Pac-Man Is A Very Weird Series | The Pac is Back, But He Never Left

foreign [Music] from being accused to killing the video game industry in 1983 to having not one but two notable retail releases in 2022 mere months apart we gotta hand it to him Pac-Man has certainly had quite the vast history I mean it probably goes without saying right over 40 years and he's still relevant dude I'm still waiting for a sequel to Croc 2. you see the thing with Pac-Man is this is yet another one of those franchises where you think you know what this little yellow guy is all about and I'm gonna call you a big fat liar if you state such a claim out loud because that is not true thanks to the recent release of Pac-Man Museum plus and Pac-Man World repack uh thank you by the way to Bandai Namco for providing your review code for the PC version the physical switch version and this really cool choco kin figure they can get with the physical game that can also that's pretty cool there has been so much interest in this rejuvenated franchise and I am all here for it you can you can call this a care package and I figure what better time than now to let everyone know if you didn't know that Pac-Man is an absolutely insane franchise to be fair when you're as long running of a franchise as Pac-Man and you're somehow not in the pit of irrelevance like Pitfall Frogger and I don't know Arrow the acrobat I guess it's expected to see this little yellow LED get stretched as thin as possible without many repercussions because like who cares if Pac-Man Party didn't sell millions just re-released the arcade game next week and recoup the costs it'll be fine but on this journey we got a bunch of strange arcade games that completely changed up the typical Pac-Man formula there are some puzzle games that are thrown in there too of the tetris and the drawing varieties there's a car racer because why not you're not successful unless you have a car racer there's Miss Pac-Man who not only has her own fully fledged console game but also a very intense legal history as to why she's currently being held captive and replaced with a body double and also at some point they gave Pac-Man teeth I hate it I hate it so much hashtag not my pack over 40 years of games to check out I will admit I haven't played every single one I know I'm a big fraud but I did pick out a whole bunch of the highlights so let's take a look at some of the Good The Bad and The ungodly Abominations that Namco decided to release for money that they expected you to buy for some reason it's a it's a weird franchise [Music] time that Pac-Man was ported to Google that was free uh and that was pretty cool I will admit that one was cool ah Puck man how can anybody forget about puckman is it really any surprise that Namco would change his name to Pac-Man after gaining popularity there were probably too many instances of people altering the arcade science to say something really naughty like yuck man obviously that arcade classic is what most people's minds go to when you first hear the name makes sense it's only one of the most popular games ever let alone from the 1980s pack was one of the very first ever proper characters in a video game that people can attach themselves to so naturally this led to cartoons cereals merchandise oh oh God and of course many more video games Namco really took it upon themselves to just mess with the formula at every single chance that they got when it came to straight ports I mean of course the original has been ported everywhere there's a version on NES and on Game Boy if you move ahead a few generations of course we got multiple ports of it just on the switch alone and how can we forget about the classic Atari 2600 version Oh my God games will never look better than this you know pac-mania now things are slower isometric and you can jump now uh cool Blinky the slow absent-minded one hell yeah dude same here super Pac-Man now you're getting keys to unlock doors and not only get fruit but also these super special power pellets that make you big and the ghosts thin uh oh we got pack and pal next to this one you have a little friend roaming around with you and while you're out here flipping over cards that revealed doors that lead to the fruits that are on the cards that you just flipped over maybe the pal will come in and grab the item for you so you have a friend you can trust and also there's a there's a freeze ray move what uh Pac-Man Pac-Man plus uh the one arcade game that's too risky to include in Pac-Man Museum plus which is crazy because the chairs three of the same words in this one it's like uh the vulnerable ghosts have leaves sticking out of their head and and sometimes the power pellets will only turn three of them blue instead of four and the center of fruits turn the ghosts invisible uh I don't I don't know if the 80s actually happened gotta gotta really just take a step back and load up a good old-fashioned game of Professor Pac-Man to get the brain juices pumping again now luckily after Namco Executives started to cool themselves down they really started to fine tune the arcade experience to make much better games Pac-Man arrangement both for arcades as well as consoles now these games are pretty cool they both take a more traditional level progression approach where the further you go the more gimmicks and layouts get introduced making each new map just a bit more exciting to get into than just oh it's like kind of the same but the color's different I guess the console version has fancy 3D graphics and multiple bus fights and the arcade version introduces a brand new ghost who is always invulnerable but can fuse with an existing ghost to make them more powerful and he does so by absorbing their bodies oh kinzo is his name huh well I I played Pac-Man collection on the Game Boy Advance and I seem to remember a slightly different name because that version was in that collect yep kinky yep it is his name is kinky oh foreign versus what a Trailblazer this one is huh we got asymmetrical multiplayer on a Nintendo console years before the Wii U that's dope Charles martinet even did a voice for this game that's that's pretty cool Mario was the main thing missing from Pac-Man until this point and a fun fact this also got a port for the DS in that console's Namco Museum Pac-Man 256 a mobile and a smart TV game that that's interesting but it's pretty fun it's one of those endless high score games and this one you're constantly chased by the evil level 256 glitch trying to get a huge pellet chain utilizing some power-ups to tackle the ghosts in brand new ways it's a pretty fun take on the formula very very replayable and I mean simply acknowledging the fabled 256 glitch in an official game has like this weird creepy thing to run away from like it's a nightmare I love that that's awesome remember when Super Paper Mario referenced the minus world that's that's just cool but let's go a few numbers back there's also Pac-Man 99 and it that's one this one's all right I guess it made sense after doing the same thing with Tetris the year before but this one I don't know it's just not as chaotic and therefore it's not as fun you