| | | | I ended up rearranging my arcade to highlight Pac-Man Championship Edition (well, the widescreen cabinet with the seven or whatever consumer games in it), Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Ver., and Pac-Man. And Pac-Man and Pac-Mom getting Ma~rRi~ed |
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Developer of this and many other games: Now Production
Some of the games are initially locked and you have to play certain other of the games twice to unlock them; it requires starting them up and actually losing all your lives, which can be a chore in Pac-In-Time and Pac 'n Roll Remix.
The versions of Pac-In-Time and Pac-Land here are edited from the originals, replacing Ms. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, and Jr. Pac-Man with corporately bland, legally distinct scabs Pac-Mom, Pac-Sis, and Pac-Boy to let Namco skip out on royalties.
For some reason, CE is about a third of the volume of the rest of the collection.
Except I think for Pac-Man 256, the leaderboards for the games will only tell you what rank you occupy in the leaderboard if you're in place 100 or better. (In the PS3 Pac-Man Museum--and in uh most scoring games, like the ones in the Arcade Archives series--you can see your rank no matter how low it is.)
I ended up rearranging my arcade to highlight Pac-Man Championship Edition (well, the widescreen cabinet with the seven or whatever consumer games in it), Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Ver., and Pac-Man. And Pac-Man and Pac-Mom getting Ma~rRi~ed
Pac-Man
This really clean presentation with sharp border art has somehow given me new appreciation for the game and I wish the contrast between the bright blinking power pellets and very dark maze didn't mess with my eyes a bit. Gotta sleep more so they'll feel better so I can play more Pac-Man. Dang those ghosts are good at trapping me; how is this so much harder than Ms. Pac-Man? Impatience with slower starting speed? Smaller maze walls mean my non-ghost-AI-mastering self can't read as far ahead?
Super Pac-Man
Pac creator Iwatani returned as designer but Namco clearly had no idea of why Pac-Man had been such a success. Eating dots too fun? Eat keys and bonk into pink doors instead. GRowing super-sized is cool but only lasts a few seconds and doesn't let you eat ghosts. A confusing super-tease. "Iwatani himself was critical on the game, criticizing how big Pac-Man was while in Super form and also calling it overall boring."
Pac & Pal
Possibly reflects Namco's frustration with hackers' Ms. Pac-Man having trumped the popularity of their own character; this game should really be called "Pac-Man and the Girl Who Steals His Goodies," because that's what happens. Uh except wait okay maybe I'VE been the one stealing them all this time. Oh NO. Still don't get to eat dots but hey, flip these cards? Flipped off. Even more confusing than Super.
Pac-Land
Hop through the weird and horrifically deadly contemporary world far enough (don't forget to flail the stick left-right to glide over the swimming pool from the springboard; in the arcade there was no stick, rather Konami Track & Field-style left/right move buttons, which explains why you always have to double-input the stick directions to get up to decent speed) to meet a big-ish fairy who gives you Joust-like flying boots, then boot-flap back home to see the original game has been edited this time around to replace Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man with Namco-owned Pac-Mom and Pac-Sis.
Pac-Mania
Love the SO 3D sprite look but not really the color cycling ghost blinking, and anyway it ends up being too many volumetric ghosts and too much screen scrolling to find where you left (because you're sloppy and forgetful) the last dots.
Pac-Attack
SNES version instead of the Genesis version that was in the PS3 Pac-Man Museum. Still the block/Pac/ghost-dropping puzzle game, still not my thing at all, but I seemed to tolerate it a few seconds longer here. The graphics and sound weren't quite as bad?
Pac-In-Time
SFC (not easier SNES) version, which, unlike the DOS, GB, and Mac versions, was NOT a re-skin of French developer Kalisto's earlier game "Fury of the Furries." Nauseating quasi-pinball-like character platform motion. Best thing is you can kill yourself quickly by letting yourself get crushed under the log elevator just left and down from the start point! Pac-Mom, Pac-Sis, Pac-Boy have now replaced Ms. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, & Jr. Pac-Man in the intro.
Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Ver.
