{"id":22351,"date":"2022-06-17T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T00:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22351"},"modified":"2022-06-06T20:35:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T20:35:17","slug":"welcome-to-the-pac-man-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/17\/welcome-to-the-pac-man-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Pac-Man Museum+!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Welcome to the Pac-Man Museum+!\u00a0 My name is Cary, and I\u2019ll be your tour guide today.\u00a0 Oh man, wouldn\u2019t it be cool if there really was a Pac-Man Museum and I worked there?\u00a0 I\u2019d be in heaven.\u00a0 Anyway, Pac-Man Museum+ is a collection of arcade and console games featuring Pac-Man.\u00a0 Kind of like the Namco Museums, just with Pac only.\u00a0 It\u2019s available on most current consoles and PC, but I got the PS4 version because it was cheapest at 20 bucks.\u00a0 Plus it was a physical version, which I always like.\u00a0 Although I\u2019m tempted to get it on Switch as well so I could have all those games portable.\u00a0 And I hear it\u2019s also on Xbox Game Pass as of this writing, so if you have an Xbox One or X\/S, check it out!\u00a0 All right, so come along with me on the tour of the 14 games on this collection!<\/p>\n

So first of all, you may be wondering what the \u201cPlus\u201d is for in Pac-Man Museum+.\u00a0 Well that\u2019s because there was an original Pac-Man Museum back on the Xbox 360 and PS3.\u00a0 I talked about it here way back when<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 The main difference is this new version has more games.\u00a0 The old game had less than ten if you don\u2019t count the DLC.\u00a0 But this new one has 14 games total.\u00a0 Granted it\u2019s not THAT much more, but a few good choices in extra games makes a world of difference.\u00a0 The other big change is that when the original game came out, the Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures cartoon was still running, so in the game you could unlock items and characters to put in cartoon Pac-Man\u2019s room.\u00a0 Boy I\u2019m glad that era of Pac-Man is over, because that cartoon sucked!\u00a0 But in Plus, you unlock items you can use to decorate your very own Pac-Man themed arcade!\u00a0 OK, so take a collection of games from my number one favorite game of all time (Pac-Man), and add decoration gameplay gimmicks from my second favorite game of all time (Animal Crossing), and that\u2019s how you win me over, Namco.\u00a0 Oh man, what if Namco made an Animal Crossing style game with their characters?\u00a0 I\u2019d never leave the house!\u00a0 Anyway, let\u2019s go over the games in this collection first now.<\/p>\n

Pac-Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not much can be said about Pac-Man that you can\u2019t already read about on the Internet, so instead I\u2019ll tell you about the first time I played Pac-Man myself. It\u2019s actually the first arcade game I\u2019ve ever played.\u00a0 The first time I saw it was actually on TV. I was about five years old and my dad and I were watching the news. They showed some guys building these rectangular machines. I didn\u2019t know what they were, but they were big and yellow, had a lighted part on top, and you put money in them. I first thought it was some kind of soda or vending machine as they were about the same size. But a few months later, my mom and I were grocery shopping at Kroger and at the checkout lanes; they had that same machine I saw on TV! I asked my mom if I could go look at it, and she said yes. Turns out it was a Pac-Man machine, and my mom gave me a quarter to try it. I was mesmerized at how you could move the little yellow character on screen, and I talked about the colorful ghosts, blue maze, and funny sound effects all the way home. I wonder if my mom knew what kind of monster she created that fateful trip. And that\u2019s how I first played Pac-Man!<\/p>\n

Super Pac-Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is actually the \u2018true\u2019 sequel to Pac-Man, as it was made by Namco. Even though gameplay-wise, there are better Pac games out there, Super Pac-Man is one of my favorite Pac-Man games. Why? Well, because it\u2019s so bonkers, and because I\u2019m really good at it. I usually try not to be boastful about my video game skills, because I know there are plenty of people who are way better than me. But with Super Pac-Man, I can say with confidence that I could probably either beat you at it, or at least hold my own really well. When I was a kid, the Wal-Mart near our house had a couple of arcade machines near the entrance (a lot of places did that back then). Some of those arcade games included Pengo, SkyKid, and Victory Road. But the game that was there the longest was Super Pac-Man. If we were there and I was being good, my mom would usually give me a quarter to play Super Pac-Man either before or after we shopped. Since we got a lot of groceries at that Wal-Mart, I played Super Pac-Man quite a bit and got really good at it!<\/p>\n

