{"id":21244,"date":"2021-05-21T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T00:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=21244"},"modified":"2021-05-02T02:59:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T02:59:56","slug":"pac-man-99-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/21\/pac-man-99-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Pac-Man 99 (Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Battle Royale games usually pit you against 100 or so other players as you fight to the death with the last one standing the victor.\u00a0 Most of these kinds of games are shooters, and because of that, I never thought I\u2019d play a Battle Royale style game.\u00a0 But a couple of years ago, Nintendo released Tetris 99, which I still play from time to time.\u00a0 Later they released a similar game called Super Mario Bros. 35, which I dabbled in a little bit, but not much (I\u2019m not as big of a fan of the original Super Mario Bros. game as people think I am).\u00a0 But boy they sure got me with their latest \u201899\u2019 Battle Royale style game featuring a classic.\u00a0 This time with Pac-Man 99, where you play the original Pac-Man game against 99 other players!\u00a0 It\u2019s available as a freebie to Nintendo Switch Online users.\u00a0 But how does it work?\u00a0 Well you\u2019ll just have to read on to find out!<\/p>\n

So it plays like the classic original Pac-Man game.\u00a0 Eat dots, avoid ghosts, and gobble power pellets so you can chomp the ghosts.\u00a0 But since you\u2019re playing with 99 others, each time you eat a ghost, you send an obstacle to another player.\u00a0 But they can do the same to you!\u00a0 These obstacles take the form of little white outlined Pac-Men.\u00a0 If you run over them, you\u2019ll slow down a bit.\u00a0 Later on in the round, some of the outlined Pac-Men will be red, and if you hit one of those, you\u2019ll die!\u00a0 Last Pac-Man standing wins.<\/p>\n

They added a few new rules to the original game to keep things interesting, though.\u00a0 Taking a cue form Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, there are lines of sleeping ghosts you can run over, and when you do, you\u2019ll leave a chain behind the ghosts.\u00a0 Then when you eat a power pellet, you can gobble the chain and send a bunch of obstacles to other players.\u00a0 Eating bonus fruit refills dots, power pellets, and sleeping ghosts in the maze, so the game is more about eating those fruits and power pellets rather than just clearing the maze of dots.\u00a0 And like Tetris 99, you can choose how and which other players to attack as well.\u00a0 Anyway, I really liked this game and I recommend you download it if you have a Switch and an online account.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

DLC<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though the game is free, you can only play the one mode.\u00a0 But there is some DLC that gives you other gameplay modes and maze \u2018skins.\u2019\u00a0 You can buy each separately, but can also purchase the whole bunch for 20 bucks, which is what I recommend doing and is what I did, since I\u2019m such a sucker for classic Namco stuff.\u00a0 Anyway, so now I\u2019ll go over all the DLC.<\/p>\n

Game Modes<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can get a few new game modes.\u00a0 One lets you play the main game with friends via Private Matches.\u00a0 Not sure if I\u2019ll be doing that anytime soon.\u00a0 You can also play the main game with all computer opponents in CPU Battle.\u00a0 Try to get as high of a score as you can in Score Attack, and finish mazes without running out of time in Blind Time Attack.<\/p>\n

Maze \u201cSkins\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can also change the graphics in the maze to look like other things.\u00a0 There are some fairly generic ones, but some of these do make reference to other Pac-Man games.\u00a0 Vector just fills in the outlines of the maze to a solid blue, and makes the fruit look more 16-bit.\u00a0 Colorful looks like the first stage in arcade Pac-Man Arrangement.\u00a0 Frame looks like Pac-Man\u2019s Park from Pac-Mania, and Blocks looks like the LEGO Block Town from the same game.\u00a0 Panel Blocks just has solid colored blocks on the floor of the maze, and Igloo is pretty self explanatory.\u00a0 Garden also looks like one of the stages in arcade Pac-Man Arrangement.\u00a0 And last, Log House looks like a cabin, and I like how the top parts of the maze look like windows!<\/p>\n

Classic Namco Themes<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rest of the game \u2018skins\u2019 are based on other classic Namco arcade games.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to describe them all, as there are just so many!\u00a0 But they all use graphics and characters from their respective titles, and try to use as many exclusive sound effects as they can. Although when you eat a power pellet, the enemies still turn into blue ghosts.\u00a0 I do like some of the subtle details they put into these skins. \u00a0For instance, in the Wonder Momo maze, they play the regular theme, but when you eat a power pellet, the music changes to Wonder Momo\u2019s transformation song!\u00a0 Also, when you play with one of these mazes, you\u2019ll get a special icon to use as your profile pic afterwards.\u00a0 I like how they didn\u2019t dumb down the names of the icons either.\u00a0 For instance, the Dig Dug icon is named Taizo Hori, and the Baraduke icon is Masayo Toby.\u00a0 But they did name some of the maze just \u201cNamco Classic\u201d whatever, instead of the actual name of the game, which I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Anyway, here are a list of the rest of the Namco Classic maze skins.<\/p>\n

New Rally-X<\/p>\n

SkyKid<\/p>\n

The Tower of Druaga<\/p>\n

Mappy<\/p>\n

Galaga<\/p>\n

Dig Dug<\/p>\n

The Genji and the Heike Clans<\/p>\n

Yokai Douchuuki<\/p>\n

Dragon Buster<\/p>\n

The Legend of Valkyrie<\/p>\n

Cosmo Gang: The Video<\/p>\n

Metro Cross<\/p>\n

Rolling Thunder<\/p>\n

Wonder Momo<\/p>\n

Xevious<\/p>\n

Baraduke<\/p>\n

The Return of Ishtar<\/p>\n

Dragon Spirit<\/p>\n

ToyPop<\/p>\n

Bravoman<\/p>\n

And those are all the skins!\u00a0 Only problem I have with them is that some of them are a bit distracting and make it hard to see enemies and dots.\u00a0 So it\u2019s best to stick with the original skin.\u00a0 Although I did get my best score while playing on the Mappy maze!\u00a0 Another problem is that even though you get a bunch of things, I still think the DLC is a bit too pricey at 20 bucks.\u00a0 It\u2019s just Pac-Man after all.\u00a0 One minor problem is that since you only get one life, a round can end pretty quickly, but that\u2019s just how the game goes.\u00a0 One thing I really like about the game is how good I am at it.\u00a0 I can rarely get high up in rankings in Tetris 99, but I frequently get high rankings on Pac-Man 99.\u00a0 I even got number two once, which I have picture proof below.\u00a0 One of these days I\u2019ll get Number One!\u00a0 I need to play it more, though.\u00a0 Haven\u2019t fired it up in a while!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pac-Man 99 is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 Pac-Man can eat ghosts and they turn into eyes and dash back to their hideout.\u00a0 Some of the skins have sound effects that sound like muffled \u201carghs\u201d and such.\u00a0 But that\u2019s about as violent as it gets.\u00a0 But come on, it\u2019s Pac-Man!\u00a0 This is one of the defining games of my childhood, if not THE defining game of my childhood.\u00a0 And I think I turned out OK.\u00a0 Plus, whenever parents ask me which video games to start their kids on, the first ones I recommend are arcade classics like Pac-Man.\u00a0 Worked for me, anyway!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Battle Royale games usually pit you against 100 or so other players as you fight to the death with the last one standing the victor.\u00a0 Most of these kinds of games are shooters, and because of that, I never thought I\u2019d play a Battle Royale style game.\u00a0 But a couple of years ago, Nintendo released […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21254,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21244\/revisions\/21254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}