Pick a Peck of Preferred Pac-Men

It's Pac-Man's 40th anniversary, and to celebrate, I'll take a look at my five favorite games in this dot-munching, ghost-dodging, table-turning series. Some of my picks are pretty obvious, while others might take you by surprise, like the sneaky monster who ambushed you from the other side of the warp tunnel, but they're all worth a look.

PAC-MAN

There's also a quarter scale Pac-Man arcade
cabinet, not to be confused with a quarter
sized Pac-Man arcade cabinet. Although I'm
sure someone's working on that.
(image from Numskull) 

The original is... not the best, but it was the first, so it gets top billing. Look, I was fascinated with this game as a child. Many others were as well, to the point where it inspired a crapton of merchandise and the nickname of football player Adam Jones, called "Pac-Man" because of how voraciously he nursed from his bottle as a baby. There were even a couple of cartoons... neither of them very good, but they were certainly there.

Pac-Man served as the foundation for dozens of sequels and countless clones, a few inspired in their own right and many more shameless in their imitation of the real deal. For every Pix the Cat, you'd find ten games like Clambake for the Apple IIe or Cosmic Cruncher for the VIC-20, which limited their "innovations" to new maze designs and redesigned characters. Not much needed to be changed, really, because the strength of Pac-Man lies in its simplicity. There was room for improvement, however, and that would come with the release of...

MS. PAC-MAN

Brighter colors! Better music! More mazes! Bouncing fruit prizes that add a new dimension to the cat and mouse gameplay! Yes, Ms. Pac-Man had it all, but what's most surprising about this sequel is that it wasn't designed or even sanctioned by Namco, the creators of the original. General Computer took the reigns of this one, starting with a hack called Crazy Otto and folding in suggestions from the marketing department of Bally-Midway until ultimately crafting the classic we know today.

Ms. Pac-Man was big in the 1980s, with ports for over a dozen computers, game consoles, and handhelds, but its presence started to fade in the years since. You might be tempted to think that Namco was jealous of its success, but it goes a little deeper than that. After it reclaimed the Pac-Man license from Bally-Midway in the latter half of the '80s, partial rights to Ms. Pac-Man remained with GenCom, and were later sold to controversial mini console manufacturer AtGames. Namco would have to make its own superlative Pac-Man sequel without the rights sharing baggage, but first would come...

PAC-MAN 2: THE NEW ADVENTURES

Both Midway and Namco were responsible for releasing plenty of misfires

Depending on the situation, Pac-Man
can either be friendly and good-natured,
or morbidly depressed, or a
trouble-making bastard. In this case,
he probably got nailed by the player's
slingshot too many times.
(image from HG101)

based on the Pac-Man license. Midway gave us the bewildering pinball/video game hybrid Baby Pac-Man, the unexpected and unwanted quiz challenge Professor Pac-Man, and Jr. Pac-Man, with a seemingly endless horizontally scrolling playfield offered as an ill-conceived "bonus." Meanwhile, Namco gave us a lousy NES port of Ms. Pac-Man, the quickly forgotten platformer Pac-in-Time, and a largely hands-off adventure title they had the cheek to call Pac-Man 2.

But wait! Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures is an odd beast, taking way more of its inspiration from the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon than the dot-munching arcade game, but it's not without its own oddball charm. It's a bit like a point and click adventure title, but a bit more like a virtual pet sim, with the player guiding Pac-Man through each colorful locale with simple commands and slingshot pellets. Sometimes he'll be happy to follow wherever you lead, but sometimes he'll be furious and throw a tantrum instead. Sometimes he'll even eat a caterpillar and go on a psychedelic bender... when that happens, you'll just have to put the controller down and wait for the inevitable slapstick that happens when he stumbles into a bucket of paint, or a carelessly placed rake, or a stray cat with an attitude problem.

There's no penalty for dying and the game's antics border on hilarious, so feel free to soak in the cartoony goodness and toss Pac-Man an energizer with your slingshot whenever he's menaced by ghosts. (Or just do nothing and watch him faint from the stress... your call.) If tormenting a video game icon isn't your idea of fun, you can always play a more traditional Pac-Man title, like...

PAC-MAN ARRANGEMENT

A word of warning! There are actually two games called Pac-Man Arrangement, but the one you want was released in 1996 as part of the arcade title Namco Classic Collection Volume 2. This can also be found as part of Pac-Man Collection for the Game Boy Advance and the first Namco Museum for Xbox, Playstation 2, and GameCube. The other Pac-Man Arrangement, a dull, plodding affair with 3D graphics, was included in Pac-Man Museum for the Xbox 360 and Namco Museum Battle Collection for the PSP.

With that out of the way, Pac-Man Arrangement (the good one) is the ideal mid 1990s sequel, with graphics so kinetic and colors so vibrant it makes Ms. Pac-Man look like a Civil War tintype. Even the dots bounce along to the peppy soundtrack, giving the atmosphere a joie de vivre that will leave both newcomers and old fans spellbound. There are new play mechanics too, and not just for the player! A new monster named Kinky roams the playfield... he turns the other monsters blue if you can catch him, but if he fuses with one of his friends first, it becomes larger and a lot more dangerous.

Pac-Man Arrangement is a great sequel, but maybe a little too predictable for its own good. It simply polishes the wheel rather than totally re-inventing it, like...

PAC-MAN CHAMPION EDITION

In 2007 Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani decided that he wanted another bite of the

Namco released a quite serviceable PSP
port of Pac-Man Championship Edition as
part of the PSP Minis line of digital
downloads.
(image from Playstation Europe)

seven hundred point apple, and came out of retirement to make Pac-Man Champion Edition. With its mazes built from neon lines and a pulsing techno soundtrack, Pac-Man Champ has the atmosphere of a rave, but its gameplay is deeply rooted in the old school. It's a high score challenge, with the player clearing dots from both sides of a horizontally oriented screen. Eat all the dots on one side of the playfield and a fruit target appears on the other side... grab that and the dots are replenished, sometimes bringing a new maze layout with them. This frantic relay race continues until time expires, or all of your Pac-Men if you're unlucky.

Pac-Man Champ received two sequels of its own, but I prefer the original... the gameplay is less rigid and pattern-focused, and feels more like classic Pac-Man than either Champ DX or Champ 2. The later games introduced bombs and chains of monsters and running energizers, leaving behind the simplicity that had made the series so approachable and appealing. If the first Pac-Man wasn't enough and Pac-Man Champ 2 was way too much, the first Pac-Man Champ is just right.