Pac & Pal<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one was never actually released in the US, but it\u2019s rumored there was a prototype called Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp that replaced Pac\u2019s \u201cPal\u201d with his dog from the 80\u2019s cartoon show. Pac & Pal plays a lot like Super Pac-Man, in that you must flip cards to open doors in the maze to nab the fruit. But you have to watch out because a \u201cPal\u201d can take the fruit and bring it back to the ghost\u2019s hideout, never to be seen again. This Pal is round and green and has a bow on her head, and her name is Miru, apparently. Although the game calls her \u201cMil\u201d but I think that\u2019s a translation error.\u00a0 There are also no power pellets. You eat things like Galaxians or Rally-X cars or trumpets and \u2018shoot\u2019 out beams or smoke or notes at the ghosts to get points temporarily. It\u2019s a really odd one.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as much fun either, so in a way I can understand why it wasn\u2019t brought to the US back then.<\/p>\n

Pac-Land<\/strong><\/p>\n

Namco may try and hide it, but Pac-Land is really based on the early 80\u2019s Pac-Man cartoon show. Has the same music and everything. They even changed some of the graphics in the US version to make it look even more like the cartoon. Pac-Land is a 2-D platformer, and it came out a full year before Super Mario Bros. (and looks better graphically, too). But that\u2019s not to say it\u2019s better than Mario\u2019s game. I never really liked Pac-Land because the controls were very stiff. And in the arcade, it had no joystick, just buttons. They toted the button only scheme would simplify controls, but it really didn\u2019t. So while Super Mario Bros. may have gotten 2-D platforming right, it certainly wasn\u2019t the first one ever.<\/p>\n

Pac-Mania<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was pretty excited to see Pac-Mania in arcades because there hadn\u2019t been a new Pac game since 1984, and this came out in 1987-1988. For the time, Pac-Mania had cool 3-D isometric graphics, a catchy soundtrack, and a neat new gameplay mechanic: you could jump over the ghosts! It\u2019s actually one of my favorite Pac games to this day!\u00a0 The version of this game on this museum is the Japan version, so no stage select or high score name entry.\u00a0 Why not put in both versions, Namco?<\/p>\n

Pac-Attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

Initially, I was pretty excited for Pac-Attack, too, as it was the first new Pac-Man game since Pac-Mania, so that was like a five year plus timespan. Pac-Attack was not an arcade game, but a console title for the SNES, Genesis, and handheld games at the time. It was a Tetris-like puzzle game, but unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t very good. But did you know that Pac-Attack is just a reworked version of an earlier arcade Namco puzzler called Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle? Earlier, Namco released a mechanical light gun game called Cosmo Gang where you shot at aliens who would creep from the top of the field to capture some boxes on the bottom. If they brought all the boxes back to their spaceship, you\u2019d lose. I know they brought that to the US, because I remember playing it somewhere a long time ago. They made two video games with the Cosmo Gang characters. One was a Galaga-like game called Cosmo Gang: The Game, and the other was the aforementioned puzzler. I don\u2019t think those appeared in the US, though. Cosmo Gang characters appear in other games, like Dig Dug Arrangement (arcade), and Point Blank 2.<\/p>\n

In Pac-Man World 2, you could collect hidden tokens that would unlock classic Pac-Man games you could play, and one of them was Pac-Attack. However, the cool thing was it was the Namco Anthology version of Pac-Attack! On the PSOne, Namco in Japan released a few Namco Anthology titles. They were like the Namco Museums, but featured console titles with original and updated versions of those classics. The Pac-Man World team put the improved Namco Anthology version of Pac-Attack on Pac-Man World 2, which is a much better game than the one we\u2019ve seen on other collections. That was actually the coolest part of Pac-Man World 2, and why I feel the PMW team really cared about the games they made. I wish Namco would\u2019ve put the Namco Anthology version of Pac-Attack on Pac-Man Museum+!<\/p>\n

Pac-In-Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is another console game.\u00a0 It was on the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, and PC.\u00a0 You play as Pac-Man who has been sent back in time by the Ghost Witch, which turns him into a Pac-Boy with shorter arms and legs.\u00a0 It\u2019s a 2-D platformer with emphasis on item usage, as you can collect things like a rope for swinging or a hammer for breaking things.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this game is not very good as the controls are too squirrely and there\u2019s this weird jumping mechanic where your first jump is dinky but the second time you jump it\u2019s twice as high.\u00a0 But in a way, I\u2019m still glad it\u2019s on here because I never had the console version of this game, just the PC one because it was cheaper.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll be glad to spend some more time with this one.\u00a0 Plus, even though it\u2019s not a very good game, it made me think of other 16-bit games I liked, and that was one of my favorite eras of gaming, so at least there\u2019s that.\u00a0 Did you know Pac-In-Time wasn\u2019t originally a Pac-Man game?\u00a0 It was first a European game called Fury of the Furries, and Namco had now defunct Mindscape change some of the graphics and music for it to be Pac-Man instead.\u00a0 Not sure what they were thinking, but it\u2019s true!<\/p>\n