see the thing with Tetris 99 is you never really knew what was going to happen but you did feel like you had a bit of control in the attacks that you were laying out to different people in Pac-Man you're kind of just playing the arcade game in a bunch of web pop-ups are showing up to slow you down as a distraction that's that's about it uh it's it's not it's not it's not that good I'm sorry but Championship Edition though oh boy now this is the true hotness what if I wanted to play Pac-Man but feel like I'm in an intense nightclub as well let's go this was one of the first times a modern game took the classic Sprite graphics and covered it with a whole bunch of crazy lighting effects and a bump in soundtrack it's no surprise that games like Galaga Space Invaders and Frogger would try to capture the same Vibe soon after but there's no dethroning the King Baby Pac-Man Championship Edition is so damn cool and a really interesting piece of trivia here this was the final game that Pac-Man's Creator Koro iratani would work on after not touching much of anything since the 80s as a result many consider this to be the proper sequel to the original arcade game because I mean fair enough no Pac-Man game after the original had a two on it oh God and nowadays I mean sure Championship Edition 1 is fun but once DX came around and you start building these massive chains of ghosts and you're hearing these intense gobble gobble sounds and Surround Sound with an incredible soundtrack filled with these songs that were composed with the 5 and 10 minute time limits in mind so things ramp up incredibly by the end oh man there is nothing like it Championship Edition 2 would come around years later having similar gameplay but Shifting the single map that you play on in DX to progressing onto different Maps after clearing one out and you also get this snazzy 3D for taking out the ghost chains now that's that's pretty cool thank you 2016. but personally I do think DX is better than two both are still great but man DX really hits in a way that no other game has for me and really if anything it's wild to think about just how much mileage they got out of this formula that they established all the way back in 1980 they couldn't even make a second Dig Dug game without making that bad and also while I'm at it quick shout outs to Anna Lynn on Steam this game is fantastic it's like this really cool Take On The Original Pac-Man idea but it's also a platformer and also has a dope soundtrack um that's like that's all I really got I I just wanted to bring up aniline uh this game this game is really fun and I hope it gets ported to every console ever because it's really good remember when Pac-Man was like the only good thing about that one movie pixels that was a that was a really gross movie you should be ashamed of yourself Adam at Adam's sandbag so that is the arcade side of things and I know many of you are probably saying to yourself um well didn't you forget about Miss Pac-Man no of course not Namco certainly is right now though oh man okay so like oh God this whole story is is absolutely nuts man so the original game Miss Pac-Man the arcade game that we all know was technically like an official rom hack of the Original Pac-Man and it was something that Namco never technically owned I I think is how it goes Midway is the company that owned the license things were starting to get very hairy after merchandise royalties were becoming too high and while the license would end up falling back to Namco for a little while the general computer Corporation group would have to be paid royalties for use of the character in commercial contexts and in 2019 those royalties would then be acquired by ah God uh at games that's a very long story short but yes essentially you know those garbage micro Genesis consoles that you see in your local Walmart's Bargain Bin the company that was initially gonna do the official Genesis classic and then after social media outrage Sega said uh you know what never mind uh they're gone we're gonna do it instead yeah those guys those are the guys who are responsible for us not having Miss Pac-Man nowadays great so rather than Namco simply try to work with them and then pay them they basically decided to just move on as if Miss Pac-Man never existed newer collections never feature the classic game I mean perhaps this is why we didn't get the obvious skin for pack and smash always thought that would have made the most sense in the world any games that did have her in Pac-Man Museum plus now feature a redesign so they went back in and changed up some of these really old ROMs just to avoid dealing with ad games that's hilarious and I'm even convinced that this is the entire reason why Pac-Man worlds got a full-blown remake just to just to replace the entire pack family and act as if the originals were never there now we have Pac mom now we get to show off Pac mom to the world I mean I understand it but it doesn't mean I gotta like it so pack mom exists now this is the one we have to get used to Namco did try a few other female packs over the years probably all going to be one-offs honestly but as far as the original miss that we all know and love well her final official appearance was in Sonic Dash of all things for a Pac-Man crossover event I man I did not see that one coming and dude even Namco knows this is all insane too just like let's just jettison add games into the sun I I think I think that'll be fine all of this Spotlight on the brand new Pac mom is certainly wild to see but there are two bright sides for one we all have a new public reason to shame ad games and that is something that I am all for but also it led to a whole lot of conversation around Pac-Man World with repack that's a really good thing I'm very happy about that uh shame shame on you ad games Pac-Man Platformers this is what many of you came to see right it's so interesting to think about just how far they took this different take on the franchise back in the day I mean we had packed land that was a side scroller with strange controls and you kept running into a ferry for some reason uh this this was really the best thing to make a stage out of in Smash really they got all these other Adventures to pull these great ideas out of but this this is the game you go with oh okay sure but no if anything that's just a game that was coinciding with the original cartoon and any of the weirdness with this one is sort of self-contained there was also the other side scroller pack in time and that's that's a whole other weird mess of annoying mechanics like a bad rope swinging system and a really cumbersome item Inventory management system it's kind of neat that they were willing to revive this one for the newer Museum but uh who really cares this is all based off of a weird Amiga game called Fury of the furries anyway I can assure you we are not missing much with this one's Legacy and besides this face is scale we I don't want it at this time in PAX history there was really no basis to make a 3D platformer that can hang with the rest during the PS1 generation so Pac-Man World there's really just Namco trying out a bunch of