The authenticity of the port is laudable, but against its competition it can't be considered anything more than average.
The final product was both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that Pac-Man for the NeoGeo Pocket Color is an arcade-perfect translation, with proper ghost patterns and sound effects intact. Yes, even the maze's infamous safe spot has been left in. The bad news is that the game sports only the original Pac-Man, no save feature, no multiplayer, and is extremely difficult to control. While the control stick on the NeoGeo Pocket Color works quite well for most of its games, it turns Pac-Man into a complete nightmare. It's simply too sensitive, and trying to maneuver your way out of a tight situation quickly becomes an exercise in frustration and futility. Trying to eat ghosts while a coveted power pellet stays in effect is a massive chore.
This obstacle can be overcome in the form of a small device which locks the diagonals on the control stick. That little change makes all the difference. Suddenly, a seemingly broken rendition of Pac-Man becomes playable, and the majority of the game's issues are solved. The biggest catch is that this comes boxed with the game, and is nigh-impossible to find separately. Given the availability of Pac-Man ports on the market, it's doubtful anyone would be willing to spend the time and money looking for this part unless he or she happens to be the hardest of hardcore Pac-Man or NeoGeo fans.
But that doesn't fix the display issues. From the get-go, the game offers you the choice of two screen options. One of them is a pixel-perfect view of the maze. However, due to the limited display size, the screen has to constantly scroll and you can't keep sight of the ghosts until they're relatively close by. The other provides a zoomed-out view of the maze, allowing you to keep up with all the action but sacrificing a great bit of detail in the process. The latter option is the more playable choice, but it's hard to understand why there's no way to change views in the middle of the game.
Even at the time this was released, there were other versions of Pac-Man on the market that boasted more features, the most important of which are multiplayer and the ability to save your high scores. That being said, it's not a terrible game by any means. The authenticity of the port is laudable, but against its competition it can't be considered anything more than average.