PacMan

PacMan is Pac-Man but with a very neat twist and a really good visual overhaul. Imagine having a Pac-Man cartridge forgotten somewhere for a considerable number of years and one day you find it and get a bit nostalgic. You plug it in power up the game but what you get is not what you remember.

PacMan is created to be somewhere between an emulation of the classic game and a fresh redesign for its visual style and gameplay. In terms of graphics, the game looks just like it would look if you were playing with a faulty cartridge that has been worn out and dropped one two many times, it’s even a bit spooky.

The CRT specific distortion has been added (static included) and the yellow pellet hungry character is a tad pixelated. The ghosts have received makeovers as well and let’s say that Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde look like they’ve been through some really tough times. It’s all very nice and this new ‘abandoned game’ theme works really well with the gameplay changes.

The most notable change in PacMan is the fact that you can only see what Pac Man sees. If he is in a long corridor, you can only spot what’s there. This makes the game a lot harder since you will have to memorize where you left some pellets and you have no idea where the ghosts are until you spot them. And yes, the ghosts seem to have the same personalities they did in the original game.

Eating the large corner pellets won’t give you the ability to eat the ghosts but it will reveal the entire maze for a few seconds so that you can see where they are or where you have some more pellets to eat.

On a closing note, PacMan is excellent. It really is. The changes to the gameplay make it much more interesting and intense, an already huge arcade challenge might have just got better.