different ideas with their star franchise to see what'll stick and stick it did surely all thanks to Mr T and Mini Me hyping it up in the commercial guaranteed success I missed the 90s well who else were you gonna get and with this new initiative man we got a whole ass Trilogy with a couple of spin-offs some weird handheld ports many years later they're not good but we'll get to that and recently a remake yo props the world for being the beefiest side Series in this franchise to date and you know honestly the first Pac-Man World subtitled 20th anniversary is a pretty fun time the whole idea is it's his 20th birthday party and it's ambushed by the ghosts and his family is kidnapped something pretty cool about all this is actually acting as if he's 20 years old here he has a wife kids a house and a mortgage by age 20. okay Namco that's a it's a pretty unrealistic game right here once the novelty of this being a Pac-Man game starts to wear off it's realistically just a pretty fine platformer it doesn't really do anything wrong but it doesn't necessarily excel at anything either it's a functional Adventure that expands on the character's Mobility with New Movement options like a butt bounce and a REV roll it's just a spin dash I don't care if you call it something else it's a spin dash we got the addition of some personality to the Ghost characters it introduces some nightmare fuel to the franchise with talk man my plans are already in motion Pac-Man cannot be allowed to crash my party really scared me as a kid it integrated puka from Dig Dug into the family that's one of the goodest Boys around I'm a big fan of that and also Pac-Man screams how to admire the smiley old throughout most of this adventure after that though that's a level of happiness that we should all strive for what's that my family is gone and I gotta travel on a boat to go save them that's fine nothing's gonna kill my happiness damn it also during the opening segment where all of pax family is getting kidnapped do you ever take the time to freeze frame on the cat you're welcome what the hell is this given that there is once again not much identity that could be pulled from the arcade games a lot of Worlds could feel kind of generic at times we got some pretty standard level themes with tried and true platformer obstacles and mechanics collectible letters scattered throughout the stages a soundtrack that mostly hovers around the okay territory it's really the fruit that you can find in the pop-up ghosts and mazes that remind you oh yeah this this is a Pac-Man game like you have these full-on mazes as these extra side areas with all these unique layouts as basically a collectible throughout the adventure you go and get a galaxian piece bring it back to a door and hey it's a maze that's what Pac-Man does best it's kind of cool but nothing else really stands out aside from it being just a pretty well designed game it's a charming and inoffensive enough romp from start to finish Without Really any downtime and because it was on the PS1 this golden age for 3D Platformers a lot of nostalgia was to follow that's just by the the pure nature of being on the PS1 of this era I'm nostalgic for Jersey Devil too because it was there nowadays though it's easier to recognize that the bigger things that are bogging this game down are really just a lot of small issues that really only be fixed if something like a I don't know a remake were to Pac-Man World repack I cannot believe this is real listen the absolute Jank of the PS1 game certainly has its charm I am a big fan of it but to have a somewhat cult classic of a platformer get a full-blown remake I honestly thought I would never see the day Crash Bandicoot Spyro the Dragon medieval Resident Evil 2. this PS1 remake Trend I am all in favor of let's do Pepsi man next clearly ape Escape is never gonna happen so why not essentially Namco went back and took their average platformer and easily without a doubt made a definitive version of it there's no like oh I don't know the physics of the PS1 Crash Bandicoot games can kind of feel better in this no no no this is easily the better version of the game I would love to hear the arguments that say otherwise there are just so many small changes that really make this a better experience overall the power pellets turn you giant now that's really cute the controls are razor sharp some of the music is remastered I think it's weird some of the songs are these really clear remixes while some of them sound like straight rips of the PS1 game I I don't know the soundtrack is still kind of just all right it's just just weird how this version was handled but the bosses though oh man the bosses this was one of the worst parts of the original game dude the Anubis fight was so bad spinning on these platforms or trying to not accidentally jump off when you're being bombarded by obstacles in three different directions it was the worst it was the worst fight in like any platformer ever and yes it is now fixed in repack like I said an objectively better game the vast majority of the platforming stages remain unchanged and therefore maintain that same level of quality of just being a really solid platforming time but all of these bosses have been improved to some capacity like in the original there was this race against clowns in the carnival stage and it was fine the top down thing was really weird and the controls are very very loose it you know it's it's a cute novelty but whatever here though it's in first person now and the controls are great I love the bosses in this version they were once the worst part of the game and now they were something I was looking forward to and there's also the addition of these brand new cutscenes before the boss fights that show talk man's influence on them whereas before you saw nothing of him until the end of the game this is way better it reminds me of Yoshi's Island when the Magikoopa would come in and like over the bosses that that was great I love that that's an awesome thing and then when it comes to the artistic style I think this looks way better too like the nightmare fuel that we had with the original Talk man that got put in the scrapyard where it belonged except the newer and better talk man this is this is so good I even have to give props to the UI the game doubles down on Pax arcady Roots by keeping the score and all of the pack letters on screen at all times everything else about this game has been maintained and Polished to a degree as it was expected to be but the way the score is always on screen now and numbers are popping up whenever you get pellets and why whatnot it actually adds a bit of an arcady vibe to this game that was missing before and helps make this feel like a proper Pac-Man game I never thought I would actually praise a game for keeping a high score system in 2022 but damn it they did it it makes sense here all that being said some issues still hold this game back from True greatness uh we still have an adventure where nothing really comes off as totally original and since everything is Faithfully recreated this means that basically every level requires a little bit of backtracking