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> Results: Pac-Man Pinball Advance
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by Cary Woodham
May 09, 2005
The Pacﾒs round. He belongs in a pinball game, right? Is the yellow ball a pinball wizard or a full tilt?
Reviewed for GBA.
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Scroll down for our Kid Factor.
Pac-Man's a seasoned dot eater and ghost chomper, but did you know he's no stranger to pinball games, too? Back in the early 80's, when Namco didn't have an office in the US, they licensed Pac-Man to Midway. At the time, Midway was also a pinball manufacturer as well as a maker of arcade games. They had a hit on their hands with Pac-Man so they decided to see if he'd be big in the pinball world as well. Two pinball games with Pac-Man were made. Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man was a full-blown mechanical pinball machine, while the unique Baby Pac-Man combines arcade maze play with a real pinball table. Both were not nearly as successful as the original game. More recently, you can download a Pac-Man Pinball cell phone game from Namco. Now he's bumping around on the GBA with Pac-Man Pinball Advance!
There's a story here about Professor Pac-Man making a Pac-Finder and ghosts kidnapping Pac's friends, but none of that is important. You don't need a story or reason to send Pac-Man bumping and rolling around a pinball table. In this game, you have all the standard pinball items: flippers, ramps, spinners, bumpers (shaped like Pookas from Dig Dug), etc. But since Pac-Man's the ball, you also do typical Pac-Man things as well. You chomp dots scattered around the table, snag power pellets and bump into ghosts for bonus points while also nabbing fruit for the high score. When you rescue your friends trapped in the pinball table, Ms. Pac-Man comes out in ball form to help her hubby with some multi-ball action!
Graphics are fairly decent and the sound effects are arcade authentic. Unfortunately, aside from some clips of the classic intro theme, the rest of the music sounds like a dirge. It's pinball, so play control is easy to learn. The control pad and the buttons activate the left and right flippers, and L and R nudge the table (nudge all you want, it never tilts). Even though the play control is good, the ball physics are not. You can see ball physics at work in a video pinball game when you try and aim the ball into a ramp by hitting the ball at a certain point on the flipper. When a game has good pinball physics, you can hit it into the desired ramp flawlessly, just like getting the hang of a real pinball table. But in Pac-Man Pinball Advance, it's very difficult to do this. Actually, very few pinball games do ball physics very well. Must be hard to program, maybe. The only other bad thing about Pac-Man Pinball Advance is that there are only two tables to pick from, and both are not very interesting. Oh sure, the manual says there are four tables, but two of them are the same as the other tables, just with different graphics. The game doesn't save high scores either.
Overall, Pac-Man Pinball is decidedly average due to the lack of variety and loopy ball physics. But, it's only 20 dollars, so it's still not too terribly bad if you want a quick pinball diversion. It certainly doesn't dethrone Pokémon Pinball and Sonic Pinball Party as the best pinball games on the Game Boy Advance.
Pac-Man and pinball are two things as clean as a whistle as far as video games are concerned. No violence, no gore, no questionable content. Kids will quickly get the hang of the easy pinball interface, but they may become bored just as quickly with the lack of gameplay variety. A good kid's game, but it's not the best.
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> Results: Pac-Man Pinball Advance
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