The Top GameCube Games of E3 2003

We can't say the GameCube's lineup this year was quite as strong as it has been in the past. Still, Mario Kart and F-Zero are strong Nintendo franchises, Star Wars is always a safe bet, and Viewtiful Joe is a wildly original game that we're looking forward to. One of the big surprises of the show was design wizard Shigeru Miyamoto's pet project, Pac-Man. Miyamoto has come up with a way to make the Pac-Man experience fresh and new while taking advantage of the GameCube-to-Game Boy Advance connection features. Nintendo's not down for the count just yet.

5. Pac-Man
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: TBA

	What's Ahead: Pac-Man was first revealed at E3 2003, so we suspect the game has a long ways to go before it will hit shelves as a retail product. The game really isn't much more than a tech demo at this point, with the four-player game utilizing the GC-to-GBA link cable being the only portion of the game revealed so far. Will there be a single-player game that puts a new twist on the classic Pac-Man gameplay? Perhaps LAN support for even grander multiplayer games? Nintendo isn't saying much at this time, and it has yet to even set a firm release date for the game, but we'll have more information as it develops.

To the casual eye, this new incarnation of Namco's pellet-gobbling title may not seem like a massive departure from the original, and in many respects, this new Pac-Man has much more in common with the classic Pac-Man than any of Namco's recent Pac-Man-inspired platformers. The crux of the game still revolves around navigating 2D mazes, eating pellets, and avoiding those pesky ghosts. What's so profoundly unique about Shigeru Miyamoto's Pac-Man is its implementation of multiplayer action in tandem with GC-to-GBA connectivity. One player will play the game as Pac-Man himself, using the screen on the Game Boy Advance to navigate the mazes, while the other three players get to play on the TV as the ghosts in pursuit of Pac-Man. To keep the ghosts from having an unfair advantage, the majority of what can be seen on the TV is blacked out, with only a small circle around each ghost being visible.

Supposedly Shigeru Miyamoto's Pac-Man was originally conceived as a tech demo to showcase the possibilities of GC-to-GBA connectivity, and we're pleased to see that Nintendo is actively trying to bring the game to market. The game appears to offer a compelling blend of old-school gameplay and new technology, and it's definitely one of the most intriguing uses of GC-to-GBA connectivity that we've seen to date.