since you often got to use this fruit that you just got for a locked door that's a few screens back that is a very common Trope with this game but even still it's fine Namco took their classic average platformer and now it's an above average platformer the child in me who grew up with the original is pleased even if they removed the scream at the start that that does take away a few points I'm not gonna lie and hey this whole Pac-Man World idea is just cool for giving a little bit of extra lore to Pac-Man himself for having a full-on family now and hey Miss Pac-Man was a big deal of a character too right you know no one really cares about the kids but Miss Pac-Man oh she's someone special well I know that nowadays Namco doesn't want you to know about this but we got a bit of a secret game that came out next after the original PS1 game in between the releases of Pac-Man worlds one and two we got Miss Pac-Man maze Madness do you remember how in the original World we had all those maze sections hidden behind doors well uh let's make an entire game around that on a quest to save Professor pack from the mirror that he's been sucked into you go across the four wonders of packland to gather special gems and take down um an evil witch and her giant evil green Pac-Man all right like a world before it is a super straightforward game it is just very mechanically sound you got levels of unique maze layouts strung together by a little bit of puzzle solving and a little bit of enemy dodging with some new elements thrown in from time to time like uh top down racing they were really on their car racing idea back then weren't they this is really one of those games that kind of shows its entire hand early while we do see some slightly new mechanics and puzzle opportunities as we progress and the theming does definitely get a bit more original than Pac-Man had like we have Egypt and then China with these enemy Chinese dragons that's super cool this is still a what you see is what you get kind of deal saved by it still being a relatively unique idea this is certainly one of the furthest ways the core maze gameplay has ever gone in terms of making an entire Adventure out of it and also the soundtrack the soundtrack to this game is incredible and very important to the game's overall enjoyment go and listen to Cleopatra that song is amazing as far as a potential remake goes I kind of thing this is one of those games that's going to be stuck in the past I don't know man pack mom's maze Madness just doesn't really roll off the tongue as much even if she has a super cool hat I'm I'm sorry I'm calling it like I see it I deeply apologize to all of you pack mom fans out there I hope both of you can forgive me really soon and then we got Pac-Man World too now this oh this is where it's at let's just Embrace this right out of the gate the originality is once again not really this game strong suit we have a grassland and Iceland a lava land whatever the game controls like a dream and that is much more important while the original had this sort of side-scrolling 3D thing going on world too goes for full-on 3D and polishes up all of the mechanics to boot rolling around is a lot more fun some of the pack chain segments are a lot more visually interesting and the bouncing man the bouncing in this game is so much more satisfying and the developers knew this too it's obvious stages like badoin Woods where you're bouncing up a ton of super tall trees it is great platforming stuff and then the bosses while they also sacrifice originality just using the ghosts with these robot suits this time around I mean hey it kind of stinks but it adds some more Pac-Man flavor to this adventure and that's fine by me even the main Baddie spooky the ghost he's just an advanced ghost it works perfectly this game is just a constant burst of platforming goodness from start to the the water world where you do multiple obnoxious auto-scrolling water levels back to back to back dear God why did they save all of these for just one world this part sucks Namco should go to jail and did you like look back at the opening cutscene and see the pack dog dude like it was an actual dog before what happened this is a tiny person walking on all fours I do not like it no sir I do not and Miss Pac-Man's nowhere to be seen in this adventure I'm not really sure why that's the case maybe they were having a like a marriage dispute I I don't know maybe they could figure that out in the remake who's who's to say as platformer started to get more complicated during this generation leading together these different genres in an attempt to age up with the older audience it's nice to have a relatively standard but very polished platformer thrown into the mix and if World 2 does eventually get a repack of its own by the time you're watching this then hey there are definitely some perks to this good timeline Pac-Man World 3 on the other hand okay I got it what if Pac-Man learned how to kick ass in hell Grand Theft Auto 3 Jack 2 Ratchet deadlocked if you want to be successful now Pac-Man you gotta get edgier that's the only option oh man oh baby listen to that dope title screen music hope that sound of wind pumps you up for a great adventure did someone say cake oh oh God they talk now God Pac-Man having like a weird normal human voice is so damn cursed but honestly it's not it's not that bad like I would clearly rather he doesn't talk at all but maybe this well done animation is fooling me here I actually really like the voices in this game but then you get into the game itself and God forgot World 3 is so weird Pac-Man's in a post-apocalyptic world now why is everything so dark and murky the soundtrack is all mellow and ambient instead of upbeat and catchy it's just it's just weird and there's a combat system oh God Irwin that this is the villain we jump from a robo Pac-Man to a big spooky ghost to a destroyal humans alien looking reject man those forehead wrinkles should have invested in some lotion that's probably why he's so mad along the way Orson is helping you out too in an interesting bit of continuity that is the ghost who was controlling talkman in the Original Pac-Man World and now he's deciding to like be good it's it's a weird piece of continuity that I appreciate it's strange every everything about this game is strange but it's not like the game is bad honestly this continues the trend of the game playing fine with some solid platforming mechanics but it's really hard to take this so seriously when the game is taking itself so seriously this is Pac-Man why am I traveling through hell like it's Doom if you want some of that patented wackiness that you would come to expect for our platformer well the game does have these maze sections but man we got this really repetitive kooky over-the-top music and these techy visuals because you're jumping into arcade machines and that's that's how it's done this time around uh they they don't really spice things up the way that they thought they might the May sections in the previous games were optional and here they're mandatory and by doing that on top of the weirdness it just it's not it's not a