Pac & Pal

About Pac & Pal

Pac & Pal (1983) is Namco's third Pac-Man game, a reworking of Super Pac-Man in which Pac-Man flips cards to unlock items while his green companion Miru tries to carry them away, never released in North America.

Pac & Pal in Depth

Pac-Man moves through an enclosed maze in which items are locked behind doors. Running over the face-down cards scattered around the maze flips them to reveal items, which are then unlocked for Pac-Man to eat; items include a Galaxian flagship, a Rally-X car, a trumpet, a snowman and a miniature Pac-Man, all with the same effect. Two items in each maze, matching "S" cards, are power-ups that turn Pac-Man blue and larger, letting him fire a beam with the button to briefly stun the ghosts. Miru, a green creature with a pink bow, tries to pick up unlocked items and carry them to the centre box, and any she delivers before Pac-Man eats them are lost. Clearing the items ends the level, with a larger bonus if Miru takes none; an orange area below the centre box slows the ghosts and hides everything but their eyes. Touching a non-stunned ghost costs a life, but Pac-Man can pass through Miru safely.

The third level and every fourth thereafter is a bonus stage with ten cards and no ghosts: eight show dollar signs, one Miru, which doubles the total, and one Blinky, whose discovery ends the stage at once, though finding him last pays a bigger bonus.

Making Pac & Pal

Namco developed and released it in Japan in July 1983 as its third self-made Pac-Man game, since Midway had produced many sequels in North America with little Namco involvement. With the Pac-Man brand growing in Japan, Namco built it on Super Pac-Man, keeping its style and many mechanics while trying to fix its flaws after that game proved unsuccessful. North American release was abandoned because the market was oversaturated with Pac-Man games. After a few successful months it was a commercial failure and stayed obscure, which has been blamed on its departures from Pac-Man and its limited production. It later appeared in Namco Museum Remix, Virtual Arcade and Megamix, Pac-Man Museum and Pac-Man Museum+. Allgame called it "a travesty", the "worst and weirdest Pac-Man sequel ever", and USgamer's Jeremy Parish said it "hastened the series' demise" but was interesting in hindsight, while Hardcore Gaming 101 praised its experimentation, noting that the series would never experiment this much again.