Sometimes too much incredibly intricate pixel art going on. Cornering may be a bit wibbly. New ghost Kinky merges with the others to form terrifying, double-size combos with deadly pair-specific powers. Hallucinogenic pills. Got to a maze with really confusing stairways. Feels insane at times. Some really good music. Incredibly 2D. So glad I got to play this. (Oh shoot Wikipedia's Namco Museum page says this was in the 2001 Namco Museum for PS2, Xbox, and GC; I wasn't paying attention and stuck with my 2000 DC version instead. ;_; )
Pac-Man Arrangement CS Ver.
Antiseptic 3D thing somehow resulting from the 2D arcade bonanza. Was happy when I locked this up at the first boss on the PSP back in the day. Didn't manage to do that here; the boss fights feel like a waste of everyone's time. Was thinking I liked the basic maze play but the mazes get worse and worse and instead of facilitating fun ghost chases, are used as barriers to prevent the player from reaching fruits: fruits in cul-de-sacs, power pellets in dead ends, long maze walls everywhere, ELEVATORS you have to wait for (!!), corridor intersections kinked sideways half a Pac-length, required color-coded teleporters. Terrible flow; really bad Pac-maze design.
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Looks upscaled from 720 rather than remastered for 1080 or something. Leaderboards not as functional as PS3 version--only shown placement if in top 100, like most games in this collection. Still plays great.
Pac-Motos
From Namco Museum Remix on the Wii. Never liked Motos; this is probably worse? (Don't remember Motos really.) Bump enemies off platform, don't get bumped off or fall through breaking tiles. Now collect little emblems to power up stats. : P Graphic flashes on each bump. Horrible collision on boss.
Pac'n Roll Remix
Wii version of a DS game. Roll around 3D places, constantly have to collect x amount of dots to get through gates. Teeter-totter log bridges and elevators split in two were awful, forced me into a nightmare of circular paths for a while, and seriously impeded killing myself off--some places it had been easy to plunge accidentally to my death, but then it wasn't--in order to unlock whatever the other game was.
Pac-Man Battle Royale
Might be fun as simplified, multiplayer version of CE played around an arcade cocktail cabinet. Not fun single-player vs AI Pac stand-in.
Pac-Man 256
Can still get stand-alone PS4 version of Australian dev Hipster Whale's mobile endless runner where you grind through forced-scrolling random-ish maze for coins to power-up weapons to auto-kill ghosts so you can grind for more coins until a segment generates with too many ghosts and too few weapons and you die and compulsively restart and many hours later finish powering up the strongest weapons and realize there's no longer any reason to play. Yeah you could cruise for points for a higher score but it's really boring. Unlike the other leaderboards I checked in this collection, the collection's Pac-Man 256 leaderboard DOES show your board position even outside the top 100.
Back in the day I was grinding 256 in the "Classic 80's" look, but I found the "Pac-Mania" look a lot easier on the eyes here.
The ghosts and fruit are a little shinier in the stand-alone version of 256. |
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| | | Losing it in Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Ver.!
I think it got to me after a while! There's so much going on in the detailed pixel animation. 8 oooo And those stairs in stage 4 or whatever are darned tricky! Such variable execution speed too, dunno if it's due to constantly varying levels of slowdown from the sprite animation or what; that and the just weirdness gives the thing an off-balance, unpredictable, mysterious feel; it kinda sucked me in but afterwards I felt like I needed to play regular ol' smooth-running Pac-Man to restore my equilibrium!
S'cool when you can grab that fifth ghost when he appears in glasses and panicking--free power pellet, in effect, and it delays his being able to combine with another ghost to turn into a super-powered giant. Eventually got to stages--world 2, I guess--with TWO ghost giants!
Still not close to the (top 100 only) leaderboard--need 140K or something. : P |
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| | | | Bamco added free Halloween wallpapers, some of them actually look pretty decent. : D |
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Playing Pac-Man in Pac-Man Museum+ on PS4 and getting a slightly higher tiny high score. : D
Okay so I tried googling but could not find anyone talking about a Pac-Man glitch--in this Pac-Man Museum+ version on PS4, or ANY version EVER--where Pac-Man eats a power pellet, the ghost turns blue, they collide, and Pac-Man dies. But I played this back frame-by-frame (you can too, with the "." key on a keyboard) and that's what happens here @ 4:37.
Does this EVER happen in the arcade version--or is this Pac-Man Museum+ version bunk? = oo Or IS it a universal thing where while the ghost still has forward momentum or something immediately after you eat a pill, contact with them will still kill you?