good fit you got sections where you get to play as some of the ghosts Pac-Man gets to be sassy with his new demon looking wannabe threat he's scary looking too there are multiple ways to take down enemies now because you have your fist combos as well as these power-ups that pop up over time I'll give him credit there was some genuine effort put into this but it is ultimately just too much of a monotonous and soulless adventure to really sit through the entire thing in one piece unless you're a dedicated pack nut like I am which is a shame because this attempt to actually give pack a voice and a personality I do think that part worked out really well certainly better than ugh but hey if Pac-Man Waka walking through the underworld sounds exciting to you then give it a shot you never know you might like it you know this is around the same time that like tie the Tasmanian Tiger made a jump into third game to a really dark World maybe this was like just a literal dark time for Platformers in the mid-2000s it made sense it's just weird to look back at I'm detecting a rise in energy in your sector details of my sector's energy should be between me and Miss Pack thank you very much didn't need that innuendo about Pac-Man's power pellets thank you a cart racer now though okay so that that's the only way you really know your platformer series is actually worth a damn Pac-Man World Rally I mean yeah it's it's a Mario Kart clone but that's never a bad thing if the first two Pac-Man World games are very standard Platformers then this yeah it follows the trend it is a very standard Kart Racer with all the item types and craziness that you've come to expect the only main gimmick with this one is that there are pack pellets scattered throughout the stages kinda similar to Mario Kart's coins but once you collect enough you can go into Power pellet Goblin mode and Chomp away on anybody that you come across pretty neat and character-wise oh they really nailed this roster too of course we got some of the members of the pack fam that's to be expected we got some ghosts Clyde has a new head I really like his style very nice dude and even all the villains from the world Trilogy that continuity really nice it makes the whole world thing seem like it was not for nothing we even get pack Satan hell yeah dude has nothing to do with the rest of the trilogy they just decided hey we got a car racer coming up let's let's let's make a pack Satan I guess and then you got some other Namco characters as unlockables like the enemies from Dig Dug the prince from Katamari and the PSP version also exclusively has Mr driller and Mappy that's pretty cool a 3D model of Mappy for some reason only in the PSP game this is really just weird choices left and right with this franchise and then when you get to the tracks yeah a lot of them continue the trend of being fairly generic but hey some things certainly stand out more than others as potential callbacks like a pirate track which I don't know could be a reference to world one maybe none of the tracks really super stand out as a throwback it's mostly the final classic cup where the coolest stuff is like a space stage with a Galaga influence a full-blown Katamari course that's awesome and a traditional pack maze makes total sense World Rally has a maze stage smash ultimate does not the world is cruel and unjust there are so many Mario Kart clones out there it's kind of hard to stand out from the pack in terms of gameplay but in terms of Aesthetics yeah I mean Pac-Man doesn't really do anything super specific to stand out but it's a fun enough time and a decent way to wrap up the series in terms of its original games pack would later show up with Mario in the arcade card games and that's kind of cool too those games got some solid fan service and it's stuff like that that makes me want to see more of these Crossovers and later Mario Kart games but that's an entirely different topic as it stands the world Trilogy Miss Pac-Man maze Madness World Rally pretty solid stuff all around and then they tried to revive the series on the Game Boy Advance and Jesus Jesus Christ why you see alongside their console releases we got World 3 and world rally on PSP and World 3 even showed up on DS and they are worse than the console versions that's to be expected but they're functional enough given what those systems were capable of the fact that we have World 3 on DS and it actually kind of works is a technical Marvel but there's no reason to actually play it it's the worst version of an already below average game but now why in the mid 2000s we got world one maze Madness and World 2 for Game Boy Advance this is one of the most confusing sets of releases I've ever seen the games weren't new enough to be the next best thing to purchase nor old enough to have a growing sense of nostalgia yet was anybody asking for these the DS was about to be the hot holiday item for those few years pack and misspack were sent out to die so okay uh the first two world one and Maze Madness are definitely iterations of the console games very clearly we have level designs being pulled onto the smaller screen and mechanically they're pretty sound I guess the music has been ported in an incredibly crusty way oh God maybe maybe it sounds better on official speakers but this this school is gross and outside of some elements that are removed like most of the boss fights they did kind of accomplish what they set out to do they look absolutely cursed and when blown up on a big screen like this yeah they look terrible but if they were set out to for some reason Port world 1 and Maze Madness to the Game Boy Advance they did it I just I just don't know why nothing about this seems to make these versions of these games appealing outside of the sheer novelty of it like at the time I remember thinking oh maze Madness on Game Boy Advance that's sweet and then I got into level one and Cleopatra is not the song that plays there it's not in the game at all so okay they removed all the good music from the game that I wanted to play easy 0 out of 10 score as a result sorry when it came to World 2 which released a while later you can tell that they at least tried to take some creative liberties with the original Adventure like I think the new Sprites are really nice so I'm glad there's some effort there instead of just shrinking down the images of the original PS1 Sprites and Ms paint the music has once again been butchered though like these games on consoles had great soundtracks but then they ported the more mediocre stuff exclusively and placed them in the levels that they didn't initially belong to I don't get it I I mean I guess considering it's it's not like the GBA had much in terms of 3D Platformers I guess this is one of the ones to check out if you're an insane person all things considered yeah these ports are really dumb interesting little asterisks on the side of the main console games but hey as the GBA era came to a close a shocking amount of console Platformers also got mediocre GBA versions just to I don't know Prank the Parents of small children who asked for these games damn it Mom no I didn't want Dr