Pac-Man Arrangement Arcade Version<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh man I am so glad this game is on here, as it\u2019s another one of my favorite Pac games.\u00a0 Back in the mid 90s, Namco made some arcade games with three classics you could play (Galaga, Rally-X, Dig Dug, Mappy, Xevious, and Pac-Man) spread across two volumes.\u00a0 You could play the original games or Arranged versions of those games with update graphics and other improvements or tweaks.\u00a0 Pac-Man Arrangement had better graphics and sound, plus a two player option.\u00a0 Even the dots were animated!\u00a0 There were new power-ups for you, but also for the ghosts!\u00a0 There was a new ghost they added here who was yellow and wore glasses.\u00a0 In the US he was oddly named \u201cKinky\u201d but in Japan he was \u201cKinzo.\u201d\u00a0 The version of the arcade game on this museum is the Japanese version, so that\u2019s how I know that.\u00a0 Anyway, he starts out of the ghost hideout blue so you can eat him, but if he touches another one of the ghosts, he\u2019ll give them a power-up. Blinky grows horns and can charge after you.\u00a0 Pinky grows rabbit ears and can jump closer to your location.\u00a0 Inky gets sunglasses and can create a mirror image of himself.\u00a0 And Clyde gets fat and poops out dots.\u00a0 It\u2019s really a lot of fun and I played it a ton in the arcade and I\u2019m glad it\u2019s been on a few home collections as well, including this one.<\/p>\n

Pac-Man Arrangement Console Version<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m really glad they differentiated between these two versions.\u00a0 Some say they\u2019re the same game, but they\u2019re really not.\u00a0 Originally, this Arrangement was made for the PSP.\u00a0 It has bright, toy-like graphics and some of the elements from the arcade Arrangement came over, but it\u2019s still a different game.\u00a0 There is no \u201cKinky,\u201d and the ghosts don\u2019t get power-ups this time.\u00a0 It\u2019s fine, just no where near as good as the arcade one.<\/p>\n

Pac-Man Championship Edition<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m also really glad this game is on here because it\u2019s another one of my favorite Pac games.\u00a0 In fact, this game was the reason why I got an Xbox 360 in the first place!\u00a0 It\u2019s a little disappointing that other versions of this game aren\u2019t on here as well, like the DX version or the sequel.\u00a0 But I like the original the best anyway so I\u2019m still happy.<\/p>\n

Pac-Motos<\/strong><\/p>\n

So on the Wii, Namco released a couple of arcade collections called Namco Museum Remix and Megamix.\u00a0 They had a few classic arcade games as well as updates of some classics that feature enhanced graphics and sometimes even motion controls.\u00a0 And they all squeezed Pac-Man in there somewhere.\u00a0 Yeah even the Galaga Remix game had Pac-Man rolling around a slide in space as you shot down Galaga bugs by aiming the Wii remote at the screen.\u00a0 Anyway, Motos was originally an arcade game where you moved a spaceship around a playfield and tried to bump enemies off the stage.\u00a0 So it was kind of like bumper cars in space.\u00a0 In Pac-Motos, you do the same thing except you are Pac-Man bumping objects off the stage.\u00a0 You can sometimes get tickets that you can use on the next round to power you up, but otherwise it\u2019s kind of the same game.\u00a0 It\u2019s still fairly fun, though.\u00a0 Not sure why they couldn\u2019t add other \u201cremix\u201d titles from the Wii collections on here, like Rally-X Remix or Gator Panic Remix.\u00a0 And yeah, they had Pac-Man in those ones, too.<\/p>\n

Pac N Roll Remix<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the DS, one of the Pac-Man games that came out for it was Pac N Roll.\u00a0 You used the touch screen to roll Pac-Man around like a track ball as you rolled Pac-Man around the top screen, eating dots and avoiding ghosts and obstacles.\u00a0 They made a remix version of it for the Wii collections, which just added motion controls.\u00a0 This is the same version except without the motion controls.\u00a0 You just use the control stick to move Pac-Man around.\u00a0 It\u2019s an all right game.\u00a0 Kind of a mix of Super Monkey Ball and Marble Madness mixed with Pac-Man.\u00a0 My personal favorite DS Pac-Man was Pac-Pix, where you drew pictures of Pac-Man and they would then come to life and eat the ghosts.<\/p>\n

Pac-Man Battle Royale<\/strong><\/p>\n

When this first came out in arcades, I tried to look everywhere for it.\u00a0 It took nearly a whole year before I finally found it.\u00a0 And now it\u2019s in nearly every arcade I go to!\u00a0 It uses a lot of Championship Edition\u2019s assets to make a four player competitive Pac-Man game where you all run around the maze, eating dots and avoiding ghosts.\u00a0 If you eat a power pellet, you can eat the other players as well!\u00a0 Whoever is left standing at the end of five rounds, wins.\u00a0 It\u2019s an all right game, but honestly, Pac-Man Vs. is a much better multiplayer experience.\u00a0 Too bad that one\u2019s not on here.\u00a0 Supposedly, Namco just released a new version of this game in arcades called Pac-Man Battle Royale: Chompionship Edition, but I haven\u2019t seen it yet.<\/p>\n

