MagicPacman Demo

Pac-Man made history in the video games industry as one of the most popular game ever released, and you can still feel its success reverberations to this day. One of the ways people like to bring tribute to Namco’s creation is by developing remakes, some of which feature new mechanics that aim to improve on the original, or at least spice up the experience.

MagicPacman fails to bring any meaningful improvements and it just shamelessly steals almost every bit of the original, except for the level layouts and some minor gimmicks that aim to change the gameplay a little bit. However, it’s still Pac-Man, and if you’ve played the original this won’t feel any different, except for the fact that it’s shorter and clumsier.

To begin with, your purpose is to help Pac-Man eat all the pellets while navigating the mazes and avoiding the ghosts. In this regard, it is rather difficult to innovate, and there are no major differences from Namco’s version. On the other hand, there are some helpful gimmicks you can make use of, such as portals that teleport you in a different section of the level. This isn’t an original feature either, but it falls into place nicely.

Although the ghosts are a real pain most of the time, the game provides you with a few ways to manage them and reduce the threat. As such, you can either pick up the green balls and turn them into scared critters that can be consumed, or you can eat the snowflake and freeze them into place. Regardless of what you use, the levels get significantly less difficult to deal with.

As far as the technical aspect is concerned, the game makes no efforts to look apart, and it can actually be considered rather ugly. The menu and the textures used for the mazes are spongy and rough, so you constantly feel like playing something held together by duct tape. Fortunately, the ghosts and Pac-Man himself move pretty smoothly, although the ghost AI is simply terrible.

In the end, MagicPacman is not exactly bad, it’s just unremarkable and without a purpose. The game is nothing but a clone of a more popular title and that would be just fine in normal circumstances, but it becomes a problem when you are asked to pay for such products.