mudo on Game Boy Advance the holidays are ruined once again Pac-Man World if it wasn't obvious enough is the most interesting side series of this entire franchise but granted this is coming from someone who has a very strong bias towards mid-2000 Platformers but I feel like if you're watching this you probably do too we share a common Bond there hope I'm not too forward but now this is likely to start the talk of the future of the franchise with the Ghostly Adventure stuff and uh I'll get to it but can we wait a few more minutes I'm not I'm not ready yet throughout the 80s Pac-Man was a relatively safe franchise with all of those arcade games sure some of them were weird but they were similar enough so it was fine credit goes to Namco it took at least 10 years before they finally said yeah you know what I I think it's time to go insane pack land was an outlier in 84 but again that was thanks to the cartoon that was happening around the same time and what yeah did you forget about that part you thought that only the likes of Mario Zelda and Sonic were getting cartoons nah man the fine folks at Hanna-Barbera thought it was high time to give Pac-Man a hat throw him into a crazy dream world with these multi-colored trees and a laughing cat and also a main villain in a Mesmer mesmerin who who's using the ghosts in order to gather all the power who the hell is mesmering I'll admit I am a fan of this show there is a really big charm to these old cartoons especially if Hannah Barbera was involved but man I don't I don't know what went into the creative decision for any of this and I also don't really know why there was this fascination with like creating an ultimate Evil that was controlling the ghost the entire time like if we take a look back at pack in time we got the ghost witch in that one who had the power to force pack well back in time I guess she can make things travel in time just by pointing at them that's that's kind of cool and also uh shrink his appendages and remove his nose in the process God what a however that was not her debut she initially showed up in Pac-Man too there's a two the new adventures where pack is having a damn panic attack on the box art God I feel bad for him he wasn't having a panic attack on the not American box art and then when they localized they were like yeah that's that's what the game needs to satisfy the Americans have him lose his mind I can't believe it man we finally have an actual sequel to that original arcade game that's awesome and it's a point-and-click adventure game where pack is a brain dead imbecile and you play as an omnipotent God telling him what to do and where to go on a regular basis and if you want to you could you could kill him if you want okay I understand the panic attacks now I love this game it's absolutely terrible don't get me wrong this is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen have you seen Pac-Man's walking Cycles this is this is like why why is this a thing but it's because of that that I love this game for the love of God the first thing you do is milk a cow because your baby is hungry and to do so you approach near death from a rogue Crow this game is incredible and looking back at some of those walk Cycles man like his emotions he's so all over the place like he's happy one second depressed the next and then like super pissed off and then he's egotistical like why was this not the basis for what we got in Smash like this would have made for a more interesting character what we got was cool but pack land was not the right inspiration uh it was either gonna be world or this and I opt for this oh but of course it's not a nice and bright sunny day in pack land no as you probably expected this adventure brings you deep into the inner city into a mysterious Warehouse where you find all the ghosts who are working for the ghost witch and you have to go in to stop her evil plans of uh stealing all of the kids ABC gum and form a gum monster okay yes I'm also definitely calling him the gum monster and not succumbing to internet peer pressure to get myself demonetized no thank you I don't care what the text at the bottom of the screen says or what it looks like this is made of chewed gum and you are not going to tell me otherwise I want to keep my channel thanks Pack Attack now this one was kind of inevitable too you know if a 3D platformer has to have a car racer then I guess a more basic game has to have a puzzle alternative spin-off then that make that makes sense to me well we got with this one is just a bit of a different take on the typical block falling Tetris puzzle game idea you're dropping a bunch of blocks a lot of them have ghosts in them but you have to line them up in specific ways because eventually you're gonna have to draw Pac-Man onto the board and he's gonna go in a straight line to gobble up as much as he can and this is a very annoying game novel idea for sure but man I am not I am not good at it at all I I pride myself on being pretty good at games like this but this this one I can't get a good chain going to save my life and besides we all know that this game has a Tetris attack like story where this is just a blatantry skin of the other Super Nintendo classic Cosmo gang the puzzle I mean that once I learned about that nugget I couldn't look at Pack Attack the same way you know what do you mean you haven't heard of Cosmo gang the puzzle before are you trying to tell me that you lived a normal life until now probably one of the most forgotten games in this franchise we got Pac-Man pinball Advance um I guess this is another game that is kind of in the World Series actually I mean that house here is ripped right out of world too so I I guess this is part of the World Series I don't know why they didn't use the world name but okay these poor ghosts here they have really gone through some traumatic moments you can tell as a pinball game I'm I mean it's fine I guess it's it's pinball all right not really a great time but I mean if you're looking for a pinball game on the Game Boy Advance that's not Pokemon pinball Ruby and Sapphire I guess it's better than Mario pinball maybe yeah you know at this point I think it's really safe to say that alongside all those weird world ports Pac-Man's history on handhelds is really something else to put it lightly we jump forward a little bit and we move on to the DS It's not like things really got better we got pack picks which is a game that I'm not totally convinced actually exists it's just a glorified Tech demo where you're poorly drawing Pac-Man and a bunch of other shapes for a few hours to take out all the ghosts that are on screen at that given time and that's it early era DS games all kind of fit that same mold you know you can tell that they just had this one touch screen idea and figured that was enough to bring it to retail there's a weird time but I mean okay uh just the fact that you could draw something and watch it animate on the Fly uh yeah it works this game works it up it operates as intended good for them this is like a working screen saver oh no watch out we got the boss now and it's a big ghost I guess I gotta draw a