain, and graphically it holds up very well owing to its unique art style. Pac Land (arcade, 1984) is one of the first true arcade platform games, appearing one year prior to Super Mario Bros., and it’s utterly superb. It’s also notably the first Pac-Man title to have music playing over the action. There’s some depth here, and it’s good fun to get involved in. Flipping cards opens many of the gates, and a new helper, the green Miru - Pac-Man’s “Pal”, as it were - helps you to grab fruit but decreases your overall score in doing so. These allow you to stun, freeze and confuse the ghosts. Pac & Pal (arcade, 1983) twists Super Pac-Man’s formula further, introducing power pellets with five specific uses, some based on famous Namco titles like Galaxian and Rally-X. It’s by no means as good as the original, of course, since a layer of simplicity has been lost, but fun nonetheless. It’s an enjoyable variation that fans of the original will enjoy when they want to mix things up a bit. Super Pac-Man (arcade, 1982) adjusts the formula by having you grab keys to open locked gates around the grid so you can collect all the fruit.
You accrue more coins simply by playing machines and completing optional missions (presented like an achievement leaderboard) that add unique objectives for each title. You start with 500 virtual coins in your pocket, but there are no microtransactions here.
Presented within a 3D arcade, you can move the camera, trotting Pac around, looking at various machines and deciding what to play, each game with its own menus for gameplay tutorials, special objectives, and a little history. It comprises the most thorough collection of the yellow, pizza-inspired dot’s exploits ever assembled, from the original arcade masterpiece, through to 2015’s Pac-Man 256. This updated compilation includes some of the titles in the previous release, and adds several new ones, bringing the total count to 14 (although Pac-Man Arrangement is featured twice with arcade and home versions). Pac-Man Museum+ follows Pac-Man Museum (2014), a collection for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)