Pac-Man

The Good
It's Pac-Man and you can't possibly go wrong with Pac-Man unless you try to do something stupid with it. The goal is to eat dots and avoid ghosts, optionally you can also eat the big dots, so you can eat ghosts and it doesn't get anymore complicated then that. It looks, plays and sounds exactly the same as the original arcade and I bought it for only ten euros (which means it's also incredibly cheap). It's one of the best ports from an arcade game to a home console I have ever seen, god bless the NES.

My memory may betray me, but I don't remember the cut-scenes at all which leads me to believe that Nintendo added them on their own. Every few levels you get a cute little cut-scene with Pac-Man and the ghosts doing something funny, it's good for a quick laugh after you spend a few minutes dodging ghosts, but it's no Ninja Gaiden either. I actually loved/love to not tell people about these little animation until they finally completed the level, the surprised look on their faces was and still is priceless.

The Bad
I am a bit disappointed in the fact that there is only one level, I am not sure if more show up as you make progress, but I doubt it because they would have at least shown you that there are more levels at the start. The only thing that really changes after you complete a level is that the rules change slightly; ghosts spawn faster, the ghosts go faster or the special dots last shorter. This makes the game fun, but not something you'd probably play for longer periods of time.

Having a multi-player mode is pretty sweet, but here it's rather odd. Tell me: what would you make the second player do if you designed the multi-player for this game? Would you:

A. Make them control one of the ghosts? B. Make them play as a second Pac-Man? C. Make the player both play their own game on the same screen? or D. Have them take turns playing?

If you chose D, you're incredibly stupid. I just don't see the point in having people take turns playing, you might as well play the Single-player and pass the controller around, we don't need a separate mode for that.

The Bottom Line
Pac-Man for the NES is a brilliant port of an almost flawless game and if you are a collector then this one should definitely be in your collection. If you just want to play some of the best games on the NES, then this one is also worth a look, but I highly recommend avoiding it in that case. Why? Well because every eight year old with a computer and Flash can make a Pac-Man game nowadays. I may have only paid ten euros for it, but you can find much better versions of this game on free websites like Kongregate and those probably have much more variety in the levels.

The Good
I think Pac-man is really cute. The mazes are very challenging. The whole concept of the game is so cool, a little creature collecting dots to finish levels is so innocent, so well-natured, even some of the most innocent looking games of the generation like Gubble, have a dark storyline. There are 3 ghosts that are chasing you around the mazes. There is no specific story for this game, there is no unsuitable content in this game, this game alone has spawned great sequels like Gobstopper Gobbler and Ms. Pac PC.

The Bad
There have been several lame attempts to try and resurrect the wonderfulness of these games with unsuitable content, a variety of guns and animated blood and gore so that it will appeal to M17+ gamers like Capman.

The Bottom Line
The best arcade game even after all these years. This game made my all-time favorite game list. A 5 out of 5 for all the Platforms that it was released on.

The Good
As a six-year old when the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man came out, I was more excited than anything to have my favorite video game come home. And so I would play this for hours. Even rolled the high score back to zero, I played it so much. Because it was Pac-Man, and to me, that was enough. After all, you did control a yellow dot through a maze eating pellets and running from ghosts. That's Pac-Man, right? Can't argue that the basic premise of the game was there.

I also liked the illustrations found in the game manual, as they had that sleek, rounded style that Atari's illustrator was know for doing with several of Atari's games.

The Bad
However, as I got older, I soon wised up that this game was almost NOTHING like my beloved Pac-Man that I loved in the arcades. Where do I even begin?

The maze was built nothing like the arcade's version. The maze wasn't even colored correctly. The escape tunnel was no longer on the sides, but on the top and bottom. There were no clever maze parts to lose ghosts, on a series of angles that looked like broken squares. And Pac-Man didn't even dots. He ate "wafers". And don't even get me started on the "vitamin" that replaced the fruit.

The ghosts were equally as bad. They were all the same flickering, pastel color. Hard to see, as they blended in with the maze, and devoid of the personality traits from the arcade game. They wandered around the broken maze aimlessly, and sometime, you might get caught. They didn't even flash when they were about to change back. You left them alone when the tone stopped that signified you could chase them. Setting the game in black and white mode allowed the player to see them clearer. Not that they would miss much from the muted colors of the regular game.

Sound effects were a dud. There was a grating four-note tone that replaced the original Pac-Man theme, and it was awful. Dot eating, ghost noises, chasing the ghosts after eating an Energizer.... Nothing even close to the original sounds.

And the greatest mystery of all: Pac-Man could never point up or down. He always floated around the maze facing the side, no matter where he was going.

And of course, no intermissions. Gamers played the same maze, over and over, without stopping.

The Bottom Line
One of the biggest selling games for the Atari, and also one of the biggest disappointments. This was one of those "the name will sell it alone" moments in gaming history, and they were right. But it came with a terrible price to Atari's future. They corrected this mistake (in a very big way) by introducing near-arcade perfect versions (for Atari) of Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr., but as far as Pac-Man goes, the ball was dropped. Not only for the game being this way, but for Atari allowing the game to hit the shelves looking like this.

Still, it seemed that Pac-Man was a hard game to accurately port for the longest time. The most "authentic" of the versions is found in Pac-Man Collection for Game Boy Advance.

Atari 2600 Pac-Man is at best a novelty item for classic gaming or Pac-Man enthusiasts. I can't recommend seriously playing it for a Pac-Man fix, but it is an interesting footnote in how a gaming empire crumbled.

For the curious only.