big Pac-Man now oh no now it's a bigger ghost this is this is one of the games of all time oh man okay so then next up we have pack and roll which is once again a glorified Tech demo given a full release but to be fair this one is a little bit more substantial using the touchscreen you roll around a limbless Pac-Man across the world and do the standard thing of picking up a bunch of pellets and destroying ghosts that's it oh and did a ghost touch you well it's okay now there's a touch screen Mini-Game to get it off you God why am I not surprised but I will give the game credit it's really not that bad just based on the simple notion of having actual level progression with elevating challenges throughout you got a few power-ups that change things up from time to time and quite frankly just the fact that we have a full 3D game on the DS that plays kind of okay dare I say sarcasm aside roll is good they have since ported roll to the Wii's Namco Museum remix and the modern Pac-Man Museum plus and some of that novelty is gone when you use an analog stick to control things instead as well as completely removing the story not sure why that didn't get preserved they could have ported that easily but okay but ultimately you know I've seen what a lot of DS screens at the kiosks at Walmart used to look like it was probably for the best to shift the control style that makes sense to me oh God and then speaking of Namco Museum remix and whatnot that doesn't even cover all the other games that pack was just shoved into we got Gallagher remix pack is there rally X Remix pack is there Gator Panic remix pack is there what the hell is Gator Panic there's pack Motors and hey I mean that one had the decency to be ported to pack Museum so that one's nice but why it's not even good this yellow guy he really gets around I can't believe people don't suffer from Pac-Man burnout ah Mario Party clones it's about time Pac-Man Fever featuring such esteemed characters like Pac-Man Miss Pac-Man heyachi from Tekken uh that one avatar from the early PlayStation 3 days now to call this specific game a clone would be a bit disingenuous Pac-Man Fever has the distinction of rather than moving to a new space and then playing a minigame you do the mini game first and then you move Namco you got you gotta slow down regarding the boards that you play on this actually goes for more of the linear path idea way before Mario Party 9 did so hey bit of a trendsetter so while there is arguably a bit more skill involved than the typical Mario Party game since the better you do in in the mini games the further you get to move the spots themselves that you land on have a whole lot of luck attached to them in regards to what the actions are after you land on them completely disregarding any skill that you are attempting to bring to the party in the first place it's still fine if you're super nostalgic for this one then that's fine too I guess we've all been to at least one or two bad parties in our day and you have memories attached that's that you know that makes sense nowadays though this is a pretty soulless experience I don't think I'll be cracking this one open with the boys anytime soon for my money it's all about Pac-Man Party this is the better of the two without a doubt I mean it's still not super great but it's less not great than fever was so that's a put put that on the back of the box chibi Robo character sounding ass some of you may realize that this is actually where everybody got their massive redesign the start of the quote pack his back era let's just say and it's an interesting development this whole redesigned thing I actually don't really hate how pack and all the ghosts look in this one Pax look is more cartoony I can work with that and then the ghosts each one has a unique look rather than just having a different color I like that too I do definitely prefer the Simplicity of the designs from Pac-Man World but hey this Pac-Man doesn't have teeth yet why on Earth would they decide to give him teeth after this I want to die Pac-Man Party certainly follows a more traditional formula that you would come to expect from a Mario Party clone your roll a number and then you move across a looping board you're Gathering not only your special item which in this case is cookies but also growing properties along the way alright that's a unique twist you mean to tell me this man has a mortgage to pay and now owns multiple properties man we're really breaking the realism here Namco and it's when an opponent lands on your castle that's when it's mini game time and it's a Wii game all right did you think we weren't gonna have gimmick controls on this one like any other Mario Party Style game this is where this party shines the mini games are pretty fun and just as nonsensical as you could possibly want they have like nothing at all to do with classic Pac-Man like Pac-Man World before it it's really just Namco throwing as many different ideas at the wall to see what sticks so it makes absolutely no sense if you've been a die-hard Pac-Man fan but hey it's fine don't don't ask questions about why it isn't Anubis and a random Yeti here only to ever show up in a single mobile game after this and then presumably die whatever it's fine just enjoy the party it's a good time you're hanging out with friends yay the thing that really does it for me is I just think the personality in this one is a lot stronger than what we had in Fever if you're looking for a kind of fun multiplayer Wii session and you've destroyed your nearest copy of Wii Party or we play motion or Mario Party 8 then sure hop onto this one instead of jumping into Sonic in the Secret Rings stupid multiplayer mode that is the direct competition I guess don't question it this game is better than that and then after riding the momentum of this redesign we would then get Pac-Man and Galaga dimensions for the 3DS chalk this one up to the 3DS launch window games and nobody remembers category because uh did you remember this game until I mentioned it probably not on its surface it's just another one of those compilations because we have classic Pac-Man classic Galaga and even the upgraded classic arcade games like Pac-Man Championship Edition that's here that's nice but the main selling point is two brand new games Galaga 3D impact a mediocre on-rail shooter that uses the console's gyroscope and really feels absolutely nothing like Galaga and then Pac-Man tilt a 2d platformer void of any personality where the only gimmick is tilting the 3DS left and right to mess with some of the platforms I am I'm so tired there was such a long stretch of time where Namco had no idea what to do with this franchise man they were oh God this it's not good like we have a platformer here with the only direct comparison I can think of is Yoshi's universal topsy-turvy gravitation on Game Boy Advance and that's not that's not a good place you want to be it's just not and and also why does he sound like he fails to conceal a fart when he dies [Music] what is this franchise hold on if you keep if you keep scrolling through the menu here you see this one mysterious option a 3D movie huh oh