It's just so ludicrous looking since the game freezes the action there so you can clearly see the ghost that killed you was blue. = { = [ ]
Also, zooming it in in Photoshop, I can confirm this version IS slightly blurry. I guess that's not surprising given that it's resampling the vertical arcade resolution to 1080p. It's sharper than Arcade Game Series: Ms. Pac-Man on PS4 (and I suppose probably Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man on PS4 as well), at least--but I've now found a perfectly sharp version and I'm going to be playing that instead (and of Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug, too! : D). |
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After a bit of a slow start, got higher scores in Pac-Man Championship Edition, hurrah. There's that "Mission" to complete to probably get myself more tchotchkes for my Pac-cade, like that Blinky lamp I raged-danced with. I don't know if I want to do CM2 to complete that mission though, that's the one where you can't see very far. Oh well anyway I had fun rage-dancing, also duh I'd let myself pretend this game was easier than the classic Pac games, well, it ain't so easy I can just cruise through it, anyway. And it keeps you on your toes with those stretches of no power pellets where you (I) may suddenly go on a life-losing spree, yeesh! Got pretty close a few times even after the rough start.
I don't know if it's just due to the different play speed or something but I don't seem to have quite as many steering bloopers in this as I've been having in PS4 Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.
Well given that I did get through it already I guess okay it isn't anything like as hard as Mr or Ms P in the "can you get through it" sense but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement in scoring, which is really the whole point of this one.
The pulsing maze FX was getting to me so sunglasses came in handy. B)
Oh yeah also I noticed now that for some games/modes the PMM+ leaderboards DO show my score in an overall ranking; I'd thought maybe you had to get in the top 100 for that, since the top list only scrolls down through 100; but the first score of mine I saw below that that actually did get shown in its position in the list was in the 500s or something for Pac-Man, I think. So maybe you have to get a score in the top 999 to get shown your overall rank--the UI looks like it's designed for three digits there. Sure wish they'd just show you your overall position no matter how low it is like a real game. : P
Anyway I had fun with it so whatever. = P |
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| | | | Okay so two videos back there, I was really wrong and dumb. : P Thankfully a viewer very patiently pointed out in the comments of the video that NO I did not die "eating a blue ghost" at 4:37, I ate the last dot, and went to the next level. BOY I am dumb and especially at Pac-Man oh boy. |
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| | | One odd thing about this version of Pac-Man is that the blue borders of the maze are slightly darker than usual, making it a bit hard to see the walls.
Also it crams a line of menu text below the screen, effectively shrinking down the display a bit. |
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| | | For Pac-Land, the controls are changed from the arcade and Famicom versions; they're more "normal" here I guess but instead of the arcade stick any direction to jump and L/R movement buttons (the developer wanted it to be like frantic button pounding to run faster like Konami's Track & Field), it's now double-tapping the stick to run (ugh) and button to jump. Maybe easier but way less fun.
Pac-Land does not have a continue function! Shoot. I would definitely need save scumming (like I can do in Mesen with the Famicom version extracted from Steam "Namco Museum Archives Volume 2).
game-extraction-toolbox says its only able to get about 40% of the Steam version ROMs extracted though, dang. |
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| | | RE the Pac-Man Championship Edition de-make in Namco Museum Archives Volume 1, I thought at first the NES version was flashier--not sure that it is: it's sharper than the blurry, probably upscaled PS4 version with its various blurry lighting and other FX, but the NES color use is more unified, whereas the PS4 version can have different colors all over; and eating a ghost produces screen shake in the PS4 version, whereas the NES version has no screen shake--and, unlike the PS4 version, no pause when eating a power pellet. Also, the NES version is just plain faster.
So faster, smoother, more unified visually--that's the NES version. It does have fewer modes or level sets or whatever you'd call them--but it was confusing having so many in the PS4 version, with no explanation of their differences or raisons d'etre.
And the NES one doesn't have that depressing second music thread that grows gradually as the timer approaches the end--never liked that riff. ; P
So given the choice of $20 for Museum+ on PC, pretty much just for CE, vs $20 for Namco Museum Archives Volume 1, pretty much for demake CE, I went with Archives. |
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| | | | The other visual problem NES CE doesn't have is that the PS4 version looks like it's composed of pixels of different sizes for different things--or sometimes even the same thing, like narrow pixels along the edges of ghosts. Kind of gross next to CE's unified chunky pixels. |
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