Pac-Mania

About Pac-Mania

Pac-Mania (1987) is Namco's scrolling, oblique-view Pac-Man directed by series creator Tōru Iwatani, which let Pac-Man jump over ghosts and was the last new Pac-Man arcade game for nearly a decade.

Pac-Mania in Depth

Seen from an oblique angle, the game plays much like the original: Pac-Man eats every pellet in a maze while avoiding the ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde and a fifth, Sue, and Power Pellets turn them blue so he can eat them and send them home. The mazes now scroll both horizontally and vertically, and some wrap around at the sides. The big addition is a jump that carries Pac-Man over ghosts. Later rounds bring two new ghosts who can jump too: Funky, whom Pac-Man can only just clear, and Spunky, who cannot be jumped at all. Take too long over a stage and Pac-Man's jump steadily weakens until it is gone.

Bonus items appear after a set number of pellets, among them Red Power Pellets, which double the value of blue ghosts until Pac-Man loses a life, and Green Power Pellets, which make him faster for a while. There are four mazes, Block Town, Pac-Man's Park, Sandbox Land and Jungly Steps, cycled in order; the player can start in any of the first three, with a score bonus for starting in Pac-Man's Park or Sandbox Land and clearing its first round. Depending on the settings, the game ends after 11 rounds, 25 rounds or never.

Making Pac-Mania

Namco developed the game under Pac-Man creator Tōru Iwatani and released it in 1987, with Atari Games handling North America; Game Machine listed it as Japan's fifth most successful table arcade unit of December 1987. Critics praised its originality and play. In 1988 Teque Software's Peter Harrap and Shaun Hollingworth converted it for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX and ZX Spectrum for Grandslam, followed by X68000 and MSX2 versions in 1989, an Acorn Archimedes port and Tengen's NES and Genesis versions in 1990 and 1991. Entertainment Weekly gave the Genesis version a B−, and Poland's Top Secret gave the NES version full marks for its music, graphics, comic cut scenes and jumping. The arcade game has since appeared in Namco Museum collections, Pac-Man Museum+ and Hamster's Arcade Archives.