that's right yeah I almost forgot this game doubled as the hype machine for the upcoming reboot of the franchise that was gonna kinda use this redesign Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures the moment you've all been waiting for [Music] when did he leave leave oh God what a what an Unholy mess this whole Ghostly Adventures experiment was I know there's the possibility of many of you growing up with this cartoon so you have this Nostalgia and listen I'm not about to bad talk it it's just I I'm confused by it and I think a lot of the long time Pac-Man fans at the time were very confused by it because we were led to believe at first that this was Pac-Man it's just a different design but it's the same character and then I guess the reception wasn't going super hot so Namco had to come in and say no no guys it's okay it's like a different universe or whatever it's not the same Pac-Man I uh I don't think that was by Design so I guess I can only take it at face value as a weird time in Pac-Man's history uh so Pac-Man is in school now and he's friends with a whole bunch of other pack people of differently shaped oval forms uh and also four of the ghosts because they're like double agents like this evil ghost of betrayus has been Unleashed onto the world and now there's like a war between the pack people and the ghosts but the four ghosts that we know and love they are also our friends and and there's a love triangle now with solyndria and the pinky the ghost oh it's I'm not the show might be fine it's just it's weird to talk about after everything I've already gone through in this video maybe sometime in the future I will give this entire cartoon the watch that it probably deserves but as it currently stands Jesus do you see how long this video already is but I will say I do find it oddly suspicious that this show popped up around the same time Sonic Boom did which was kinda set out to do the same thing for that franchise and when Sonic Boom is the comparison I got I just I gotta say I don't think you're in a good place the biggest criticism that this cartoon got was that it was merely a vessel for a whole bunch of merchandise there's a whole bunch of toys all over the place and naturally some video games too and just in terms of being video games they are kind of significant because they were the closest that we were going to get to Pac-Man World after years of getting nothing but weirdness we got Ghostly Adventures one and two for both consoles and handhelds and and they're just kind of whatever all four games follow the same structure of incredibly linear levels strung together by a world map with the main gimmicks being the expected pellet Gathering and ghost eating and the addition of brand new forms to take for Pac-Man via a whole bunch of newberries sort of like a Mario power up with its mushrooms the thing is though I don't know if I win necessarily call these Platformers like they technically do fall under that umbrella but you're never really required to hone your jumping skills with these the same way you were for the world games you're really just walking in a straight line and then attacking some things every so often and then doing these contextual puzzles with the power up that's about it to me it seems like they were obviously aimed at a much younger demographic considering once again these dude double as a tie-in to a children's cartoon and like the cartoon I would believe it if you were nostalgic for these because they're not too terrible like just on production value alone it's fairly impressive stuff they did succeed in making these games feel like the cartoon that was on at the time it's just they're not really doing much for me and on a more objective level I do think both of these games are pretty homogeneous they both feel exactly the same and many of the power up segments and two feel like they were ripped straight out of one you got a lot of the same power-ups and you're doing a lot of the same things there are some gimmick stages that do differ but all I'm saying here is they're not looking at the difference between Mario Galaxy one and two you know not terrible Adventures but nothing that's really going to set your world on fire different story on the 3DS though that's worth noting they both follow the same ideas like I said before but the first game is a side scroller that say it with me now is devoid of creativity or Soul or challenge it's what you think it is but then we got an actual 3D game for the second also devoid of creativity and soul and challenge the production value is kinda solid I guess the cutscenes do have more motion going on for them than I would come to expect for a lower budget platformer on the 3DS aside from Pac-Man clearly suffering from lockjaw if the console games are meant to appeal to kids the 3DS versions are meant to exist to either appeal to kids that didn't have any of the consoles or just became really unlucky because for their birthday they asked for the game for their console and their parents got this instead because they didn't know any better I feel like there's no in between I'm sorry that's usually the case for portable versions of multi-platform games go read a history book oh God so do you find finally believe me when I say that Pac-Man is actually one of the most bizarre series of all time this yellow lad whether he'd be a grown man with a mortgage or child going to school he was based off of a pizza and he's put on light shows he has a wife and kids a second set of Wife and Kids he's acquaintances with Satan because Satan wants to go on a race every now and then he went through a really colorful phase and spent one too many trips to the dentist he lost parts of his body on multiple occasions with Pac-Man Museum plus Pac-Man World repack and the pack is back meme we got most of the bases of this franchise covered in the year 2022 and that's kind of cool so if we're going to celebrate the pack you gotta go big or go home right congrats on over 40 years of games whether they be good bad or indifferent my man here's to 40 more and at least two more additional wives I'm not gonna judge you do you go for happiness well I did it I talked about Pac-Man for over 50 minutes and they said it couldn't be done God and this doesn't even get into the conversation of like all the canceled games that exist all the mobile games that are out there there's all the cameos and a whole bunch of other games like smash obviously and Street Fighter cross Tekken can't forget about that one God there's like there's like this baseball game that released in Japan there's a whole bunch of Namco characters but like human so we have a Canon human Pac-Man I oh [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 685,250

Keywords: AntDude, Pac Man, Pac Man World, Pac Man World Re Pac, Pac Man World 2, Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures, Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures intro, Pac Man arcade, Pac Man retrospective, Pac Man series, Pac Man cartoon, Pac Man remake, Pac Man games

Id: x5mlEkg4Bv8

Length: 53min 34sec (3214 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022