With every gaming system, you can bet Pac-Man will make at least one appearance. Quite often it will be just one game with a high price, but with Pac-Man collection, you get the original Pac-Man that we all know and love, Pac-Attack; a variation of Tetris, Pac-Mania; an isometric game with the ability to jump, and a brand new game; Pac-Man Arrangement which does its best to mix up the formula.
Pac-Man is just how I remember the game to be on the Game Boy Color. You have the option of a zoomed out, full screen view, and a zoomed in view. Although the graphics are simple, the simplicity of the game has made it a true classic. For the uninitiated, you navigate around a maze, eating up the pellets which lay around the entire map. You must avoid the ghosts and eat every pellet to complete the level. There are special pellets in the corner that make the ghosts vulnerable for a limited time, and Pac-Man can then eat them which returns them to the 'nest' and earns bonus points.
Pac-Man Arrangement has all sorts of gimmicks to spice up the game-play. There's teleportation panels and speed boosters, some of which the ghosts can take advantage of too. While the continue system makes it very easy, it's a brilliant place to learn the game mechanics. When you lose your lives, you can choose to continue which restocks your lives and allows you to continue from where you left off. The stages are varied in both appearance and structure, adding a twist to the formula. There are also new larger ghosts, which have powers of their own such as being able to bounce across the screen, or charge fast down a corridor. There's even a final boss to end the game too.
Pac-Attack's game-play is based on Tetris. The shapes can have ghosts or Pac-Man contained in them. So not only do you want to make lines, you want to line up the ghosts, so Pac-Man can come along and eat as many as possible. The ghosts can easily block you from making rows, so you have to be careful when positioning them, so Pac-Man has a nice path to munch as many as possible to make your job easier. There's a standard game type and a 'puzzle' mode where you have a limited amount of Pac-Men to clear all the ghosts.
Pac-Mania gives Pac-Man the ability to jump. This adds a new dimension which you may think would make it easy, but there are far more ghosts which means the option to jump a ghost isn't a viable one when another ghost is following close behind. Some ghosts can jump up to reach you, so you must keep an eye out for those. You can jump over these as long as you jump early. Due to the extremely zoomed in camera, it makes it hard to actually plan your routes and is all too easy to get into impossible situations due to the sheer amount of ghosts. If you lose your lives, you just start that level again, rather than having to start from the beginning.
Pac-Man is pretty much perfect for the Gameboy Advance due to the simple and accessible game-play. You get decent value given that there are multiple games and each one has at least a fair amount of entertainment. Pac-Mania can be quite frustrating at times, and it would have been nice for Pac-Man Arrangement to have difficulty options or the ability to play the new maps using more classic style rules, but you can't complain too much.