Pac-Man 256<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was originally a mobile game made by the same folks who did Crossy Road.\u00a0 I even reviewed it here<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the better mobile Pac games so it\u2019s no surprise that Namco had them do a console version.\u00a0 So as you may know, when you get to maze 256 in the original Pac-Man, the maze glitches out and the game ends.\u00a0 So in Pac-Man 256, you are constantly moving forward, eating dots and ghosts in the maze while the glitch slowly moves forward and you must keep one step ahead of it.\u00a0 So it really is like a cross between Pac-Man and Crossy Road.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get the console version because I already had it on mobile, so I\u2019m glad it\u2019s on this collection as well.<\/p>\n

And those are all the games!\u00a0 I\u2019d like to talk more about the arcade you can design, though.\u00a0 As you play the game, you\u2019ll earn coins you can use to either play other arcade games or buy furniture for your arcade.\u00a0 You can also get mini achievements by playing the games to unlock new furniture.\u00a0 But even though you have to use these coins, you\u2019re never in any danger of running out, as you always earn more coins by playing the games anyway.\u00a0 You can place a vending machine in your arcade to buy more stuff, or a jukebox so you can play music you unlock from the different arcade games.\u00a0 You can also unlock floors and wallpapers (I love how one wallpaper looks like the maze from the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man).\u00a0 Another thing you can put in your arcade is a Gashapon machine where you can buy figurines to display as well.\u00a0 These figurines include Pac-Man characters, the ghosts, fruit, and gold and silver variations of each one.<\/p>\n

So that leads me to one of the problems I have with this game.\u00a0 Of course I know that Namco can\u2019t really release some of the Pac-Man games to this collection because they didn\u2019t make them, like Professor Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, and Baby Pac-Man.\u00a0 There\u2019s another glaring omission which you probably know, but we\u2019ll get to that in a bit.\u00a0 But even so, you can still unlock figurines of those characters!\u00a0 They change the names of them a bit, like calling them Professor Pac, Pac-Boy, Pac-Sis, and such.\u00a0 Pac-Man\u2019s dog is here, too, and he was originally named Chomp Chomp from the cartoon, but in this game they call him Pac-Buddy!\u00a0 Oh man, copyrights are weird!<\/p>\n

So of course the glaring omission on this collection is Ms. Pac-Man.\u00a0 But that\u2019s because Namco technically doesn\u2019t have the rights to this game.\u00a0 I won\u2019t go into the whole story here, as this blog is getting long enough, but they even took the trouble to edit Ms. Pac-Man\u2019s sprite in the games she\u2019s in here so she doesn\u2019t look like Ms. Pac-Man anymore.\u00a0 So in games like Pac-Land, Pac-Attack, and Pac-In-Time, they gave her a purple brimmed hat instead of a bow, and now she\u2019s called Pac-Mom.\u00a0 So is she Pac-Man\u2019s Mom or the mom of Pac-Man\u2019s kids?\u00a0 There\u2019s even a figurine of her, too.\u00a0 It\u2019s crazy.\u00a0 On one hand, the people who do have the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, AtGames, should just let Namco have the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, as Namco would make much better use of her than they would.\u00a0 But on the other hand, whatever amount of money AtGames would want, Namco should just pay them to get the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, as they\u2019ve already made billions of dollars from that, and would continue to make billions in the future.\u00a0 But what do I know?\u00a0 I\u2019m just a dumb Pac-Man fan.\u00a0 There is one game where they forgot to change Ms. Pac-Man\u2019s appearance, but I won\u2019t tell you which one it is!<\/p>\n

I do wish some other console games would\u2019ve been on here, too, like Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, which was a really unique one.\u00a0 But Ms. Pac-Man was in that game as well.\u00a0 Other problems I have with this collection is that you can\u2019t choose how many lives and other options in each game, you can only buy furniture you\u2019ve unlocked via achievements, they only use the Japanese versions of the arcade and some console games, and I hear the Xbox version has input lag.\u00a0 But otherwise this is a great collection and has a lot of Pac-Man games I love.\u00a0 So thanks for taking the tour with me of Pac-Man Museum+.\u00a0 What are your favorite Pac-games?\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Pac-Man Museum+!\u00a0 My name is Cary, and I\u2019ll be your tour guide today.\u00a0 Oh man, wouldn\u2019t it be cool if there really was a Pac-Man Museum and I worked there?\u00a0 I\u2019d be in heaven.\u00a0 Anyway, Pac-Man Museum+ is a collection of arcade and console games featuring Pac-Man.\u00a0 Kind of like the Namco […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22351","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\/22351","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=22351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22353,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22351\/revisions\/22353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}