To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, if you build a better Pac-Man, they will beat a path to your door. - Lady Bug review on ClassicGaming.com
If you're wondering, I wrote that review on Lady Bug, and it's true. Every Tom, Dick, and Yoshi has been attempting to recreate the rabid fervor that claimed this country and Japan in the early 1980's. Lord knows, it inspired one of the worst albums and songs known to man by Buckner & Garcia, Pac-Man Fever. But for some reason, the little yellow pizza that loved to eat and was unfortunately initially named Puck-Man grew to stardom, with his own merchandising, Man of the Year for MAD Magazine in 1983, and a craptastic Atari 2600 port. And everyone for a long time tried to emulate it, from Mouse Trap to Lady Bug to Pepper II to Pooyan*. But there hasn't been any real improvements to Pac-Man since they put him in drag with a bow-tie on his head and a Mariyn Monroe birthmark, and applied lipstick to him in Ms. Pac-Man.**
Well, the next great Pac-Man game is here, and guess what? It's the first true sequel to Pac-Man, and it's Pac-Man Championship Edition, otherwise known as Pac-Man CE or, more accurately, Pac-Man 2. This baby was overseen in its development by none other than Toru Iwatani himself.
The gameplay itself is unchanged from the original: eat dots, eat fruit, avoid ghosts, turn the tables on ghosts by eating power pellets and eating them. However, this version is fiendishly clever in revamping gameplay.
For one, a level is never complete. There is no way to escape being eaten by eating the last dot and moving on to the next level. The maze is now invisibly split into two halves, and eating all of the dots on one half causes a fruit to appear on the other side. In order to replenish the dots, the fruit must be eaten, thereby ending the optionality of eating a bonus fruit from the original. The fruits on either side advance independently, so it is possible, though highly difficult, to have a cherry level on one side while advancing to the crown on the next. The other major difference is that eating another power pellet while the previous one's effect is still active does not reset the ghost scoring advance.
>
These are important as it stresses the other, biggest change: the timer. Pac-Man CE is all about speed. In the original Pac games, you could wander around an empty maze and eat casually. This is no longer the case. Since there is a fixed time limit (5 or 10 minutes, depending on the game mode) - and you receive a Pac-Man every 20,000 points instead of just a one time extra Pac at 10,000 - you're encouraged/forced to finish mazes faster and more bravely. Since you're less penalized for dying - you spawn at your death point now, instead of a set place - it makes the game more frantic and bold. While a time limit may seem constraining, it actually doesn't feel as such.
The game to some may seem pricey at $10 (800 Microsoft Points), but I have yet to find someone who didn't try the demo and not buy the game immediately afterward. If there is any caveat, it is the fact there seems to be patterns in the gameplay, though one may as well consider it a throwback to the original. Try it - you'll buy it.
(*Okay, Pooyan isn't a maze game. I just wanted to say Pooyan.) (**Oh, come on. You didn't think Ms. Pac-Man was a real woman, did you?)
