Pac Mania

Pac Mania is a cavalier perspective maze game that was developed and released by Namco for arcades in 1987. In the game, the player controls Pac-Man as he must eat all of the dots while avoiding the colored ghosts that chase him in the maze. Eating large flashing “Power Pellets” will allow Pac-Man to eat the ghosts for bonus points, which lasts for a short period of time.

A new feature to this game allows Pac-Man to jump over the ghosts to evade capture. It is the ninth title in the Pac-Man video game series and was the last one developed for arcades up until the release of Pac-Man Arrangement in 1996. Development was directed by Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani. It was licensed to Atari Games for release in North America.

Pac-Mania gained a highly-positive critical reception for its uniqueness and gameplay. It was nominated for “Best Coin-Op Conversion of the Year” at the Golden Joystick Awards in 1987, although it lost to Taito‘s Operation Wolf. Pac-Mania was ported to several home consoles and computers, including the Atari ST, MSX2, Sega Genesis and Nintendo Entertainment System, the last of which being published by Tengen. Several Pac-Man and Namco video game collections also included the game. Ports for the Wii Virtual Console, iOS and mobile phones were also produced.

Gameplay – Pac Mania

Pac-Mania is a maze game viewed from an oblique^[4] perspective and with a gameplay similar to the franchise’s original installment.^[5] The player controls Pac-Man, a yellow circular creature that must eat all of the pellets in each stage while avoiding five colored ghosts – Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), Clyde (orange) and Sue (purple).

Eating large Power Pellets will cause the ghosts to turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points and send them to the house in the middle of the stage. Clearing the stage of dots and pellets will allow Pac-Man to move to the next. Mazes scroll both horizontally and vertically, and the left and right edges of some layouts wrap around to each other. Touching a non-vulnerable ghost costs the player one life.

New to this game is the ability to jump over the ghosts, allowing Pac-Man to evade capture. Later rounds of the game introduce two new ghosts, Funky (green) and Spunky (grey), who also have the ability to jump. While Pac-Man can still barely jump over Funky, it is impossible to jump over Spunky.^[5]

Eating a certain number of pellets will cause a bonus item to appear in the middle of the stage, which can be eaten for points. Some of these bonus items are called Special Items, which are items from later levels, or are Red and Green Power Pellets. Red Power Pellets double the point values of blue ghosts (this bonus is lost if Pac-Man loses a life), and Green Power Pellets temporarily increase Pac-Man’s speed. If the player takes too long to clear a stage, Pac-Man’s jumping power begins to decrease steadily until it is entirely lost.

Four different mazes are available: Block Town, Pac-Man’s Park, Sandbox Land, and Jungly Steps. Upon completing a set number of rounds in each maze, the player progresses to the next; after playing through all four, the cycle restarts. At the beginning of the game, the player can choose to start in any of the first three mazes and will earn a score bonus for choosing either Pac-Man’s Park or Sandbox Land and completing the first round in it.

The game ends when the player has either lost all lives or (depending on the machine setting) cycled through all four mazes a set number of times.