toacosmo's Review of Pac-Man Collection

A great compilation of some of the more prolific Pac-Man games.

User Rating: 7.6 | Pac-Man Collection GBA

By toacosmo | Review Date: July 2, 2007

If you have never played a Pac-Man game, then I, along with many people cannot consider you a serious gamer. I don't care if you've finished every Metroid game with a 100% rating, or finished Halo on Legendary without dying once. My 60 year old aunt plays Pac-Man, and it's the only game she enjoys If you've never played Pac-Man, then you have never played what is probably the single most prolific game in history. I realize that that's an extremely strong statement, especially for what would today be considered a casual game, but all you have to do is examine modern Pop-culture to see what kind of an impact Pac-Man has had on society. I recently stayed at a hotel in Disney World called Pop Century where my building had Pac-Man and several ghosts plastered all over the outside walls that looked out over the pool. Take a look at almost any TV show and chances are at least one episode has at least one Pac-Man reference of some kind. Now Namco is releasing Pac-Man, 2 of its better successors, and a brand new game called Pac-Man Arrangement, in one convenient package on the GBA. So does this compilation do justice to the Pac-Man name, or does it fall in with the likes of Pac-Land and Professor Pac-Man? Let's find out.

Aside from the fact that they're in the same game cartridge, these games are unconnected to each other. As such, I'll review them separately.

Pac-Man:
The original Pac-Man. Because I have a moral obligation not to review any games that would be considered "classics" I'll just say that as far as the original Pac-Man goes, this is it. Actually, I will say one more thing: You can either have the full screen, or a scrolling screen. The full screen is annoyingly small, and the scrolling screen is considerably harder. They really should have made the screen slightly better. Other than that, though, it's freaking Pac-Man.

Pac-Attack:
Probably the strangest on this cartridge, Pac-Attack is just a dumb Tetris clone. The only interesting thing about it is that it adds Pac-Man into the mix; you have ghosts that prevent you from taking out rows of blocks, and every so often you have a Pac-Man block that eats the ones that are on his set path. You can manipulate the path by building blocks so that they create a path. Like I said earlier, it's just a Tetris rip-off, however, it is one of the more interesting Pac-Man gimmick games.

Pac-Mania:
One of the more boring Pac-Man remakes. By adding the ability yo jump, they rendered the game fairly easy early on. As you get further into it, however, the ghosts gain the ability to jump as well, so it makes the game a little more challenging. Another new feature that this one adds is the camera. You view the game at an angle, which makes it difficult to see the ghosts. Aside from the graphics, which do look pretty nice, this game really isn't anything other that a broken version of Pac-Man.

Pac-Man Arrangement:
Probably the best game on the cartridge, Pac-Man Arrangement adds a new level of depth to the series. While the infinite-continue-from-right-where-you-left-off continue system makes this the easiest version on the cartridge, the power-ups, new arenas, and varied ghosts more than make up for that. It's more or less a remake of the original Pac-Man, except it uses the scrolling view, rather than the original full view. The stages are varied in both appearance and structure, adding a new layer if interest to the formula. The ghosts have all been renamed, and have new abilities. Or rather, they have one new ability, but that new ability is that they can gain power ups. There are also big ghosts, that have powers ranging from jumping across the screen to ramming you from the other side of the arena. Of course, you have new abilities to fight them with, including jump portals that can take you from one corner to the other, to speed arrows that allow you to stun ghosts temporarily. It even adds a final boss to the mix. I could go on and on about this game, but what it boils down to is that it's easily the best Pac-Man remake in recent years. Even though you can finish it in just a few hours, this game alone makes the compilation worth getting.

Overall you're getting some of the more interesting Pac-Man titles, plus a great new game for a budget price (I picked my copy up for 9.99 new). If you have any interest at all in the Pac-Man series, then you will almost definitely have a blast with this title.

Pac-Man Collection

A great compilation of some of the more prolific Pac-Man games.

I'm not this old.

Still So Many Dots to Eat!